Petrified Truth

Down to a nub

As noted earlier, the Dubai Ports World controversy has again exposed the Bush team's all too often poor handling of things political. Jim Hoagland is mad because the ineptness is undermining some good diplomacy.

[W]here was White House chief of staff Andrew Card as the ports contract moved through the bureaucracy? Or Karl Rove, who is paid to be Bush's political early warning system? From Katrina on, they have let Bush down. No, let's be more precise: They have melted the Bush presidency down to a nub.

This incredibly sustained oblivious staff work — and Bush's incredibly sustained enabling of it — carries a high price, for Bush and the nation.

The president embarks this week on a journey to India that should be a foreign policy high point for his second term. The visit has been meticulously and imaginatively prepared. Instead, it may well be eclipsed in national attention by the guffaws, sneers and blatant disrespect this White House has both allowed and encouraged to flourish with its bumbling responses to controversies big and small.

Hugo Chavez - nuisance or threat?

Stratfor's George Friedman tries to explain why the aggressive anti-Americanism of Venezuela's strongman Hugo Chavez is probably not a critical threat.

In reality, Chavez's ability to challenge the United States is severely limited. The occasional threat to cut off oil exports to the United States is fairly meaningless, in spite of conversations with the Chinese and others about creating alternative markets. The United States is the nearest major market for Venezuela. The Venezuelans could absorb the transportation costs involved in selling to China or Europe, but the producers currently supplying those countries then could be expected to shift their own exports to fill the void in the United States. Under any circumstances, Venezuela could not survive very long without exporting oil. Symbolizing the entire reality is the fact that Chavez's government still controls Citgo and isn't selling it, and the U.S. government isn't trying to slam controls onto Citgo.

Washington ultimately doesn't care what Chavez does so long as he continues to ship oil to the United States. From the American point of view, Chavez -- like Castro -- is simply a nuisance, not a serious threat. Latin American countries in general are of interest to Washington, in a strategic sense, only when they are being used by a major outside power that threatens the United States or its interests. The entire Monroe Doctrine was built around that principle.

The Bush administration unleashes periodic growls at the Venezuelans as a matter of course, and Washington would be quite pleased to see Chavez out of office. Should al Qaeda operatives be found in Venezuela, of course, then the United States would take an obsessive interest there. But apart from the occasional Arab -- and some phantoms generated by opposition groups, knowing that that is the only way to get the United States into the game -- there are no signs that Islamist terrorists would be able to use Venezuela in a significant way. Chavez would be crazy to take that risk -- and Castro, who depends on Chavez's cheap oil, is not about to let Chavez take crazy risks, even if he were so inclined.

Friedman may turn out to be right, but there's plenty of time for trends to turn out badly. It's not a good thing to see Venezuela slip into a virulently anti-American mood, to see a rising tide of leftist "populism" moving across South America, or to see Chavez making nice with jihadist-minded Iran.

• Blogs of War - Letter to Condie Rice and Tony Blair re Venezuela
• Blogs of War - Iran and Venezuela Strengthen Ties

The United States and the 'Problem' of Venezuela
By George Friedman

Venezuela has become an ongoing problem for the Bush administration, but no one seems able to define quite what the issue is. President Hugo Chavez is carrying out the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela and feuding with the United States. He has close ties with Cuba and has influenced many Latin American countries. The issue that needs to be analyzed, however, is whether any of this matters -- and if it does, why it is significant.

Chavez came to power in 1999 through a democratic election. He unseated a constellation of parties that had dominated Venezuela for years. Chavez, an army officer, had led a failed coup attempt in 1992 and spent time in prison for that. He sought the presidency without any clear ideology other than hostility to the existing regime. There was a vague belief at the time of his election that Chavez would be simply another passing event in Latin America. Put a little more bluntly, there was an assumption that Chavez rapidly would be corrupted by the opportunities opened to him as president, and that he would proceed to enrich himself while allowing business to go on as usual.

The business of Venezuela, however, is oil. Not only is the country a major exporter, but the state-owned oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), also owns the American refiner and retailer Citgo Petroleum Corp. Venezuela has tried to diversify its economy many times, but oil has remained its mainstay. In other words, the Venezuelan state is indistinguishable from the Venezuelan oil industry. Chavez, therefore, has faced two core issues: The first was how income from the oil would be used, and the second was the degree to which foreign oil companies could be allowed to influence that industry.

Chavez was able to win the presidency because he promised the Venezuelan masses a bigger cut of the oil revenues than they had seen before. More precisely, he promised a series of social benefits, which could be financed only through the diversion of oil revenues. From Chavez's point of view, the problem was that the Venezuelan upper class and the foreign oil companies were pocketing the oil money that could be used to pay for the social services upon which his government rested and his political future depended. From his fairly simple populist position, then, he proceeded to move against the technical apparatus of PDVSA and against the foreign oil companies, most of which opposed him and threatened to undermine his plans.

But there was yet a further dilemma. In order to support his political base, Chavez had to have oil revenues. In order to generate oil revenues, he had to have investment into the oil sector. But diverting revenues and building up the oil sector were competing goals. Given the political climate, foreign oil companies were not inclined to make major investments in Venezuela, and PDVSA -- minus its technical experts -- was not capable of maintaining operations and existing output levels. There was, then, a terrific problem embedded in Chavez's political strategy. In the long term, something would have to give.

