Mark Steyn writes:

It seems to me we have no very clear war aims in Afghanistan, which is never a good position to be in.

Are we “nation-building”? With US commanders talking about ending Afghanistan’s “culture of poverty”, it sounds like it. Yet, even assuming you could build a nation in any meaningful sense of the word on Afghan soil, such a nation would be profoundly uncongenial to us.

Are we there just to quarantine al Qaeda in their Pakistani redoubts and whack any bad guys who wander in range? That might be worthwhile, but is a tough sell to Nato forces who (excepting Brits, Canucks and a couple of others) operate under ludicrously constrained rules of engagement. So the “nation-building” facade is necessary to square it with the multilateral types.

The much misunderstood British strategy in Afghanistan was, by contrast, admirably clear-sighted, and worked (for them) for over a century. They took a conscious decision not to incorporate the country formally within the Indian Empire because they didn’t want a direct British land border with Russia. So instead they were content with a highly decentralized semi-client state and a useful buffer between the British Empire and the Tsars, a set-up that worked well (from London’s point of view) for over a century until it all fell apart in the Sixties when Moscow started outbidding the Brits for the loyalty of various factions – or what passes for loyalty in that part of the world.

The British strategy was cold and calculated and, if you care about Afghan child mortality rates and women’s rights, very unprogressive. But it was less deluded than asking western troops to die in pursuit of the chimera of ending a “culture of poverty” while in reality providing multilateral window-dressing for the country’s slippage back to warlordism and Sharia.

What are the goals here? Maybe the President could tell us. Or are we just going to (to cite the definitive film on the subject) Carry On Up The Khyber?

We doubt the President could tell us. We don’t suppose he has the least idea.

From The Community Organizer

Michelle Malkin’s book Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies (Regnery 2009) is, we’re happy to see, top of the NYT bestseller list for the fourth week running. As the leading supplier of  the most significant facts about Obama and his administration that the mass-media try to hide, she deserves the nation’s  gratitude.

This is from one of her recent Townhall columns:

Savor the silence of America’s self-serving champions of privacy. For once, the American Civil Liberties Union has nothing bad to say about the latest case of secret domestic surveillance — because it is the ACLU that committed the spying.

Last week, The Washington Post reported on a new Justice Department inquiry into photographs of undercover CIA officials and other intelligence personnel taken by ACLU-sponsored researchers assisting the defense team of Guantanamo Bay detainees. According to the report, the pictures of covert American CIA officers — “in some cases surreptitiously taken outside their homes” — were shown to jihadi suspects tied to the 9/11 attacks in order to identify the interrogators…

The ACLU’s team used lists and data from “human rights groups,” European researchers and news organizations that were involved in “(t)racking international CIA-chartered flights” and monitoring hotel phone records. Working from a witch-hunt list of 45 CIA employees, the ACLU team tailed and photographed agency employees or obtained other photos from public records.

And then they showed the images to suspected al-Qaida operatives implicated in murdering 3,000 innocent men, women and children on American soil.

Where is the concern for the safety of these American officers and their families? Where’s the outrage from all the indignant supporters of former CIA agent Valerie Plame, whose name was leaked by Bush State Department official Richard Armitage to the late Robert Novak? Lefties swung their nooses for years over the disclosure, citing federal laws prohibiting the sharing of classified information and proscribing anyone from unauthorized exposure of undercover intelligence agents.

ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero refused to comment on Project CIA Paparazzi and instead whined some more about the evil Bush/CIA interrogators. Left-wing commentators and distraction artists are dutifully up in arms about such “inhumane” tactics as blowing cigar smoke in the faces of Gitmo detainees. But it’s Romero blowing unconscionable smoke:

“We are confident that no laws or regulations have been broken as we investigated the circumstances of the torture of our clients and as we have vigorously defended our clients’ interests,” he told the Post. “Rather than investigate the CIA officials who undertook the torture, they are now investigating the military lawyers who have courageously stepped up to defend these clients in these sham proceedings.”

Courage? What tools and fools these jihadi-enablers be. Civil liberties opportunism is literally a part of the al-Qaida handbook. A terrorist manual seized in a Manchester, England, raid in 2005 advised operatives: “At the beginning of the trial … the brothers must insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them by state security before the judge. Complain of mistreatment while in prison.” Jihadi commanders rehearsed the lines with their foot soldiers “to ensure that they have assimilated it.”

