Sic Semper Tyrannis

The Sanford Affair

The man has a mistress with whom he is in love.  From the point of view of his wife this is much worse than Clintonesque prowling, much worse.   Actually, recovery from this ailment is unlikely.  All of them are suffering.  Does this mean that he is A BAD MAN and beyond redemption?  I suppose that depends on whether or not you believe in the possibility of redemption or if you believe that one's character is revealed by one's actions and that this is the whole story.  I am not a Calvinist so I come down on the side of contrition and redemption.  The problem for Sanford is that it may well be that he really is not contrite.  His wife will know.  Perhaps she already does know.

Will South Carolina forgive him?  I have always thought that the state is basically divided into two cultural zones.  In the Highlands, the Presbyterian, Baptist and generally evangelical spirit of Appalachia seems to prevail.   A lot of those people are not going to forgive him.

In the coastal Low Country a much more laid back atmosphere is very visible.  My bet would be that he will be largely forgiven in the Low Country.

In any case, he is finished in national politics.  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/30/AR2009063001581.html?hpid=moreheadlines

"Judicious investment" in oil

"Downgrading the forecast, IEA said the oil demand would rise 0.6% or 540,000 barrels per day on average during 2008-2014. In its latest Medium-Term Oil Market Report, the Paris based agency said the oil demand would rise to 89 million barrels per day in 2014."

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OK.  Crude prices declined to around 32 dollars per barrel and now are back up around 70 dollars.

Why?

There is no short term shortage of crude.  Oil producers and traders are impounding the stuff all over the world, holding it in waiting for the steadily rising price to come to the level they want.  Speculation?  The "S" word?  OK.  Let's call it "judicious investment."

Demand is down just about everywhere at the moment, so more and more oil has to be withheld from the markets to keep the price going up.  This is very "judicious investment."

How high will the price of crude go this summer?  That depends on the skill of the producers and investors.  pl

 

An Immodest Proposal - Mexamerica

Some time ago I posted something called "An Un-Muddled but Perhaps Addled Stand" on the subject of US relations with Mexico.  In that piece I advocated separation of the issues of citizenship, ownership and residence in the relationships of the two countries.  Reaction was mixed with some people on the left insisting that to even thnk of such arrangements was a confession of regression to colonialism.  I thought that was nonsense then and do now.  How can economic opportunity for the masses of Mexican people be imperialism?

The border and illegal immigration problems grow ever more severe.  The US border states are growing increasingly desperate in their efforts to control the cross border effects of the rampant organized crime of the Mexican border states.  Poverty is still driving armies of Mexicans and Central Americans across our southern border.  We are fitfully building physical barriers, enlarging the Border Petrol and moving slowly, regretfully toward deployment of; first National guard troops and eventually, inevitably, federal troops to that border.  At the same time, Americans who live in parts of the country where large numbers of Latino migrants, both legal and illegal exist, know that a very large majority of these people are hard working, decent, and family oriented folk who make an important contribution to the work force in many jobs that US born Americans no longer want.  It seems unlikely that the US Congress will pass any law that can "solve" a problem of mass migration.

What to do?

Perhaps we should make the two countries into one.  Perhaps the two governments should enter into negotiations for eventual merger.

One country with one citizenship?  One country with one code of federal laws, one federal judiciary, merged armed forces, national police forces, corporate law, ownership standards, taxes, electoral laws, one constitution.

Why not?  The two "peoples" are too different?  That increasingly seems implausible.  Racial differences?  Religious differences?  Educational differences?  Who will stand up here to argue that?

Jonathan Swift suggested a "Modest Proposal" for the Irish Problem.  He had no more expectation of the adoption of his proposal than I have of mine.  My purpose is to have a freewheeling discussion of what can be done about the "Illegals Problem."   pl

Al-Maliki is celebrating victory over the American invader.

"A great deal of Mr. Maliki’s political support rests on the fact that violence has declined since the carnage of 2006 and 2007, that he has rebuilt the security forces, that he has presided over the beginning of the end of the American war. He rarely mentions any American role in the improved security in Iraq — though 130,000 American troops remain in the country.

“We will not ask them to intervene in combat operations related to maintaining public order,” he said in an interview with Le Monde published last week. “It is finished.”"  NY Times

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Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the neocon scum will be held accountable somewhere, someday for their crimes against the American soldier.