Two things saved him from his dilemma. The first was a short-lived coup by his opposition in April 2002. This coup was truly something to behold. Having captured Chavez and sent him to an island, the coupsters fell into squabbling with each other over who would hold what office and sort of forgot about Chavez. Chavez flew back to Caracas, went to the Miraflores presidential palace, and took over, less than 48 hours after it all began. The coupsters headed out of town.

The coup gave Chavez a new, credible platform: anti-Americanism. He was never pro-American, but the brief coup allowed him to claim that the United States was trying to topple him. It would be a huge surprise to us if it turned out that the CIA was utterly unaware of the coup plans, but we would also be moderately surprised if the CIA planned events as Chavez charged. Even on its worst day, the CIA couldn't be that incompetent. But Chavez's claim was not implausible. It certainly was believed by his followers, and it expanded his support base to include Venezuelan patriots who disliked American interference in their affairs. What the coup did was flesh out Chavez's ideology a bit. He was for the poor and against the United States.

Chavez got lucky in a second way: rising oil prices. The appetite of his government for cash was enormous. Someone once referred to Citgo as "Chavez's ATM." With Venezuela's oil production declining, Chavez's government likely would have collapsed under social pressure if world oil prices had remained low. But oil prices didn't remain low -- they soared. Venezuela still had substantial economic problems and its oil industry was suffering from lack of expertise, investment and exploration, but at $60 a barrel, Chavez had room for maneuver.

All of this led him into an alliance with Cuba. When you're anti-U.S. in Latin America, Havana welcomes you with open arms. Cuba needed Venezuela as well: After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Cubans were cut off from subsidized oil supplies, and their ability to pay world prices wasn't there. Chavez could afford to provide Castro with oil to sustain the Cuban economy. It could be argued that without Chavez, the Castro regime might have collapsed once faced with soaring oil prices.

In return for this support, Chavez benefited from Cuba's greatest asset: a highly professional security and intelligence apparatus. Arguing, not irrationally, that the United States was not yet through with Venezuela, Chavez used Cuban expertise to build a security system designed to protect his regime. His government -- though not nearly as repressive as Cuba's is at the popular level -- nevertheless came under the protection not only of Cuban professionals, but of cadres of Venezuelan personnel trained by the Cubans. The relationship with the Cubans certainly predated the coup in Caracas, but it kicked into high gear afterwards. Both sides benefited.

Chavez's rise to power also intersected with another process under way in Latin America: the anti-globalization movement. From about 1990 onward, Latin America was dominated by an ideology that argued that free-market reforms, including uncontrolled foreign investment and trade, would in the long run lift the region out of its chronic misery. The long run turned out to be too long, however, because the pain caused in the short run began forcing advocates of liberalization out of office. In Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia, economic problems created political reversals.

The old Latin American "left," which had been deeply Marxist and always anti-American, had gone quiet during the 1990s. It recently has surged back into action -- no longer in its dogmatic Marxist style, but in a more populist mode. Its key tenets now are state-managed economies and, of course, anti-Americanism. For the leftists, Chavez was a hero. The more he baited the United States, the more of a hero he became. And the more heroic he was in Latin America, the more popular in Venezuela. He spoke of the Bolivarian revolution, and he started to look like Simon Bolivar to some people.

In reality, Chavez's ability to challenge the United States is severely limited. The occasional threat to cut off oil exports to the United States is fairly meaningless, in spite of conversations with the Chinese and others about creating alternative markets. The United States is the nearest major market for Venezuela. The Venezuelans could absorb the transportation costs involved in selling to China or Europe, but the producers currently supplying those countries then could be expected to shift their own exports to fill the void in the United States. Under any circumstances, Venezuela could not survive very long without exporting oil. Symbolizing the entire reality is the fact that Chavez's government still controls Citgo and isn't selling it, and the U.S. government isn't trying to slam controls onto Citgo.

Washington ultimately doesn't care what Chavez does so long as he continues to ship oil to the United States. From the American point of view, Chavez -- like Castro -- is simply a nuisance, not a serious threat. Latin American countries in general are of interest to Washington, in a strategic sense, only when they are being used by a major outside power that threatens the United States or its interests. The entire Monroe Doctrine was built around that principle.

There was a fear at one point that Nazi U-boats would have access to Cuba. And when Castro took power in Cuba, it mattered, because it gave the Soviets a base of operations there. What happened in Nicaragua or Chile mattered to the United States because it might create opportunities the Soviets could exploit. Nazis in Argentina prior to 1945 mattered to the United States; Nazis in Argentina after 1945 did not. Cuba before 1991 mattered; after 1991, it did not. And apart from oil, Venezuela does not matter now to the United States.

The Bush administration unleashes periodic growls at the Venezuelans as a matter of course, and Washington would be quite pleased to see Chavez out of office. Should al Qaeda operatives be found in Venezuela, of course, then the United States would take an obsessive interest there. But apart from the occasional Arab -- and some phantoms generated by opposition groups, knowing that that is the only way to get the United States into the game -- there are no signs that Islamist terrorists would be able to use Venezuela in a significant way. Chavez would be crazy to take that risk -- and Castro, who depends on Chavez's cheap oil, is not about to let Chavez take crazy risks, even if he were so inclined.

From the American point of view, an intervention that would overthrow Chavez would achieve nothing, even if it could be carried out. Chavez is shipping oil; therefore, the United States has no major outstanding issues. A coup in Venezuela, even if not engineered by the United States, would still be blamed on the United States. It would increase anti-American sentiment in Latin America, which in itself would not be all that significant. But it also would increase hostility toward the United States in Europe, where the Allende coup is still recalled bitterly by the left. The United States has enough problems with the Europeans without Venezuela adding to them.

