Sic Semper Tyrannis

It's "Bibi" time again.

Natanyahu takes office today with his cabinet of extreme nationalists, religious parties and a variety of other "friends of AIPAC." 

What can be expected from this cast of characters?

- An endless evasiveness on the subject of a state for the Palestinians.  Bibi and co. will instead try to sell them on the idea of a comfortble life as serfs, helots or whatever term one prefers.

- An effort to strike a clearly unequal bargain with Syria.  The deal must be seen by the Likudniks as unbalanced and in Israel's favor or they will not feel good about themselves.  After all, if you are not screwing your "enemies," then who are you?  This is a very Middle Eastern attitude, a place where a game that is not a zero sum game is thougt to be a defective game.

- An endless hostility toward Iran.  An Iran that fulfills the need for enemies, enemies that can be defeated and frustrated as a kind of memorial to bygone enemies.  Bibi's government will lean toward a unilateral first strike on Iran if the USA can not be maneuvered into doing the "business."

- the Iran "issue" will probably be the proximate cause of the confrontation between Bibidom and the Obama White House that I have been expecting.  Bibi has let it be known that he will not "tolerate" an American effort toward an "opening" with Iran.  Bibi thinks the United States is a sort of "cash cow" to be manipulated by clever people like him.  He, Avigdor Lieberman, et al will seek to bully and dominate the US using propagandists in the media, propagandists from captive think tanks, friendly media outlets and servile members of Congress.  In the end, a personal confrontation involving President Obama himself is an inevitability.  Then we will see...  pl

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSLU207116

"Cast Lead," a useless effort.

"There have been numerous allegations of Israeli atrocities during the three-week campaign,including the charge that Israel fired white phosphorus shells "repeatedly over densely populated areas."

Human Rights Watch made the accusation in a report last week.

White phosphorus burns on contact with oxygen. It is legal to use as an illuminant, but the human rights organization alleges that Israel used it as a weapon.

Israel has rejected those claims as well.

Other Israeli investigations into the conduct of its troops in Gaza continue." 

CNN.com

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Of course they will, of course.  This reminds me of the time an Arab dictator of my acquaintance displayed on his local television two scoundrels whom he accused of murdering a cabinet minister who had known too much.  The dictator (later a pal of President GW Bush) had ordered the killing, but there, on television, the two miscreants cowered in a corner while their guilt was proclaimed and el Jefe swore by the Qur'an that investigations would continue until all the evil doers would be punished, were punished as these two evil doers would be punished.

Nothing further was ever said or printed of the two miscreants, further investigations or the death of the inconvenient minister. 

Well, the photograph above is of white phosphorus shell fired from either artillery or mortars.  It is bursting over an upscale civilian apartment development.  There are a lot of pictures like this.  Any old soldier, including ones from the IDF, knows that this is white phosphorus shell.

White phosphorus (a metal) burns on contact with air.  If you get it on you, it will burn through your arm, leg, etc., until the burning phosporus comes out the other side.  Your only real recourse is to cut it out of you with a knofe before it does so.  White phosphorus shell is legally used for generating smoke on the battlefield.  It used to be common in aerial bombs.  Germany and Japan were heavily bombed with this among many other  things for the specific purpose of burning down their towns.

So.  The IDF spokeman is a liar.  The question of whther and to what extent the IDF also shot civilians deliberately I leave to the conscience of IDF soldiers who seem unwilling to shut up about it.  God bless them.

On a grander scale, Israeli complaints of continued Palestinian (Hamas) smuggling of supplies and munitions are a validation of the analytic comments I made here and on television to the effect that the Israeli effort at Gaza (Cast Lead) would be a total strategic failure if the Palestinians did not submit to the Israeli collective will as a result of that punitive campaign. 

They have not submited and so it is fair to say that "Cast Lead" was strategically a total failure that served once again to demonstrate the impotence of Israeli arms in dealing with the essence of their "problem" with the Palestinians.  What is next, forced "re-locations," a first strike against Iran as a relief from having to deal with the truly existential issue of Palestine?  How about face to face negotiations with the Palestinians as equal human beings?  How about that?  pl

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/03/30/israel.gaza.abuses/

Bob Gates on FNS - Yes, that's what we are doing.

The Secretary of Defense appeared on Fox News Sunday today.  Chris Wallace, the moderator, took the opportunity to ask every divisive, provocative question available and Gates breezed through the interview coolly answering all questions in a factual, calm way that utterly defeated the Fox instinct for trouble making.