Here is a partial list of my accusations.  It will be argued that some of these things are not technically "crimes."  I think that irrelevant. These specifically apply to Iraq.  You may add your own and I may comment further:

- "Planning and waging aggressive war.." Keitel and Jodl were executed for this.  In this case the "aggressive war was against Iraq, a country that, however ill governed, had not attacked the United States and that did not have WMD weapons any longer.  This latter point was in the process of being proven by the UN's inspectors when the miscreants under dicussion succeeded, with the help of White House staff still in the public square, of deliberately propagandizing the American people by making a false case against Iraq in the public media.  By carrying out these actions those charged involved the United States in a senseless war in which many thousands of American military personnel were killed or mutilated.

-  Those charged directly intervened in the operational planning of the invasion of Iraq in such a way as to risk defeat in detail in many smaller actions.  They did this by denying to the ground component commander (Mckiernan) the forces that he reasonably and prudently requested and by "nickel and diming" him endlessly in such a way that the forces involved were still minimal and barely adequate.  The success of these forces is not an indication of whether or not the force was adequate in strength.  The additional risk assumed by fielding too small a force placed the troops involved at risk.

- Those charged insisted on assuming in pre-invasion planning that Iraqi resistance would be minimal and that the coalition invasion force would be met with "open arms" rather than IEDs by the Iraqi populace.  This foolish and willfully blind assumption caused the death or wounding of many American soldiers.  Many experts tried to tell the accused that their assumption was wrong but they would not listen.

- Those charged insisted on disestablishing the public institutions of Iraq; the army, the police, the civil service, etc.  These actions were taken against the advice of US Army and USMC senior officers on the ground who were in the process of sorting out which units and commanders could be used to re-establish public order.  Considerable progress had been made.  These disestablishments drove many Iraqi officers and men into the various insurgent groups where they formed a hard core of competence that killed and wounded many American soldiers.

- Those charged refused to accept the plain and abundant evidence present in the first two years of the war that what was faced by the coalition was nothing less than a full-blown national resistance insurgency.  By so refusing, they caused US forces to operate in an inadequate planning environment that exposed US soldiers to much greater risks than might otherwise have been the case.

- Those accused encouraged the use of brutal and illegal methods of interrogation of prisoners.  This was done in spite of US doctrine and law that specifically forbade such conduct.  Was this not a crime against the souls of the junior soldiers encouraged and pressured to do such things?

I will stop at this point and wait for your comments.  pl

Why all the bombings in Iraq?

"Thousands of U.S. combat troops will remain at a handful of bases in Baghdad and on the outskirts of other restive cities, such as Mosul and Kirkuk, in northern Iraq, past the June 30 deadline. But U.S. troops say their ability to respond quickly to thwart attacks could erode significantly because Iraqi officials will have unprecedented authority over their mobility and missions in urban areas.

"We won't be providing the same level of security for ourselves and Iraqis," said 2nd Lt. Jason Henke, a military police platoon leader who will remain at one of the few inner-city bases in Baghdad. "With only a small window of time that we are allowed to operate in, it's going to be easier to target U.S. forces when we are outside the wire."

Henke's concerns were heightened this week by a string of powerful roadside bombings near his base, Joint Security Station Loyalty, in central Baghdad.

On Tuesday, one of his squadrons was attacked with an armor-piercing bomb that struck the passenger side of a mine-resistant armored vehicle, igniting the fuel line. His platoon lost another truck Thursday in a similar attack."  Washpost 

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The most important component of the policy package shorthanded as "The Surge" was not the increased US combat presence, however helpful that was.  The most important thing was the successful effort to woo Sunni insurgents away from active or tacit support of the takfiri jihadis and into the "friendly" category.  We did that, and well.  They were not wholeheartedly converted "born again" friends of Brother Dave Petraeus?   What a surprise!  We used money to bring them to our side?  How terrible!  Does that mean that their hearts were not pure!!  Ah, the world is a sad place and this kind of work is always like herding cats.

Now the Americans are clearly leaving.  Power is steadily shifting towards the Shia dominated government that the Americans created.  That Shia government does not seem inclined to honor the variety of overt and implied "promises" that the Americans made to the "Sons of Iraq," etc.  The government's actions toward their Sunni "brothers" surely indicate that this is true.