Taken in isolation, Venezuela can't really hurt the United States. If all of South America were swept by a Bolivarian revolution, it wouldn't hurt the United States. Absent a significant global power to challenge the United States, Latin America and its ideology are of interest to Latin Americans but not to Washington. The only real threat that Venezuela poses to the United States would be if its oil production becomes so degraded that the United States has to seek out new suppliers and world prices rise. That would matter to Washington, and indeed it may eventually occur -- Venezuelan output has dropped about 1 million bpd below pre-Chavez highs -- but it would matter a thousand times more to Venezuela.

This explains the strange standoff between Venezuela and the United States, and Washington's basic indifference to events in Latin America. Venezuela is locked into its oil relationship with the United States. Latin America poses no threat on its own. The chief geopolitical challenge to the United States -- radical Islam -- intersects Latin America only marginally. Certainly, there are radical Islamists in Latin America; Hezbollah in particular has assets there. But for them to mount an attack against the United States from Latin America would be no more efficient than mounting it from Europe. The risk is a concern, not an obsession.

For the United States, its border with Mexico matters. For the Venezuelans, high oil prices that subsidize their social programs and buy regional allies matter. Both want Venezuelan oil to keep pumping. Aside from the one issue that they agree on, the United States can live and is living with Chavez, and Chavez not only lives well with the United States but needs it -- both as a source of cash, through Citgo, and as a whipping boy.

Sometimes, there really isn't a problem.

This report may be distributed or republished with attribution to Strategic Forecasting, Inc. at www.stratfor.com .

Port security

The highly-charged debate over U.S. port security and the involvement of an Arab-owned company has raged all week. With little time for in-depth study, it's been hard to use the customary shorthand method of taking a side: pick out a reliably idiotic politician or pundit, and choose the opposite.

Worldly-wise Mansoor Ijaz is well-connected and smart. His take:

The Dubai deal is a showcase example of how to deal with important issues confronting America's disquiet about where it stands in an increasingly integrated world -- whether by examining U.S. double standards in trade and protectionism policies, analyzing the internal failures in U.S. government response to provide adequate security at our ports or preventing U.S. reactions from appearing as xenophobic or Islamophobic to our most important Muslim allies. America cannot have it both ways on these issues any longer.

Critics of the Dubai deal raise the specter that terrorists might somehow infiltrate U.S. port operations. This displays a lack of understanding about what would be involved in Dubai owning and running U.S. facilities....

If the Dubai controversy helps American lawmakers and the White House craft better policy for every foreign company doing business on our shores, not just the Arab ones, a quantum leap in our security will have been achieved.

Overall port security is an area where the Bush administration has failed the American people, Dubai deal or not. This imbroglio should prompt the administration to speed up technology development -- perhaps even in conjunction with Dubai's innovative investment funding -- already under way in U.S. laboratories and at some premier U.S. defense contractors.

Glenn Reynolds, the omniscient InstaPundit himself, writes in the Wall Street Journal (subscribers only) on how the story has unfolded, and what that means for the White House.

When the story first appeared, bloggers were overwhelmingly negative. My own reaction, on Feb. 12, was "color me unimpressed." Other bloggers were more pungent, but the story got little attention in the national media, which were mostly preoccupied with the Cheney quail-hunting story. Most bloggers didn't dig deeper either.

By this past week, the port story had heated up. More bloggers piled on, and so did an increasing number of leading media and political figures. Talk radio was all over the topic, and the temperature of the discussion was high.

Some bloggers, meanwhile, were having second thoughts. One of them was me: Although my initial reaction was negative, I started getting emails from readers -- some of them longtime correspondents -- who had experience with the UAE. One had served alongside troops from the Emirates in Afghanistan; another had spent time in Dubai. Some had worked with UAE ports officials. All were positive.

[I]t's not clear where the rest of the debate is headed, but there are already some useful lessons for the White House. First, blogs make an excellent early warning system. The White House, unaccountably, seems to have been blindsided by the furor over this deal, though most people's gut reaction was negative. As with the many bloggers like me who changed their minds, gut reactions can be overcome by evidence -- but the White House should have taken advantage of this early warning to have its arguments in order. It didn't.

That's the second lesson: The White House should not only have read blogs, but responded to them with information and arguments, rather than waiting for blog readers to weigh in.

As discussed here often over the past five years, this administration, for all its reputation for political mastermindery, is remarkably inept at using strategic communications with both its allies and its foes to avoid these kinds of sandtraps.

That's more than just a political problem for an administration. It endangers us all when a global War on Terror is mishandled and loses support. Unfortunately, second-term presidencies tend to get worse, not better.

Tall hat brigade

Peggy Noonan has been experiencing what passes for airport security these days.

The security personnel themselves seem to know it's nonsense: they're always bored and distracted as they go through my clothing, my stockings, my computer, my earrings. They don't treat me like a terror possibility, they treat me like a sad hunk of meat.

I don't think most of us get extra screening because they think we are terrorists. I think we get it because they know we're not. They screen people who are not terrorists because it helps them pretend they are protecting us, in the same way doctors in the middle ages used to wear tall hats: because they couldn't cure you. It's all show.

...

It is almost five years since 9/11, and since the new security regime began. Why hasn't it gotten better? Why has it gotten worse? It's a disgrace, this airport security system, and it's an embarrassment....