There has been concern here about the new US policy in Afghanistan.  When asked if Obama was denying the US command there of forces, Gates said that the president had approved all requests that he, Gates, has made for deployment authority for forces going to Afghanistan.  When asked what the US goal is in Afghanistan, Gates repeated the president's statement that we are there to "defeat, disrupt and destroy"al-Qa'ida forces in the country.  Wallace tried several times to expand that mission statement to include the Taliban.  Gates ignored this and would not be drawn.  The implication is clear that an attempt will be made to suborn the more suborn-able parts of the insurgent array.  Wallace also tried to insist that a lot more troops would be needed.  Gates ignored that as well.  There will not be a lot more US troops over and above the 60,000 number that are now scheduled.  These are several reasons for that.  The most important one is that the administration does not want to be pulled into an open ended commitment to Afghanistan.  Al-Qa'ida is the objective, not a renaissance for Afghanistan.  The second most important reason for a limited force in Afghanistan is the state of exhaustion of the US Army.  Materiel, soldiers, families, are all exhausted.  The force is brittle.  Money for the "operations and maintenance" costs of another big war would be unsustainable.  The right wingers on FNS want to see a bigCOIN campaign in the policy that Obama announced for Afghanistan.  They want to see a policy that represents an Obama acceptance of what they call the "Bush Surge."  In fact the Obama Afghanistan policy if very limited in scope, and cleverly disguised to look like something that the right thinks it likes.  pl

A good plan for Afghanistan...

And more importantly, for the United States.

I have been holding my breath to to see what the White House and CENTCOM strategy reviews would produce with regard to Afghanistan in particular.  In the interest of full disclosure I should mention that I was consulted in a very small way on one of these.  It was agreed at the time that I would not mention this until policy was announced.

There have been two basic possibilities for US policy in Afghanistan:

- One choice might have been to commit to a full blown, multi-decade nation building COIN war that would have "sucked up" trillions of dollars in money that we could ill afford to leave littering the heights of Central Asia.  All the "old Afghanistan hands" whom I know insist that the country known as Afghanistan does have a seat in the UN and an embassy in Washington but that those two "data points" mark the closest approach to "nationhood" in the political science sense of the word that can be detected.  The creation of "Afghanistan, the Country" would have been dear to neocon hearts (and the idea still is).  That goal would have involved de-racination of Afghanistan to such a degree that it would become a very Westernized country.  The costs would be enormous.  The assumption in this (peddled by the neocons) is that a drained swamp does not breed alligators.  The "swamp" in this case is the matrix of traditional lifeways.  Those lifeways are despised and feared by the neocons.  Why?  Work it out.

- The other possibility in policy was that the US would spend a reasonable, but not excessive amount of money helping the Afghans in the development of physical and governmental infrastructure, would assist in enlarging Afghan security forces and improving their training in an effort scheduled to end in 2011 and most importantly would concentrate on energized and mobilizing native Afghan and Pakistani forces against their enemies and ours, the takfiri jihadis centered on the Al-Qa'ida group.  The idea being to disrupt and disorganize our real enemies enough to keep them off balance and unable to plan significant attacks against the West and most importantly the United States.  This intelligence and special operations task is small scale compared to neocon dreams and it is likely to be with us for a long time.

This latter option appears to be the one selected and if that is true, I support it.  This is a rational plan, proportionate to the problem rather than some silly idea centered on the "end of civilization."  pl

BTW.  The cognoscenti point out to me a serious US problem in Pakistan/Afghanistan.  That is a badly divided command structure.  Something should be done about that.

"Oil falls as U.S. inventories rise to 16-year high" Marketwatch

"Total petroleum products supplied over the past four weeks averaged 19.1 million barrels a day, down 3.2% from a year ago, the Energy Information Administration reported.

Meanwhile, crude inventories rose 3.3 million barrels last week, more than the 1.4 million barrels expected by analysts surveyed by Platts. At 356.6 million barrels, stocks are at the highest level since July 1993.

Crude oil for May delivery dropped $1.21, or 2.2%, to end at $52.77 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It ended the previous day's trading at $53.98, the highest closing level for a front-month contract since Nov. 28."  MW

 

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I suppose that some of you would like to bet that crude will continue to rise in price?  pl

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/oil-falls-us-inventories-rise/story.aspx?guid=%7B3DF1D39F-2233-4495-9559-50598BFDBC28%7D&dist=google

CNBC as a negative indicator, of everything.

Have these people ever gotten anything right?  On the Sunday news talkies, they pushed the idea that there would be no private investors for the government's toxic paper program.  Yesterday, the stock markets took off like a flock of startled geese in response to the program and the disappointment was clearly visible in the faces and voices of the money honeys and prognosticators.  The level of commitment to completely unregulated market function and the interests of the rich above all else is impressive.  Nothing else about CNBC is impressive.  I take that back.  Some of the women are impressive lookiing.  CNBC should be treated a a contrarian indicator.  "Fox Business?"  Hmmm...

The Obamanians have more things to do to sort out the economy:

- Suspend "mark to market" accounting for a bit. 

- Forget about "clawing back" the bonuses.  Contracts should not be violated.  The Senate will probably fulfill its purpose in this matter.

- The "up-tick" rule should be reinstated.

- Stop "naked shorting" as a practice.  Make it a felony if it is not already.