In that situation it is to be expected that Sunni Arab hostility to the takfiri jihadis will wane and it is waning.  That is why it is possible for there to be more and more suicide bombings.  Get the message?

There are two ways to avoid further difficulty - 1.  The government should understand that bloody minded oppression of the Sunni Arabs will mean unending low level warfare in Iraq, and 2.  Someone should keep paying off the Sunnis sub rosa.  pl

 

Judge Leon's decision in the al-Janko case.

I was so fortunate as to be asked to give my opinion to the court in this matter.  Judge Richard Leon of the DC District Court and the good people of the Oregon Federal Public  Defenders office have returned honor to American justice in the case of Abd al-Rahim al-Janko who has been wrongly imprisoned and abused by the Taliban and then the US Government for eight long years.  pl

Download 6.22.09 Janko Habeas Opinion

Khamenei is still likely to go away...

He, and the clique of IRGC, Baseej and his allies among the scholars await the judgment of the Iranian people.  This judgment wil be delivered in the fullness of time as sentiments, and alliances mature and become the governing factors.

The knowledgable in the West and Israel know that this is the truth.  They know that this clique will be replaced eventually by a different group whose understanding of the world is more sophisticated than the bomb throwers of a generation all but passed.

The war parties in the US and Israel have taken up a new propaganda theme.  They are now saying that a "military coup" by the IRGC and other "radicals" has taken place and that the resulting regime is no longer under the influence and control of the Shia 'ulema.  The new theme insists that the new "coup junta" symbolically headed by Khamenei is even more dangerous and more likely to rashly use nuclear weapons as an expression of their lunacy.

This is an obvious attempt to twist the situation in the best agitprop tradition for the purpose of obtaining American popular consensus for war against Iran.

Ahmadinajad is a fool and he will undoubtedly play into the hands of the propagandists.

Much the same crew is seeking to flood the American media with stories of conflicts between Obama and General Jones.  These stories are directly related to those of the return to glory of Dennis Ross.  We will see...  pl

 

Khamenei is likely to go away.

My view of the Iran situation is that the particular 'ulema/pasdaran/basiij clique now governing Iran is digging a grave for itself with each passing day of unwillingness to compromise, share power or respect the collective right of the Iranians to express their discontent.  Beneath the surface, the 'ulema, the business commmunity and many Iranians are hardeniing in their attitude towards the ruling apparat.  I think there is likely to be a sine curve of resistance that fluctuates between relative quiet and street action.   This will eventually either eliminate this clique or cause a massive change in its policies.  I am not necessarily talking about an end to vilayat e faqih, but there is likely to be a change in the manner of application of this doctrine.

I think Obama is doing the right thing in expressing support for the demonstraters while keeping some distance from them.  Since I  am who I am, I would discreetly provide funds for the opposition, but, that's me. 

Most importantly, the action of the Iranian people has made it virtually impossible for the war party here and in Israel to succeed in dragging us into another one of their adventures.

In the meantime, there is something wonderful happening in re Syria.  pl

"Game changer" in Iran

The paradigm that I have been thinking within regarding the future of Iranian-US-Israeli relations is no longer valid.

You could see that today in the appearance of Bibi Natanyahu on "Meet the Press."  When pressed by David Gregory concerning Iran, he displayed hesitation and uncertainty in his responses.  That is a good thing.

A fuse has been lit in Iran.  The mullahcracy has shown itself to not be the expression of God's will in the vilayet al-faqih.  No, they are shown now to be just another bunch of sleezy politicians intent on keeping all power and willig to kill to accomplixh that goal.  Khamenei may win this round with the IRGC and Baseejis behind him but there will be other rounds in this contest.  The higher ranks of the Shia scholars have already begun to split.  How many among them will want to be associated with the suppression of popular will?

A brutal repression of a popular uprising is rarely decisive.  The British put down the Easter, 1916 revolt in Dublin with great ferocity, but six years later they no longer thought it was worthwhile to try to hold Ireland.  There are many such examples.

This IS a game changer.  The process may take a while but nothing will be the same after this.  pl

What would the Iranian Army do?

The fuss is probably largely over until next time.  What it would come down to in an all out confrontation is whether or not the regular armed forces of Iran would carry out orders to kill their countrymen or allow others in the IRGC or Basiij to do so.  Opinion?  pl

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_Iran