So we're all talking about port security this week, and the debate over the Bush administration decision to allow United Arab Emirates company to manage six ports in the United States. That debate is turning bitter, and I wonder if the backlash against President Bush isn't partly due to the fact that everyone in America has witnessed or has been a victim of the incompetence of the airport security system. Why would people assume the government knows what it's doing when it makes decisions about the ports? It doesn't know what it's doing at the airports.

This is a flying nation. We fly. And everyone knows airport security is an increasingly sad joke, that TSA itself often appears to have forgotten its mission, if it ever knew it, and taken on a new one--the ritual abuse of passengers.

Now there's a security problem. Solve that one.

Amen to that.

Global intifada begins

Islamic mobs attacked the U.S. embassy in Jakarta today, continuing a worldwide wave of violent demonstrations.

Hundreds of Muslims protesting caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad tried to storm the U.S. Embassy on Sunday, smashing the windows of a guard post but failing to push through the gates. Several people were injured.

Pakistani security forces, meanwhile, sealed off the capital of Islamabad to block a planned mass demonstration and fired tear gas and gunshots to chase off protesters. In Turkey, tens of thousands gathered in Istanbul chanting slogans against Denmark, Israel and the United States.

Protests over the cartoons, which first appeared in a Danish newspaper in September and have been republished in other European publications and elsewhere, have swept across the Muslim world, growing into mass outlets for rage against the West in general, and Israel and the United States in particular.

Christians also have become targets. Pakistani Muslims protesting in the southern city of Sukkur ransacked and burned a church Sunday after hearing accusations that a Christian man had burned pages of the Quran, Islam's holy book.

That incident came a day after Muslims protesting in the Nigerian city of Maiduguri attacked Christians and burned 15 churches in a three-hour rampage that killed at least 15 people. Some 30 other people have died during protests over the cartoons that erupted about three weeks ago.

The AP correspondent quoted above is still peddling the notion of Muslim "rage," but the pattern of the last few weeks is now clear: an intentionally instigated global intifada.

• Counterterrorism Blog - Danish cartoons: new political tool
• Michelle Malkin - World on Fire: Islamists Gone Wild

Turnover needed

Robert Novak reports on an uncomfortable truth about the Bush White House, valid even following the outbreak of absurd overreaction by the media about VP Cheney's hunting accident.

Bush-bashers delighted in exaggerating Cheney's post-accident conduct as a metaphor for everything wrong with George W. Bush's presidency in its sixth year. Nevertheless, there are supporters of the president (and the vice president, as well) who believe the handling of the accident does reflect structural problems in the Bush White House. Those defects were present from the start of this presidency and remain, in the absence of a basic reconstruction after Bush's re-election.

Republican malaise in Washington derives less from anemic poll ratings than from overriding concern about how the Bush team functions. This anxiety is enhanced because Republican criticism of the White House is seen as evidence of disloyalty and consequently discouraged.

The critical shortcomings of the Bush administration on both strategy and tactical execution won't be overcome without personnel changes. It's long overdue, but seems increasingly unlikely to happen in time to matter.

The whys of appeasement

Victor Davis Hanson, historian that he is, ponders the unnerving parallels between our time and the 1930s.

[D]eja vu pertains not just to us, but our enemies as well. Like the Nazi romance of an exalted ancient Volk, the Islamists hearken to a mythical purity, free of decadence brought on by Western liberalism. Similarly, they feed off victimization -- not just recent defeats, but centuries-old bitterness at the rise of the West. Their version of the stab-in-the-back Versailles Treaty is always the creation of Israel.

Just as Hitler concocted incidents such as the burning of the Reichstag to create outrage, Islamist leaders incite frenzy in their followers over a supposed flushed Koran at Guantanamo and several inflammatory cartoons, some of them never published by Danish newspapers at all.

Anti-Semitism, of course, is the mother's milk of fascism. It is always, they say, a small group of Jews -- whether shadowy Cabinet advisers and international bankers of the 1930s or the manipulative neoconservatives and Israeli leadership of the present -- who alone stir up the trouble.

The point of the comparison is not to suggest history simply repeats itself, but to learn why intelligent people delude themselves into embracing naive policies. After the Taliban and Saddam were removed, the furious reply of the radical Islamist world was to censor Western newspapers, along with Iran's accelerated efforts to get the bomb.

In response, either the West will continue to stand up now to these recurring post-September 11, 2001, threats, or it will see the bullies' demands increase as its own resistance weakens. Like the appeasement of the 1930s, opting for the easier choice will only guarantee a more costly one later.

Codrescu unleashed

Robert Kent of Friends of Cuban Libraries writes to say that we'll get a chance today to see Andrei Codrescu's historic takedown of the morally supine American Library Association.

A tape of Andrei Codrescu's sensational January speech at the ALA midwinter conference will be broadcast on Saturday, Feb. 18, at 5:45 P.M. (Eastern Time) on C-SPAN2, on the BookTV program. We hope you will inform your readers of this historic broadcast.

The first segment of the speech is about other matters, but in the second
half Andrei tears into the ALA for failing to defend Cuba's independent librarians from persecution. Even better, it is said, is Andrei's post-speech dialogue with a stunned and (for once in his life) semi-speechless Michael Gorman.

Andrei's presentation marks what may be a turning point in ALA history (as noted by the 75% of respondents in the AL Direct poll who voted to condemn the Castro regime). Airing times may differ in other time zones, so viewers should check their local listings.

My DVR is set. Kudos again to essential C-SPAN and Book TV.

• Tawdry is as tawdry does

Military force strategy

More Donald Rumsfeld: sometimes he has good ideas, and sometimes not; sometimes both at the same time.