- Start regulating hedge funds and similar "casino" operations.

pl

"The Lobby Falters" Mearsheimer

"An even more important reason for the lobby to drive Freeman out of his job is the weakness of the case for America’s present policy towards Israel, which makes it imperative to silence or marginalise anyone who criticises the special relationship. If Freeman hadn’t been punished, others would see that one could talk critically about Israel and still have a successful career in Washington. And once you get an open and free-wheeling discussion about Israel, the special relationship will be in serious trouble.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the Freeman affair was that the mainstream media paid it little attention – the New York Times, for example, did not run a single story dealing with Freeman until the day after he stepped down – while a fierce battle over the appointment took place in the blogosphere. Freeman’s opponents used the internet to their advantage; that is where Rosen launched the campaign. But something happened there that would never have happened in the mainstream media: the lobby faced real opposition. Indeed, a vigorous, well-informed and highly regarded array of bloggers defended Freeman at every turn and would probably have carried the day had Congress not tipped the scales against them. In short, the internet enabled a serious debate in the United States about an issue involving Israel. The lobby has never had much trouble keeping the New York Times and the Washington Post in line, but it has few ways to silence critics on the internet."  Mearsheimer

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The bloggers almost won?  pl

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n06/mear01_.html

Dr. Adam Silverman on US/Israel Relations

Download ALS_Freeman_neo_Cons_Lang

Iran, Obama, AIG and Britt Hume

"Fox News Sunday" (FNS) is always fun for the feeble minded.

Chris Wallace, the ringmaster for this circus, went on and on and on today about his "concern" that because the Congress is taxing away the bonuses of failed but still rapacious AIG executives, private money will not be committed by other rapacious executives (some of whom are with AIG counterparties in the CDS racket) to a scheme in which they have a good chance of making a lot of money in a partnership with the government in which most of the money will be government money, i.e., buying the trash paper from the banks.  Having been a "visitor" to the world of international business for ten years I find that amusing.  Businessmen are about making money, and that is all.  They are no more "concerned" for the fate or public humiliation of other businessmen than sharks are "concerned" over the blood of other sharks in the water.  If there is a reasonable chance of personal profit, businessmen will swim toward the money.  Is the bonus tax unconstitutional? Probably.  The courts will settle that and the business sharks all know it.

President Obama has now made some significant gestures toward Iran.  These should be seen as alternative to the drift toward eventual war with that country that was the basic Bush Administration policy.  The Iranians do not seem to be responding favorably to those gestures.  This is foolish.  The danger to Iran of continuing evasiveness over the exact nature of their nuclear program is suicidal.  The Iranians should insist that the IAEA pursue unlimited inspections of ALL facilities and atomic programs in Iran.  To do otherwise is to weaken all those in the West who want to see reasonable relations between Iran and its potential enemies.  When the opacity of parts of the Iranian nuclear program are coupled with continuing expressions of hostility by Iranian officials toward both the US and Israel, an atmosphere is encouraged in which eventual military action becomes probable.

The Israelis are pushing hard for this, as are their overt and covert allies in America.  Britt Hume of FNS was very open today in saying that "the worst thing that could happen would be for the Iranians to respond positively to Obama's gestures toward them."  Why? That is simple.  He believes that the iranians are utterly untrustworthy and that any temporary improvements in relations will be mere deceptions and delays in what he sees as the inevitable outcome.

This situation has nothing to do with ancient history about Mossadegh and the Iran-iraq War and everything to do with what the future will hold for all concerned.  If the Iranians do not want to find themselves fighting an air and missile war against the United States and Israel, they should take care over what they say and do.  pl

Military Access Survey

From time to time I like to take a survey of the locations from which people can access SST on military, on-base computers, NIPR net,etc.

Please write to let me know.  Someone please make me a map if you have the time.  A serving officer (O-6) has written to tell me that he feels that he is being deprived of his civil rights by arbitrary and unpredictable DoD action in blocking SST on government computers that access the internet. pl

Obama and Leno

Pat Buchanan thinks that it is not a good idea for the president of the United States to appear as a "straight man" for Jay Leno on late night television.  I heartily agree.  Buchanan is offended by the loss of "distance" and majesty in the person of the official whom he sees as a virtual sovereign equivalent to the British queen.  Buchanan is an ardent nationalist and a thinly disguised monarchist.  This a common view today, a variant on the "president as CEO of America" theme so evident in the mouths of the egregious.

I continue to resist these notions.  The president is the head of the Executive Branch of the federal government.  He/she is bound by the law...  He/she is separately the Commander and Chief of the armed forces and bound by law there as well.  The president is not our CEO.  He does not "run" America as a CEO runs a company.  To think or talk otherwise is to encourage a drift towards the centralization of authority that inevitably wil lead to tyranny. 

Nevertheless, I think it is NOT a good idea for the president to appear on entertainment television.  What is next, a guest "shot" on "The Daily Show" or the "Colbert Report?"  Comedians make jokes.  Inevitably the jokes are somewhat at the guest's expense and are directed towards events or policies for which the guest can be held responsible.  Leno took President Obama to task last night for the supposed inadequacies of his treasury secretary, Geithner.  It is understandable that he would do this.  The cable news industry has recently made Geithner a "whipping boy" in its mindless search for instant solutions for complex problems.  People like Matthews, the butcher boy of MSNBC, can not differentiate between executive ability and entertainment value, and so they don't like the mild mannered Geithner.  Having to answer to people like Leno, etc., on live TV increases the "burn rate" on issues like Geithner's fate and shortens the time that public opinion will allow the president to deal with real as opposed to media phenomena.