Since 9/11, the selective champions of privacy have recklessly blabbed about counter-terrorism operations, endangered the lives of military and intelligence officials at Gitmo, and undermined national security through endless litigation… Now, caught red-handed blowing the cover of CIA operatives, they shrug their shoulders and dismiss it as “normal” research on behalf of “our clients.”

But don’t you dare question their love of country. Spying to stop the next 9/11 is treason, you see. Spying to stop enhanced interrogation of Gitmo detainees is patriotic. And endangering America on behalf of international human rights is the ultimate form of leftist dissent.

A. C. Grayling, Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London, writes in his book Against All Gods (Oberon Books, London, 2007):

It is time to reverse the prevailing notion that religious commitment is intrinsically deserving of respect, and that it should be handled with kid gloves and protected by custom and in some cases law against criticism and ridicule. It is time to refuse to tiptoe around people who claim respect, consideration, special treatment, or any other kind of immunity, on the grounds that they have a religious faith, as if having faith were a privilege-endowing virtue, as if it were noble to believe in unsupported claims and ancient superstitions. It is neither. Faith is a commitment to belief contrary to evidence and reason… [T]o believe something in the face of evidence and against reason – to believe something by faith – is ignoble, irresponsible and ignorant, and merits the opposite of respect.

He further asserts that ‘it is the business of all religious doctrines to keep their votaries in a state of intellectual infancy’, and that ‘inculcating [any one of] the various competing falsehoods of the major [or minor, for that matter] faiths into small children is a form of child abuse, and a scandal’.

With these opinions we agree.

But we are not  sure that he is right when he  declares in the same book that religion is on the decline, and ‘as a factor in public and international affairs it is having what might be its last – characteristically bloody – fling’.

If he is alluding to the jihad being waged by Islam on the rest of the world – as he surely is – it is certainly bloody. But whether it will prove to be religion’s last act on the world stage, or  fail in its aim to spread Islam as the predominant faith and only system of law on earth, is uncertain. A belief that mankind as a whole is continually progressing towards an ever more reason-directed future, can only be held on faith. Grayling seems to have that belief, that faith. But we do not.

With the spread of Islam through Europe, and the election of Obama in America, there is a double threat  to individual liberty, and so to the triumph of reason; because reason can flourish, create, and persuade, only where individuals are free.

As we have explained below (Mocking the victims of Lockerbie), Qaddafi himself orders every act of terrorism carried out by Libyans. Qaddafi is the mass murderer. But British, European and American diplomats are on the best of terms with him.

Of Libya under Qaddafi’s totalitarian dictatorship, Michael J. Totten writes at Commentary’s ‘contentions’ website (read it all here):

The place stinks of oppression. You can’t escape the state without leaving the country or going off-road and into the desert. Informers and secret police are omnipresent and all but omniscient. Hotel rooms are bugged. No one can travel from one city to another without a thick stack of permits and papers. I saw propaganda posters and billboards literally everywhere, even alongside roads in the wilderness where nobody lived. State propaganda is even carved into the sides of the mountains. Pictures of Qaddafi hang inside every building, and an entire floor of the museum in the capital is dedicated to glorifying him personally. Libya even looks like a communist country, with its Stalinist tower blocks outside Tripoli’s old city center and its socialist-realist paintings depicting happy proletarians in their Workers’ Paradise.

No one I met would talk about politics if there was the slightest chance anyone might overhear us. Those who did open up when we were safely in private were unanimous in their hatred, fear, and loathing of the regime. And they made sure to tell me that their entire families would be thrown in prison if I repeated what they said to anyone.

I visited several bookstores and found only four types of books in two genres: the Koran, commentaries on the Koran, Qaddafi’s Green Book and other works supposedly authored by him, and state-approved commentaries on his manifestos. If other genres were in circulation—fiction, poetry, economics, history—I couldn’t find them. And I quickly gave up trying to locate an international newspaper or any other source of information that didn’t belong to Qaddafi…

From Investor’s Business Daily (read it all here):

Understand, this is a time of great financial peril. That’s the main reason why Bernanke was renominated. The idea of changing Fed leaders in the middle of a financial crisis was too much.

Bernanke has printed close to $2 trillion in new money to help refloat the economy. President Obama is no doubt happy — if for no other reason than it will let the White House claim its $787 billion “stimulus” is the real reason the economy’s starting to grow again.