This is good:

Well into the Bush administration's second term, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is concentrating much of his energy on remaking a small but important corner of the military: special-operations forces.

...Rumsfeld's top-to-bottom review posits that the gravest long-term threat to national security comes from small cells of al Qaeda and its radical offshoots scattered across more than 80 countries. To take them down, Mr. Rumsfeld wants to build a much larger and more aggressive special-operations force with broader latitude to both work with indigenous forces and take action in countries where the U.S. is technically not at war.

This is short-sighted:

The Pentagon chief's focus on these elite forces reflects his conviction that the Iraq war -- in which about 140,000 U.S. troops are struggling to rebuild a country from the ground up -- is an anomaly that is winding down and won't be repeated, say senior defense officials....

Meanwhile, conventional ground forces, which are doing the bulk of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, will by 2011 return to their prewar levels. The Air Force and Navy will absorb even deeper personnel cuts.

One of our huge problems right now is that our military -- in every way -- is simply not big enough. The post-Cold War drawdown has left us dangerously weakened, and it shows in Iraq and elsewhere.

This part of Rumsfeld's thinking is a mystery.

We’ve faced worse than you

The father of a Marine lance corporal in Iraq has a warning for our current enemy, Islamofascist terrorists: don't underestimate free Americans. It's been tried before.

We’ve taken it on the chin from you chaps for 30 years. We won’t take it any more. You may think the game has changed. Unlike your honorable ancestors riding the deserts of Africa, real warriors and the finest horsemen the world has ever seen, you hide and kill women and children, believing you can overcome us psychologically. Justice demands murderers like you pay the price, eventually. And you think that employing WMD will deliver victory.

Now that you’ve provoked the entire European community, helping us prove our point about your nature, for all the world to see, the Western powers may be forced to use the big hammer should you continue your murderous ways. Since you show no signs of relenting (indeed you escalate) it is likely you’ll kiss the big hammer sooner rather than later.

Yet our strength does not reside in the big hammer.

You know what our real strength is?

We love the God of love, and since He loves the little guy, we also love the little guy. You, on the other hand, murder the little guy.

This is precisely why, in the end, we will prevail, and you will suffer, not because we are cruel, but because you are so misguided.

Don’t say you were never warned.

Read the whole thing.

A five and dime store in an E-Bay world

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is thinking about the vital role of public affairs in the War on Terror, and considering that the U.S. may be losing the battle for hearts and minds.

Our enemies have skillfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age, but for the most part we -- our country -- has not -- whether our government, the media or our society generally.

...

The standard U.S. government public affairs operation was designed primarily to respond to individual requests for information. It tends to be reactive, rather than proactive -- and it still operates for the most part on an eight hour, five-days-a-week basis, while world events, and our enemies, are operating 24-7, across every time zone. That is an unacceptably dangerous deficiency.

Government is, however, beginning to adapt.

In Iraq, for example, the U.S. military command, working closely with the Iraqi government and the United States Embassy, has sought non-traditional means to provide accurate information to the Iraqi people in the face of the aggressive campaign of disinformation.

Yet this has been portrayed as inappropriate -- for example, the allegations of "buying news" in Iraq. The resulting explosion of critical press stories then causes everything -- all activity, all initiative -- to stop.

Even worse, it leads to a "chilling effect" for those who are asked to serve in the military public affairs field.

The conclusion is drawn that there is no tolerance for innovation, much less any human error that could conceivably be seized upon by a press that seems to demand perfection from the government, but does not apply the same standard to the enemy or even sometimes to themselves.

...

The U.S. government will have to develop the institutional capability to anticipate and act within the same news cycle. That will require instituting 24-hour press operation centers, elevating Internet operations and other channels of communications to the equal status of traditional 20th Century press relations. It will result in much less reliance on the traditional print press, just as the publics of the U.S. and the world are relying less on newspapers as their principal source of information.

And it will require attracting more experts in these areas from the private sector to government service.

This also will likely mean embracing new institutions to engage people across the world. During the Cold War, institutions such as the U.S. Information Agency and Radio Free Europe proved to be valuable instruments for the United States of America.

We need to consider the possibility of new organizations and programs that can serve a similarly valuable role in the War on Terror in this new century.

Watch the video.

Low expectations not low enough

So, let's get this straight: the VP of the United States accidentally plugs one of his hunting buddies, the type of accident that happens dozens, even hundreds, of times every year in this country to hunters of every description.

At least Tony Blankley gets it.

[T]he Washington press corps, and particularly the White House press corps, has developed, as an institution, a grossly dilated view of itself. Most of us can tolerate arrogance, if it is accompanied by extraordinary capacity and virtuosity. The brilliant scientist, the war-winning general, the great artists are entitled to their pride.

But the hallmark of the Washington press corps these days is mediocrity, groupthink, a lack of curiosity and rampant careerism. These attributes were all on show in the shooting-party incident. But this is just a trivial incident — except for the poor, shot gentleman who suffered a heart attack, may he recover fully and quickly.

We live at a moment of revolutionary change in the international order. The rise and violence of radical, possibly caliphate-forming Islam and the huge, culture-changing, unexamined consequences of rampant globalization make the present one of the least predictable moments to be alive.

Both government officials and citizens are in desperate need of a national press corps that is alive to the change and digging to find factual hints of the near future. We need the kind of future-oriented intellectual vigor, curiosity and genuine iconoclasm that typified American reporters in the first half of the last century.

Instead, as the shooting-party incident exemplified, we have in the White House at the most elite level of American journalism, self-absorbed, self-important men and women who stand on their prerogatives even over marginal and inconsequential matters.