No more comedy shows Mr. President, please.  pl

Conference on Torture at Catholic University Today

I was invited some time ago to be a panelist today at the Columbus Law School at CUA in Washington.  The conference will address Catholic morality and torture.  Because of this commitment I will be unable to post today.  pl

http://law.cua.edu/PDF%20Documents/2009%20PDF%20Docs/Spring/Torture%20Conference%20Agenda%20Revised%20March%2013.pdf

OK I posted on the NJ thing.

You know where it is.  pl

National Journal Blog, 13 March, 2009

The NJ decided this week to hold a conversation on the avenues open for communication on the subject of US/Israeli relations. 

Unfortunately, the early comments on this from some supporters of Israel make it clear that any attempt to speak freely on this subject will subject commenters to charges of anti-Semitism.  Boundaries are specified in their comments.   Rules are laid down for the maintenance of a muffled zone on this subject,  It is clear from these comments that the question is being used as a trap laid for any who wander into it.

I had thought not to walk into the trap, but so many reject that idea that I have changed my position.  We will compile opinions on the issue of the NJ weekly subject and after a couple of days I will post a link at that site to our discussion of the question as well as my own opinions.  pl

http://security.nationaljournal.com/2009/03/how-to-talk-about-israel.php

Where did Madoff stash his cash?

OK, so a lot of the loot is in Ruthie's name, and she will probably get to keep some of it whether or not she, too, is indicted.  I am unmoved by the injustice of la famille Madoff being allowed to keep some of their loot.  Life is unfair.  I was taught that systematically, and I accept it, although I would be willing to accept the villa in Antibes as a gesture intended to soothe my feelings.

I am more disturbed by the fact that so many Jews let this piece of s--t cheat them because he, too, was a Jew.  How dumb is that?  Hell, we could have found lots of Gentiles pefectly willing to cheat them with equal efficacy and despatch.  (Here I am revealed as a self-hating Gentile. But, then, you probably already sensed that.)  Seriously, folksim, don't trust people just because they belong to some category or other.  There are scum bags everywhere.  (I was taught that by my father who took me to visit the camp at Dachau when I was a small boy - 1948ish maybe?

No.  I want to know where Bernie stashed the money that he kept.  The numbers indicate to me that there is a lot of money that is not accounted for by simple pay-outs to later "investors."  Where is it?  WHERE IS IT?

Is there a government involved? I want to know.  pl

 

Elkern on fate and the "------- Lobby"

I really doubt that Israel will bomb Iran in any big way - but I really do think they are trying to get us (US) to do it for them.

Like Turkey, Persian Iran would be a natural ally for Israel, surrounded by Arabs. "The enemy of my enemy is my freind" translates to "the neighbor of my neighbor is my ally".

Israel wouldn't want Iran to be destroyed - like we did to Iraq - but rather, merely "flipped", and this would work a whole lot better for them if we would do the messy part. How many "Regime Changer" missiles do we have stockpiled?

Lacking direct experience in the region, I could be totally wrong here; if so, please correct me. A Koranic sense of Justice would lead Iran to defend Palistinian Muslims; my New Testament ethics lead me to share this sentiment. But I would bet that there's a strong tribal memory among Shiite Persians of persecution at the hands of Sunni Arabs which could pull them in the opposite direction. I would bet a second beer on the proposition that Israeli Jews are more accutely consious of ethnicity even than religion. Furthermore, I'd bet a third (somebody's gonna get fat, dumb & happy off this wager) saying that non-Israeli Jews are even more likely to think this way. Tribal solidarity is the strength and the curse of Judaism; how many will think outside that box?

Actually, I'm pleased to say that several of the clearest voices speaking out against the Israel Lobby in the US are Jewish progressive intellectuals. Sadly, they are often vilified as "self-hating Jews", which could only piss me off more if I was Jewish.

I've recently been worried by the possibility that the Israel Lobby is now willing to risk visibility because the US is pretty much used up, and won't be worth bothering with much longer. But this overreach could also be explained by individual and/or collective hubris.

Still, what I see is a strong contigent of Israelophiles in the US with great (horrible?) bureaucratic infighting skills, pushing the US into conflict with Iran. Babak, the Dispensationalist "Christians" provide cannon-fodder in the voting booth, but not Seals in the bureaucracy.

We must not let this war happen. I just hope that Freeman is correct in chosing to bail out screaming "Lobby", and I hope that Adm. Blair can keep his chair & keep our policy safe & sane.

But maybe it will be more palatable if we don't think of it as fighting 3 wars at once, but rather as one big war streching from the Med to the Himalayas...

Elkern

http://www.jinsa.org/

 

Is Admiral Blair next?

That's a fair question.

The vicious clique that deprived us all of the chance to have Charles Freeman as chairman of the NIC had as its principal goal the ability to control the content of US national intelligence estimates of concern to Israel.  The analytic paper in which these servants of a foreign power have the greatest interest is that concerning Iran. 