But the naming of [Denis] Hughes as the top banker at the New York Fed is the real news. And it’s quite astounding.

He has no significant finance experience. Nor does his educational background — “Brother Hughes,” as the AFL-CIO’s Web site calls him, has a B.S. degree from the Harry Van Arsdale School of Labor Studies at Empire State College — reassure us…

Of greater concern is his career as a bought-and-paid-for union official and political operative. The New York Fed chairmanship is hardly a place for a person whose entire career has been spent fighting and strong-arming the very people he’ll now be regulating.

Putting this key Fed bank in the hands of a person whose experience suggests a bred-in-the-bone hostility to capitalism strikes us as bizarre at best and dangerous at worst. And it bears the unmistakable imprint of the White House. Just last week we wrote about plans to elevate former United Steelworkers adviser Ron Bloom from head of the auto task force to “industrial policy czar.”

Putting so many union people in powerful positions of economic policymaking is a recipe for disaster. Since 1955, the share of the workers belonging to unions has plunged from 33% to about 11%. Still, though increasingly unpopular, unions have helped wreck two major industries: autos and steel. Not much of a track record.

But now, through politics, unions are getting rewarded with control of the economy — a very bad omen for American capitalism.

In an article by the admirable John Bolton (read it all here) about the release of al-Megrahi, the convicted Lockerbie bomber, we find this :

The state department said on Friday that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton worked “for weeks and months” to persuade Britain not to release the murderer.

As we have learnt that foreign offices, which are dedicated to promoting the interests of foreigners, are very unlikely to tell the truth, we do not believe that Hillary Clinton did anything of the kind.

But we do believe the implication of what the State Department is claiming without apparently realizing what they’re saying: that the release  of al-Megrahi was under discussion for ‘weeks and months’, and that Hillary Clinton knew about it and may have been party to the secret negotiations.

From The Community Organizer

Vasko Kohimayer writes in Front Page Magazine (an article well worth reading in its entirety):

Having incurred more than $65 trillion in obligations of various kinds, the federal government finds itself in an insurmountable fiscal hole. To give a sense of size, this amount is more than the annual economic output of the whole world and four times America’s Gross Domestic Product. It would be impossible to manage this even if our leaders suddenly came to their senses and began to behave responsibly. There is little chance of that, however. The larger our debt, the more eager they are to spend more.

Despite our leaders’ efforts to conceal the level of indebtedness, its reality cannot be evaded. The steady weakening of the dollar is one evidence of that. In recent months financial experts have even been discussing the unthinkable: The possibility that the American government may default… The deficit will end up being close to $2 trillion at the end of this fiscal year… The markets are growing increasingly concerned about the possibility of the United States failing to meet its obligations.

The question is how did America get into this position. What brought this country – once a citadel of financial stability – to such dire straits? The answer will become apparent when we look at the composition of America’s debt burden.

The federal government’s obligations consist of two main components. The smaller of the two is the one that is reported on more often. It is referred to as “public debt,” or “national debt,” or “sovereign debt.” This is the debt that the government has incurred as a consequence of its budget deficits over the years. It currently stands at $11.6 trillion, which is about 85 percent of GDP.

The public debt, however, only represents a relatively small portion of the government’s total debt. The rest is primarily made up of obligation connected with three large entitlement programs – Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid. It is estimated that together their combined claims amount to roughly $55 trillion more than what the government will collect in designated taxes. At this point Medicare and Social security do not yet represent a net budgetary expense, because revenues (FICA taxes) exceed what is paid being out in benefits. To put it differently, these programs are currently running surpluses; this situation, however, will not last indefinitely. The social security surplus will end around 2018. The negative gap will then widen rapidly with each successive year… The $55 trillion question is: How will the government raise the cash once the surpluses come to an end?

There are two ways in which this can be done: by raising taxes or by borrowing. Neither seems like a good option under the circumstances. Taxes are already perceived to be high; bringing them much higher would be politically unpopular if not impossible. Furthermore, raising taxes would hamper growth, which would in turn decrease the tax base and thus defeat the purpose of the increase in the first place. As far as borrowing is concerned, it is almost certain that investors would refuse to finance additional debt given their concerns about its present levels. With no place to go, it is likely the federal government will do what governments usually do when caught in this situation: it will “meet” its obligations by printing money.