While nowhere near the edge, even the omniscient InstaPundit declaims, "Cheney screwed up bigtime."

• Dick Cheney's Fox News interview video - via Expose the Left
• Dick Cheney interview transcript - via FNC

Amelia Peabody, call your office

Interesting: an undisturbed tomb has been found in the Valley of the Kings, just steps away from that of King Tut.

Archaeologists have discovered an intact, ancient Egyptian tomb in the Valley of the Kings, the first since King Tutankhamun's was found in 1922.

A University of Memphis-led team found the previously unknown tomb complete with sarcophagi and five mummies.

The archaeologists have not yet been able to identify them.

But Egypt's chief archaeologist Zahi Hawass says they "might be royals or nobles" moved from "original graves to protect them from grave robbers".

"We don't really know what kind of people are inside but I do believe they look royal. Maybe they are kings or queens or nobles," he told Reuters news agency.

Bob Partridge, of the Ancient Egypt Society, said it could possibly be the tomb of Queen Nefertiti, who co-ruled Egypt between 1379 and 1358 BC. Her tomb has never been found.

Photos via BBC.

Winter Olympics

Random thoughts about the Winter Olympics opening ceremony in all its lame Euro abstract style:

• NBC Olympics site

Prayers for the Assassin

Review copy received: Prayers for the Assassin, a new novel by veteran thriller author Robert Ferrigno. Looks interesting; I'll know more in a few days.

Prayers for the Assassin is set thirty-five years from now, after a civil war in which most of the United States has become a moderate Islamic republic and the Bible Belt has broken away to become a Christian nation. This political shift was precipitated by simultaneous suitcase-nuke detonations in New York, Washington, D.C. and Mecca, a sneak attack blamed on Israel, known as the Zionist Betrayal.

Official site.

Trying to explain

Via indispensable C-SPAN, here's an hour video (Real format) featuring Gen. Michael V. Hayden, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence and former head of the National Security Agency, concerning NSA's terrorist surveillance program.

His opening presentation was compelling, as demonstrated in this excerpt, via Real Clear Politics:

The purpose of all this is not to collect reams of intelligence, but to detect and prevent attacks. The intelligence community has neither the time, the resources nor the legal authority to read communications that aren't likely to protect us, and NSA has no interest in doing so. These are communications that we have reason to believe are al Qaeda communications, a judgment made by American intelligence professionals, not folks like me or political appointees, a judgment made by the American intelligence professionals most trained to understand al Qaeda tactics, al Qaeda communications and al Qaeda aims.

Their work is actively overseen by the most intense oversight regime in the history of the National Security Agency. The agency's conduct of this program is thoroughly reviewed by the NSA's general counsel and inspector general. The program has also been reviewed by the Department of Justice for compliance with the president's authorization. Oversight also includes an aggressive training program to ensure that all activities are consistent with the letter and the intent of the authorization and with the preservation of civil liberties.

Let me talk for a few minutes also about what this program is not. It is not a driftnet over Dearborn or Lackawanna or Freemont grabbing conversations that we then sort out by these alleged keyword searches or data-mining tools or other devices that so-called experts keep talking about.

This is targeted and focused. This is not about intercepting conversations between people in the United States. This is hot pursuit of communications entering or leaving America involving someone we believe is associated with al Qaeda. We bring to bear all the technology we can to ensure that this is so. And if there were ever an anomaly, and we discovered that there had been an inadvertent intercept of a domestic-to-domestic call, that intercept would be destroyed and not reported. But the incident, what we call inadvertent collection, would be recorded and reported. But that's a normal NSA procedure. It's been our procedure for the last quarter century. And as always, as we always do when dealing with U.S. person information, as I said earlier, U.S. identities are expunged when they're not essential to understanding the intelligence value of any report. Again, that's a normal NSA procedure.

So let me make this clear. When you're talking to your daughter at state college, this program cannot intercept your conversations. And when she takes a semester abroad to complete her Arabic studies, this program will not intercept your communications.

As only the video shows, his handling of multiple questions from the audience at the National Press Club, including those from outright moonbat leftists, was more than deft.

His patience significantly exceeds mine.

When librarians protect terrorists

In the Boston Globe: "When librarians protect terrorists."

Newton, which this year was named as the country's safest town, can now add a second designation to its Chamber of Commerce brochures: It can boast of being a town that is not only safe for its residents but which also protects the privacy rights of would-be terrorists who wish to use its library.

After a credible terror threat to Brandeis University was traced to a public computer at the Newton Free Library on Jan. 18, the FBI and local police rushed to secure the computer, with the possibility of identifying the nature of the threat and the person behind it.

What law enforcement had not anticipated, however, was that their pressing search would be abruptly sidetracked when Kathy Glick-Weil, the library's director, informed them that no one was searching anything without a warrant.

The FBI was forced to wait 10 hours to make the search. I know my former profession has lost its collective mind when slavish adherence to naive and ill-informed notions about the proper role of civil liberties can trump the need to act on a pressing threat to public safety.

(Sidenote: the article's author should have refrained from needless denigration of the professional preparation of librarians. It detracts from an otherwise useful op-ed.)

"America Expects Surveillance"

US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is primed for his session with the Senate Judiciary Committee about NSA's terrorist surveillance program.

When I testify before Congress today, I will tell them not only that the president had the authority to use this effective antiterror tool, but that it would have been irresponsible for him not to employ this weapon to prevent another attack on our country.