Israeli general staff intelligence believes that the Iranians possess an immediate ability to assemble at least one nuclear weapon and are close to achieving an industrial ability to manufacture such weapons and their matched delivery systems.

Admiral (Ret.) Dennis Blair has testified before Congress that US intelligence (using the same data) does not agree.  The National Intelligence Council (NIC) of the United States believes that the Iranians could not have enough weapons grade fissile material to make ONE atomic weapon until 2010. (Some members of the NIC would say 2015)  Admiral Blair has also testified that the NIC does not believe that the Iranians have yet made a decision to manufacture nuclear weapons.  So far they have not produced uranium concentrated enough to use in fission weapons.

Israel has always had a very limited ability to collect hidden information in Iran.  More than that I do not wish to say.  What they know of things like the Iranian nuclear and missile programs are largely the result of others' efforts.  The reason why the Israeli and US estimates reach such different conclusions is the persistent and "traditional" habit of IDF intelligence of"worst casing" every single shred of supposed information and then compiling those shreds into a pastiche satisfactory to their collective fear.  This is reminiscent of the analytic technique of the neocons in the campaign to sell the Iraq War to the American people.

The "Israel First" crowd want a US national estimate that will justify and virtually require a US attack on Iran.  There will be a strong effort made to appoint a chairman for the NIC who will preside over the creation of such an estimate.

Dennis Blair has defied the Lobby, the neocons and IDF intelligence.  

Watch your back, admiral.  Watch your back.  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/11/AR2009031104308.html?hpid=topnews

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/03/hbc-90004545

Write to your government about Freeman.

I received the following example of a letter to responsible officials from Jersey Jeffersonian, a correspondent on this committee.  I recommend it to you as inspiration.  pl

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"(Senator or Congressman,)

The following is a letter I sent to the White House regarding the withdrawal of Ambassador Charles W. Freeman from his appointment by the DNI to the post of Chairman of the National Intelligence Council.  I expect you also to carry the national security needs of the United States uppermost, and not those of other nations, something sagely advised by President George Washington in his Farewell Address. I don't have any use for fifth columnists such as AIPAC or JINSA, and neither should you if you truly care for your country.  The text of the letter follows:

Sir,

      I write to express my extreme displeasure with the way in which Ambassador Charles W. Freeman, DNI Dennis Blair's choice as Chairman of the National Intelligence Council has been forced to withdraw his candidacy.  This victory for the scurrilous rumor-mongering of the "Israel First" crowd is intolerable.   Your abject surrender to the disreputable tactics employed to undermine this eminently qualified, experienced, and patriotic public servant speaks volumes about your lack of commitment to the sort of truly diversified and clear-eyed assessment of our nation's national security that has been so sorely missing in the last administration.  Platitudes about "bi-partisanship" are cheap; leadership demands sterner stuff.  I am appalled by the failure to support your DNI by fighting for his choice for this crucial position.

                                             In Disgust,

                                             Jersey Jeffersonian"

Freeman speaks out on his exit

Tue, 03/10/2009 - 5:35pm

Retired Amb. Chas Freeman, who said today that he no longer accepts an offer to chair the National Intelligence Council, has sent this message:

You will by now have seen the statement by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair reporting that I have withdrawn my previous acceptance of his invitation to chair the National Intelligence Council.

I have concluded that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office.  The effort to smear me and to destroy my credibility would instead continue.  I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country.  I agreed to chair the NIC to strengthen it and protect it against politicization, not to introduce it to efforts by a special interest group to assert control over it through a protracted political campaign.

"Pakistan's nukes" by Richard Sale

      With Pakistan’s political instability spreading, nervous concern has mounted over the fate of Islamabad’s nuclear arsenal should Taliban sympathizers gain power within the Pakistan military, but under the terms of secret agreements, U.S. personnel have been stationed in Pakistan whose sole function is to guarantee and secure the safety of Islamabad’s nuclear arsenal and keep it out of the hands of terrorists, according to several serving and former U.S. officials.

       In any case, in the opinion of several former and serving U.S. officials, Pakistan’s nukes are currently secure, “They are for now,” said one.

     Not everyone agrees. Speaking of the arsenal, a former senior CIA official said, "When it comes to this subject,  you've got a lot of people making stuff up. There is not only disinformation, but misinformation and wish-information."

      He added that when it came to Pakistan's arsenal, "We don't even know where it all is."

Open Thread on Freeman's Withdrawal

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/03/10/intelligence-pick-withdraws-amid-controversy/

Ingolf on CDSs as "zero sum" games.

Apologies to Cieran, Arun and ISL for using a term (zero sum) which I guess is a kind of financial markets shorthand.

Used in this sense, it's meant literally. Each of the parties to a credit default swap in effect enters into a bet. To the extent that one wins the other will lose. Equally, if one counterparty is unable, for whatever reason, to honour its obligation the other party will, to the same extent, fail to attain its desired ends (unless of course someone -- like the taxpayer -- is found to stand in for the defaulting party). It is in that sense an artificial construct, being neither a real asset, money or credit.