This, of course, is an easy way out, but it debases the currency and produces inflation. And since America’s huge debt load is far beyond the government’s ability to pay off with honest money, the level of inflation is likely going to be very high. It would actually appear that the government has already embarked on this path. There are even those who fear that the United States may eventually experience hyperinflation… The soaring inflation that will follow will have a devastating effect on the already fragile financial system and will inevitably lead to economic breakdown. This will in turn set off centrifugal forces in a troubled and divided society.

America’s impending travails are thus ultimately tied to fiscal mismanagement, particularly in the area of entitlements. It is as ironic as it is instructive that entitlements seek to confer the kinds of benefits the Founding Fathers thought the federal government should have no business of pursing. It was with this in mind that they drafted a constitution that sought to prevent the federal government from getting involved in those areas. They made it very clear that federal functions were to be few and  limited, confined primarily to protecting the life, liberty and property of Americans.

Ensuring people’s well-being through the provision of retirement income, healthcare and other such goods was not to be the government’s job.

It is to our detriment that we have betrayed both our founding principles and the Constitution. We have done this because we have fallen for that greatest of lies, which is that government is capable of providing for citizens’ material and social needs…

Brainwashed by years of public education, many believe that ensuring the population’s material welfare is precisely what good government is all about. But no government has ever been able to pull this off…

Those naive enough to rely on the government’s “guarantee” of a “dignified” retirement are bound to be bitterly disappointed… But if the only thing the government did was to fail to deliver on its promises, the situation would not be so dire. Unfortunately, it also did something else in the process – it has bankrupted this nation by saddling it with debts and obligations we cannot fulfill. This outcome is unsurprising. The old maxim is as valid now as it has always been. Government does not solve problems; it only makes them worse. Given the ambitious scope of entitlements, it was only to be expected that federal involvement would eventually create difficulties on an insurmountable scale…

James Carafano writes in the Washington Examiner:

The Pentagon budget the president sent to the Hill would have slashed production and deployment of U.S.-based missile interceptors by about a third. The cuts would have come from missile defenses that are already tested, proven and, for the most part, paid for. So much for the promise of “pragmatic and cost-effective” defenses.

Case in point: The Obama budget included absolutely zero funds to replace “Missile Field One.” This Alaskan missile field, now part of the missile defense shield, includes the first silos built to test the long-range interceptors.

The silos were not built for long-term use. They now need to be replaced. But the Obama budget request zeroed out that funding … even though the budget still retained an already paid-for fleet of interceptors.

Talk about penny-wise and pound-foolish! Those paid-for interceptors can be of no use without silos from which to shoot them. The Obama budget would have left them silo-less.

The White House also started backpedaling from the previous administration’s commitment to field missile defense interceptors in Poland that would protect both our allies and our troops in Europe from the growing Iranian missile threat. The administration tried to justify the delay by saying it wanted to look at “pragmatic and cost-effective” alternatives.

One alternative it says it wants to consider is a mobile, land-based system. Cool, huh? Except that such a system exists nowhere other than on some PowerPoint slides. So much for “pragmatic.”

The other alternative it is considering is a sea-based system. But sea-based defenses are much more expensive to operate than land-based silos. Moreover, our current sea-based system can’t intercept long-range missiles.

A new sea-based interceptor will have to be developed to do the job. Thus, the “pragmatic and cost-effective alternative” the administration says it wants to consider is demonstrably more expensive and totally unproven.

Obama’s defense budget also killed a missile defense research and development program called the Kinetic Energy Interceptor. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said it was “going nowhere,” expensive and unproven. What he did not mention is that, so far, the only part of the KEI program that has actually been built is a “fire-control” system that links the missile-detecting sensors to the interceptors.

The fire-control part of KEI has been fully tested. It is a robust system that could be utilized with any land- or sea-based interceptor (not just the proposed KEI missile). By killing the funding for the entire program, the fire control system (the part American tax dollars have already paid for) will be terminated as well — another violation of the “proven and cost-effective” pledge.

Finally, Obama promised that he’d work to replace today’s tested, proven and paid-for technologies with something even better: A future system that could knock down enemy missiles at their most vulnerable point — the “ascent phase,” right after they’ve been fired.

OK, except the Pentagon’s proposed budget lacks any real funding for such a program. Nor do Pentagon planners have any idea what such a program might look like. In short, today’s real, working weapons systems are being replaced with vague promises.