Expect the worst from the senatorial gasbags. It'll be equal parts:

• Cynical political theater by the President's enemies
• Hand-wringing from naive civil-liberties purists
• Resentment that any action was taken without Senate pre-approval
• Support from the few realists who understand we're at war

Losing friends

Here's some well-deserved negative publicity for the see-no-evil leadership of the American Library Association, who refuse to speak up for persecuted dissident librarians in dictatorial Cuba: a slapping in the Chronicle of Higher Education (lifespan of link unknown). That's interesting, since the Chronicle pretty well represents the conventional wisdom in academia and one would expect more empathy for the ALA lefties.

Despite vehement protests from some of its members, the ALA has refrained from defending the independent librarians. Association officials argue that the Cuban movement -- whose leaders they describe as "so-called librarians" -- is more political than scholarly....

Members of the Cuban movement acknowledge that they are not trained librarians. But that, they say, should not stop the association from supporting their efforts to reduce censorship.

"It's true that every independent librarian is a dissident," Elizardo Sánchez, one of Cuba's leading dissidents and an independent librarian in Havana, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. "The fact that someone decides to have books and lend them to his neighbors is for the government a 'counterrevolutionary act.'"

Tip via Jack Stephens at Conservator.

See also: Tawdry is as tawdry does.

Reading for kids

In yet more evidence of the breakdown of Western civilization, the plague of celebrities authoring, or least putting their names to, children's books continues.

The oddest new entry is by bloviated Democratic politician Ted Kennedy. With no apparent sense of irony, it features his real dog named... Splash. The theme, however, is all too familiar.

Meanwhile, in Great Britain, the Royal Society of Literature recently asked various prominent authors to recommend their top ten books for children. J.K. Rowling, Philip Pullman, and poet laureate Andrew Motion all recommended both classics and personal favorites.

All too typically, others utterly failed the test, unable and even unwilling to come up with any advice for the young. Nick Hornby dismissed the idea as a waste of time intended for the undeserving.

"I used to teach in a comprehensive school and I know from experience that many children are not capable of reading the books I wanted them to read," he said.

"I think any kind of prescription of this kind is extremely problematic."

Oliver Kamm is appalled.

In short, there are prominent and prize-winning authors who are incompetent to deal with children and do not understand what books are for. The power of literature lies not in its faithfulness of description of a world that readers are familiar with, but in its illumination of enduring human concerns.

Good writers retain popularity not because of arbitrary pedagogical preference but because they see more, and better. The notion that children on a stereotypical inner-city council estate would fail, because of their background, to be enriched by Dickens or Defoe is worse than an impoverishment of the imagination. It is snobbery.

Some would call it the "soft bigotry of low expectations."

Toons

Now we have to watch Islamic "rage" break out over supposedly "blasphemous" newspaper cartoons in Denmark. The latest: Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus burned out.

Thousands of Syrians enraged by caricatures of Islam's revered prophet torched the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus on Saturday — the most violent in days of furious protests by Muslims in Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

The demonstrations in Damascus began peacefully with protesters gathering outside the building housing the Danish Embassy. But they began throwing stones and eventually broke through police barricades. Some scrambled up concrete barriers protecting the embassy, climbed into the building and set a fire.

"With our blood and souls we defend you, O Prophet of God!" the demonstrators chanted. Some removed the Danish flag and replaced it with a green flag printed with the words: "There is no god but God and Muhammad is the messenger of God."

Demonstrators moved onto the Norwegian Embassy about 4 miles away, also setting fire to it before being dispersed by police using tear gas and water cannons. Hundreds of police and troops barricaded the road leading to the French Embassy, but protesters were able to break through briefly before fleeing from the force of water cannons.

Point of order: no one seems to remember, or care, that the state-controlled media outlets in numerous Arab countries routinely run villainously bigoted "cartoons" attacking Jews and Americans.

Michelle Malkin has much, much more.

UPDATE: Austin Bay says it exactly.

These attacks would not be possible without the tacit permission or connivance (or both) of the Syrian government. At the moment Syria is facing UN censure for its role in the murder of Lebanon’s Rafik Hariri....

Thousands enraged, huh? More likely scenario: the dictatorship is using The Cartoon War as a convenient issue to deflect the anti-regime heat building inside Syria and shift media focus from the murder investigation.

UPDATE: Evan Kohlman at The Counterterrorism Blog considers the strategic implications for Europe and the West.

[T]he uproar over the Danish cartoons is merely the latest eruption of growing tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims across the European continent. Eventually, it seems all but certain that these ongoing tensions will manifest themselves into further acts of terrorist violence. Anyone who remains skeptical of this serious threat to the political stability of Europe should come and listen to extremist British Muslims gleefully express their desire to "spread blood in the streets of England" in "another 7/7"--precisely as they did today in front of hundreds of police and other onlookers. There can be no clearer warning to the Western world.

UPDATE: Melanie Phillips in Great Britain is crystal-clear about what it means.

[T]he cartoon jihad has made one thing crystal clear. No more alibis. The roots of global terror do not lie in Iraq, nor in Israel/Palestine, nor in Chechnya, Kashmir or any of the other iconic conflicts which are said to be its cause. They lie instead in the Islamists’ rage that their religious culture is not in power across the world, their determination to subordinate that world to its tenets and their truly pathological belief that it is they who are under attack if their victims dare defend themselves. Twelve scribbled drawings have lifted the veil -- on both the nature of the threat and the disarray that greets it.

Irrational and irresponsible

Sen. Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, sent a letter to empty-headed Howard Dean today. It's perfect.