If anything, it's more akin to a bet placed on a horse, where the punter is equivalent to the buyer of a CDS and the bookie to the seller. It can also of course be compared to an insurance contract, although the principal players were particularly eager to ensure it wasn't classified as such since this would have brought them under an entirely different (and much stricter) regulatory regime. One of their fatal flaws (as David Habakkuk notes) is that they weren't traded on a regulated exchange and thereby marked to market, margined and cleared on a daily basis.

I'd assumed it would be clear from my comment that I wasn't suggesting they aren't both very real and potentially exceptionally dangerous (Buffet wasn't wrong when he dubbed them "financial weapons of mass destruction"). Their astonishing proliferation, complexity and opaqueness, and the degree to which they have become embedded in the financial system like a long and unstable daisychain is a scandal. And, as Cieran notes, now that the taxpayer has been saddled with the obligations resulting from AIG's failure, the damage has spread well beyond the contracting parties.  Ingolf

National Journal blog - 9 March 2009

http://security.nationaljournal.com/2009/03/is-al-qaeda-shifting-strategy.php#1305691

Bush "light" in the ME?

The Washington Post editorial page here declares President Obama's "outreach" to the Syrians and Iranians dead before arrival, and clearly the newspaper rejoices in that self-fulfilling prophecy.

On the same page one of the Kagans is given space in which to join in the rejoicing. The Obama Administration is Bush "light"" would be the message.  This is nicely "balanced" on the page by an oped from an obscure Iranian professor's plea for "understanding" and accomodation.

The Post editorial page has been a leading neocon propaganda organ for several years so these "statements" are to be expected.

The real question is the actual nature of Obama foreign policy in the Middle East.  Looking at what has happened so far it would be possible to believe that Kagan is correct in his underlying assumption of the basic continuities.  Alternatively, one might think that an exceedingly sophisticated game is being played in which a policy of peace making is followed while the appearance of special interest politics is allowed to persist.

I am a pessimist by nature, so I am inclined to think that nothing much has changed.  pl

How deep is the CDS hole?

  By the end of 2007, the CDS market had a notional value of $45 trillion, of which the corporate bond, municipal bond, and structured investment vehicles market totaled less than $25 trillion. Therefore, a minimum of $20 trillion were speculative "bets" on the possibility of a credit event of a specific credit asset not owned by either party to the CDS contract.

As the market matured CDSs were increasingly used by investors wishing to bet for or against the likelihood that particular companies or portfolios would suffer financial difficulties; rather than to insure against bad debt -see above. The market size for Credit Default Swaps began to grow rapidly from 2003, by late 2007 it was approximately ten times as large as it had been four years previously.    ^Wiki

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How deep is the CDS hole?  Aye, there's the rub.  Nobody knows.  Nobody in the general public knows how much of that $45 trillion is potential AIG debt of which the citizens of the United States are now the proprietors.

The "Financial Products Division" of AIG had around 350 people in it of a total AIG work forces of around 100,000.  You see!  You can make a difference as an individual!

The US government sensibly does not want to tell us how deep the hole is, who the holders of CDS from AIG are and what sort of plan the government has for dealing with an AIG CDS liability of 10, 20 or 30 TRILLION dollars if that is what it is.  I can't imagine what such a plan would be...

I suspect that the USG does not want us to know that AIG CDS liabilities are massive beyond belief and that their distribution is close to universal.

Perhaps foreign policy is now irrelevant?

pl

 

 

 

December, 2011. Remember that?

I keep receiving mail in which the premise is the notion that there will be 30 to 50 thousand American and other foreign troops in Iraq indefinitely.

That is nonsensical.  The signed agreement with the Iraqi government specifies the terms of coalition withdrawal.  It contains a firm time line.  The US is a party to that agreement.  It is an obligation binding under international law.

President Obama stated publicly and for the record that by the end of 2011 he intends to have all US troops out of Iraq.  There was very little "flex" in the way he stated this matter.  The word "intend" had to be in his declaration because he was not, in fact, born in a stable and laid to rest in a manger.  He does not know the future.  I presume that if the overly large embassy in Baghdad were besieged by mobs, there might be some sympathy for keeping enough troops in the country to secure it until the crisis passes?

On "Meet the Press" the week after Obama's declaration, Secretary Gates was asked if the agreement with Iraq could be modified before the end of 2011.  His reply was clear.  The agreement can only be modified by joint agreement of the parties.  In other words, the agreement is unlikely to be modified unless the Iraqi government wants some specific change in it.  What might that be?  They may want us to keep enough logistical soldiers in the country to keep their forces supplied, maintained, etc.  Similar requests are possible.  Incidentally, there are no non-combat troops except chaplains, their assistants, non-SF medics and the like.  What the media people mean by "combat troops" are soldiers who are serving in units that have no function other than fighting, infantry, armor, etc.

Some people want to think that we may not withdraw fully because the generals might not like it.  People who think that do not understand the political system in America.  Bush and Co. were foolish enough to hide behind rhetoric that said that the generals were in charge of policy about Iraq.  That was nonsense then and it would be nonsense now if the Obama Administration were foolish enough to say something that implied a concession of policy decision making to the "generals."  Every flag officer in the armed forces knows that the first time he/she resists a fully formed presidential decision will be the last.

No.  We are out in 2012.  pl

Open Thread, 7 March, 2009

I am heartened by the news that President Obama is still considering a policy of minimalist counter-terrorism engagement in Afghanistan rather than full blown COIN with all its manifestations of nation creation and vast expense.

At the same time I am waiting for some indication of the seriousness of the US/Syrian talks.

That being the case I declare an open thread.  pl

The FARA Law

The "Foreign Agent Registration Act" (FARA) was designed to provide a data base in which are registered all those whose foreign employment or associations place them in a position to be offering policy advice to the government of the United States on behalf of a foreign government, party, institution, company or individual.  The FARA act is administered by the Department of Justice.  A failure to register constitutes a felony.  Concerned citizens may make complaints to the FARA staff of the Department of Justice, to the Federal Bureau of Investigation or to their member of Congress with regard to individuals who may be in violation of the statute.

As I have stated in my CV (posted here at SST) at the personal request of Martin Indyk, I was registered under FARA for about five years as the representative of a Lebanese citizen business man and politician (unsuccesful).  I worked for the man in his industrial enterprises and also in his family charitable foundation.  The foundation funded vocational training and microcredit lending for small business creation in Lebanon, and provided funding for the US Middle East Project of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.  This CFR project sponsored academic papers on the Arab/Israeli situation.  These were provided to the State Department among other agencies of government.  Because I worked for this foreign person our counsel recommended that I register under FARA to ensure compliance with the law.  This registration later became a great convenience to the neocon brethren who would cite it in calling to complain to editors and network executives about me, my views and/or foreign associations.  Whenever they sought to use this "tool" they always falsely claimed that I was a representative of a foreign government rather than an individual.  This calumny culminated in Indyk's call to me suggesting that I should admit my "foreign agent" status.  I was happy to do so.  I de-registered myself several years ago when I stopped working for the overseas principal.

I think the FARA law is an excellent statute.  It is not well administerd by the Justice Department.  It is always underfunded and is poorly operated as a system that should be quickly responsive to the public.  Nevertheless, the law provides an excellent opportunity for the government to distinguish between the "sheep and the goats."

A possible confusion of allegiances is a perpetual problem in a country still in the process of self-definition.  The United States can not afford to have its diplomacy and/or policy formulation reside in the hands of people of unknown associations.

I urge concerned citizens to require Department of Justice action or enquiries with regard to doubtful cases.  pl

Are we serious about Syria?

"But the dispatch of emissaries, including former U.S. ambassador to Lebanon Jeffery Feltman, would mark the highest-level U.S. administration visit in more than four years to Syria, which has been called a state sponsor of terrorism. Syria has been accused of building a secret nuclear reactor that was destroyed by Israeli bombers in 2007 and being behind the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. 

"It's a reversal of what we were trying to do," said John Hannah, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy who, as national security adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney, worked on Syria policy in the Bush administration. 

Hannah said he's skeptical of President Obama's plans, but he added that the gambit could yield a huge payoff if the U.S. is able to extract Syria from the anti-Western coalition in the Middle East, which is led by Iran."  Foxnews

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"It's a reversal of what we were trying to do,"  That's true.  The Bush Administration policy was regime change pure and simple, no ifs ands or buts.  The Syrian government tried to talk to the Bush White House for the last eight years to tell its side of the story.  They were consistently rebuffed, often by Hannah.  The Bush Administration had its own candidate for president of Syria waiting in the wings, a sort of Levantine Chalabi, but, it never quite seemed to work out in Damascus and the US was too tied up in Iraq for "other measures..."

"Syria, which has been called..."  Sure.  The power of description is a mighty power.  All of you reading this...  I can call you anything I like; child molester, adulterer, racist, whatever and I could make it "stick."  "Information Operations" are the style of the neocons, the Bush Administration and their little foreign pals.  Think such accusations through for yourselves.

Now we are sending Jeffrey  (I don't care how it is spelt) Feltman to Damascus to render an opinion on the sincerity of the Syrians.  When Feltman was US ambassador to Lebanon under Bush #43, he was an unrelenting enemy of the Syrians.

Are we serious about this or is this just more Bush policy under new management?  p

 

 

 

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/03/04/obama-administration-rolls-dice-overture-syria/

Clinton, Ross and the Muslims

Hilary Cinton has made a big mistake in giving Dennis Ross a role as her advisor for the Gulf and "Southwest Asia."