I was recently apprised of your assessment of the President’s terrorist surveillance program – an “early warning” capability to intercept the international communications of al Qaeda terrorists to and from persons within the United States. With respect to this important program, you stated, “President Bush’s secret program to spy on the American people reminds Americans of the abuse of power during the dark days of President Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew.” As Chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, I find your statements to be irrational and irresponsible.

Any suggestion that a program designed to track the movement, locations, plans, or intentions of our enemy – particularly those that have infiltrated our borders – is equivalent to abusive domestic surveillance of the past is ludicrous. When Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson approved the electronic surveillance of Martin Luther King, those Presidents were targeting American citizens based on activities protected by the First Amendment. When President Richard Nixon used warrantless wiretaps, they were not directed at enemies that had attacked the United States and killed thousands of Americans.

I believe Americans understand that the careful and targeted program authorized by President Bush has no relation to the abuses of the past. Indeed, its closest antecedent is the direction of President Franklin D. Roosevelt to Attorney General Robert H. Jackson on the eve of World War II. With war looming and reports of lurking enemy saboteurs, President Roosevelt ordered the use of domestic electronic surveillance to target “persons suspected of subversive activities.” As President Roosevelt noted, “It is too late to do anything about it after sabotage, assassinations and ‘fifth column’ activities are completed.” Significantly, President Roosevelt’s direction was issued despite a statute (Section 605 of the Communications Act of 1934) and Supreme Court precedent (United States v. Nardone, 302 U.S. 379 (1937)) that prohibited such wiretapping.

When President Bush exercised his constitutional authority and responsibility as Commander-in-Chief to target international communications between potential terrorists within this country and al Qaeda members overseas, he recognized, just like President Roosevelt, that after a terrorist attack occurs “[i]t is too late.” Our nation had been attacked on September 11, 2001, by foreign enemies. We were, and are still, at war with an enemy that Congress identified in an Authorization for Use of Military Force (Pub. L. No. 107-40 (Sept. 18, 2001)). Much of the war against al Qaeda is being fought overseas – Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq. But the war against terrorism is not confined to foreign lands. The war against terrorism is being fought every day in our own backyard. America is a battlefield.

In peacetime and especially when our nation is at war, our leaders, including the chairmen of our political parties, should be more careful and better informed before they criticize the intelligence programs that protect our nation. Vibrant debate is important in our free society, but that debate should be serious and rational, especially where national security is concerned. Too many are looking at national security issues through partisan lenses. I have seen it on the Intelligence Committee for the past three years. Our nation, and the men and women of the military, law enforcement, and the intelligence community, deserve better.

He also sent a 19-page defense (PDF) of the NSA terrorist surveillance program to the Judiciary Committee, which is going to hold hearings.

QDR

The Pentagon has released its updated strategic planning framework and it includes some interesting focus areas.

The Pentagon plans to increase the ranks of U.S. Special Forces, establishing a Marine component for the first time, and will create a new unit to direct the "elimination" of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of rogue states or terrorists, according to a new strategy document released today.

The 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review, a report mandated by Congress every four years, lays out broad plans to strengthen U.S. forces to defeat terrorist networks, boost homeland defense, increase deterrent capabilities and "improve the nation's ability to deal with the dangers posted by states that possess weapons of mass destruction and the possibility of terrorists gaining control of them."

In an effort to strengthen U.S. forces to defeat terrorist networks, the new report says, the Pentagon "will increase Special Operations Forces by 15 percent and increase the number of Special Forces battalions by one-third."

The U.S. Special Operations Command, known as SOCOM, "will establish the Marine Corps Special Operations Command," and the Air Force will create "an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Squadron" under SOCOM, the document says.

The Navy, for its part, will augment SEAL teams under the command and "will develop a riverine warfare capability," it says.

"The Department will also expand Psychological Operations and Civil Affairs units by 3,700 personnel, a 33 percent increase," the report says.

Starting in the new fiscal year, the Pentagon will also fund a $1.5 billion initiative over five years to develop "broad-spectrum medical countermeasures against the threat of genetically engineered bio-terror agents," the review says.

All that sounds good, but the increase in PsyOps and Civil Affairs seems low. Iraq and Afghanistan are teaching us anew that long-term interaction with local populations is the norm, not the exception. And that the smart set from the State Dept cannot fill the need.

• Pentagon - 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review

Tawdry is as tawdry does

Someone in the mainstream media has finally noticed the confrontation (noted earlier here and here) between writer Andrei Codrescu and the leadership of the American Library Association: Jonathan Gurwitz in San Antonio.

Michael Gorman, the president of the American Library Association, was mugged recently in San Antonio. Gorman was in town for the ALA's annual midwinter meeting.

Ordinarily, I would be horrified to hear that a visitor to this fair city had been the victim of such a misdeed. But in this case, it's the ALA that's committing the crime and the truth that fittingly mugged Gorman.

Gorman demonstrates his qualities as a spokesman for intellectual freedom this way, in response to correspondence from Robert Kent, organizer of Friends of Cuban Libraries:

I have not chosen to answer your fulminations but, then, I would have no time for my many other duties if I were to engage in correspondence with every half-wit and crackpot who communicates with me.

Mr. Codrescu seems to share your curious delusion that everyone who lends another person a book is a "librarian." Few others do.

Congratulations on your tawdry little coup.

Big man, that, with "many duties." No doubt very, very important.

Read Andrei Codrescu's remarks in full, thanks to Henry at Cuban-American Pundits, particularly lest you think the Cuba issue was the only subject of Codrescu's provocative speech. There was much more.