The man is chairman of a foundation that is an arm of the Jewish Agency, the organizational mainspring of the world Zionist movement.  The Jewish Agency and the Israeli government are so closely connected that it is hard to say where one ends and the other begins.  The foundation that Ross heads is devoted to advancing the interests of the Jewish People worldwide.  That is the foundation's exclusive purpose.  Obviously, the Jewish Agency and it subsidiaries overseas and in the United States have every right to exist and to foster whatever interests that they choose, but should someone so closely associated with a group devoted to other than the interests of the United States as a whole have a key role in American foreign policy?  Why would anyone who is not a Jew think that Ross represents his or her interests?  Is it difficult to "connect the dots" in his case?  Does this man have a US security clearance?  In what sense is he not an agent or representative of the Jewish Agency?  Why is he not registered under the "Foreign Agent Registration Act? (FARA).  Just about everyone in the Islamic world believes that Ross is an Israeli agent.  Someone should sue over this man's employment at the heart of US foreign policy.

According to press reports (Kessler et al) someone in the traveling party has disclosed the substance of a private meeting between Secretary Clinton and Sheikh Nahayan, the foreign minister of the UAE.  I presume that it was Clinton herslf who made the disclosure.  The "he" attribution in the story means nothing.  Reporters often mis-identify sources as a courtesy.  If anyone other than Clinton disclosed the "matter" of the meeting, then that person should be fired.  Kessler. of the Washington Post writes that Clinton told Nahayan that the Obama Administration does not expect a serious and positive response from its rhetorical gesture toward Iran (open hands, etc.).  Is this "leak" an attempt to spur an Iranian response or is it a manifestation of Ross's notion (mentioned by Glen Kessler) that a rejection by Iran of US overtures is to be desired so that this rejection can be used as leverage in pushing for tighter sanctions against Iran?  In either case, the disclosure and the remark both point to a negative attitude towards a real opening to Iran.

This is not promising. pl

 

Charles Freeman, the right man in the right job at the NIC

"Freeman belongs to the camp that's the mortal enemy of the neoconservatives: the realists. Realist ideology pays no attention to moral differences between states. As far as realists are concerned, there's no way to think about the way governments act except as the pursuit of self-interest. Realism has some useful insights. For instance, realists accurately predicted that Iraqis would respond to a U.S. invasion with less than unadulterated joy.

But realists are the mirror image of neoconservatives in that they are completely blind to the moral dimensions of international politics. Realists scoffed at Bill Clinton's interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo, which halted mass slaughter. Realists tend not to abide the American alliance with Israel, which rests on shared values with a fellow imperfect democracy rather than on a cold analysis of America's interests.

Taken to extremes, realism's blindness to morality can lead it wildly astray. Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, both staunch realists, wrote "The Israel Lobby," a hyperbolic attack on Zionist political influence. The central error of their thesis was that, since America's alliance with Israel does not advance American interests, it could be explained only by sinister lobbying influence. They seemed unable to grasp even the possibility that Americans, rightly or wrongly, have an affinity for a fellow democracy surrounded by hostile dictatorships. Consider, perhaps, if eunuchs tried to explain the way teenage boys act around girls. "  Jon Chait.

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"...if eunuchs tried to explain the way teenage boys act around girls."    This is an analogy to remember, an analogy by which to judge the author.

Freeman's appointment has been under growing attack by people like Chait who attack anhyone whom they think might hold balanced opinions with regard to the Arab/Israeli dispute.  They seek to eliminate from public life all those whom they think are not completely in the control of "the lobby."  In fact, Freeman has a long record of support for a just solution to the Middle East situation, a solution that protects the long term interests and existence of Israel while enabling the creation of a national home for the Palestinians.  Evidently that position is not one sided enough for Mr. Chait.  The pathetic insertion of a private e-mail message concerning China is patently a "red herring" designed to obscure the fact that the only thing Chait is interested in is Israel.

Chait has it right concerning Charles Freeman's forecasting in advance of the US intervention in Iraq.  Freeman understood clearly that a prolonged occupation of Iraq by foreign forces would lead to fierce resistance by a population united in only one thing, a hatred of foreign domination. 

Now that there is a new administration in Washington, it would be easy to forget that in the time of the previous government it was not easy to find people who had enough integrity to speak truth to power in an atmosphere dominated by concerted efforts at character assassination and exclusion of dissenting voices from the media.  In that environment Charles Freeman was a pillar of strength, a voice that never faltered, an analyst whose judgments were consistently correct.

He is to be appointed head of the National Intelligence Council (NIC).  This is a body of very senior analysts whose major task is to write the nation's carefully crafted judgments regarding a wide variety of topics.  These judgments are embodied in National Intelligence Estimates. (NIE) These estimates are the official truth of the US Government with regard to world realities.  They are the basis for the debate on policy that every rational decision making process must follow.  If these estimates are corrupted by desired policy outcomes or incompetence, then the policy that is informed by them will necessarily be flawed.  "Garbage in, garbage out" is a truism borrowed from the information business.  We saw that principle applied  in the '02 Iraq NIE.  That document was a monument to the inevitable effect of political influence on analytic efforts and a gross incompetence in the process itself.

Charles Freeman is a man awesomely educated, of striking intellect, of vast experience and demonstrated integrity.

The business of the NIC is the description of reality.  Feeman is undoubtedly a realist in both senses of the word.   Who could possible be better for this job?  pl