Petrified Truth

Waiting game

It's not exactly complacency perhaps, but this sounds awfully close to a Clintonian kick-the-can-down-the-road strategy.

The U.S. military is operating under the assumption that Iran is five to eight years away from being able to build its first nuclear weapon, a time span that explains a general lack of urgency within the Bush administration to use air strikes to disable Tehran's atomic program.

Defense sources familiar with discussions of senior military commanders say the five- to eight-year projection has been discussed inside the Pentagon, which is updating its war plan for Iran. The time frame is generally in line with last year's intelligence community estimate that Iran could have the capability to produce a nuclear weapon by the beginning or middle of the next decade.

But the sources said that while the five-year window provides President Bush additional time to decide on whether to launch military strikes, they suspect it underestimates Iran's determination to build a bomb as quickly as possible.

If "the sources" are right, then it's likely good people will die unnecessarily, as before.

Katrina in Houston

NPR's Wade Goodwyn reports on the impact of New Orleans refugees on Houston, and what may be coming next. Scary topic; good report.

Up to now, the vast majority of the Katrina evacuees in Houston have been supported by money from the federal government. In addition to rent money, the government has extended Medicaid coverage. For many evacuees, it's the first time they've ever had health insurance. But the clock is ticking on these benefits.

Beginning Aug. 31, the first 5,000 households of Katrina evacuees in Houston are scheduled to lose their FEMA assistance. An additional 20,000 families are scheduled to lose their checks Oct. 31. All evacuees lose their FEMA benefits by February, one way or the other.

Houston's political, business and religious leaders are worried about what is going to happen afterward.

The first chapter of the Katrina evacuees' story in Houston is a tale of generosity, brilliant organizing and inspired local government. But the city is about to turn the page. The second chapter of the Louisiana diaspora and the great Texas city is likely to be a much darker drama.

The long war

Anaylst Fred Burton of Stratfor, pondering recent incidents involving airline security, writes to offer a useful reminder about terror threats, and how we react.

To say that the governments and industries targeted by terrorism face difficult choices is a gross understatement. The problem lies in the fact that decision-makers not only must protect the public against specific groups using known tactics (in al Qaeda's case, bombs and liquid explosives) but also must protect themselves in the face of public opinion and potential political blowback. Officials naturally want to be perceived as doing everything possible to prevent future acts of violence; therefore, every threat -- no matter how seemingly ridiculous -- is treated seriously. Overreaction becomes mandatory. Politicians and executives cannot afford to be perceived as doing nothing.

This powerful mandate on the defensive side is met, asymmetrically, on the offensive side by a force whose only requirements are to survive, issue threats and, occasionally, strike -- chiefly as a means of perpetuating its credibility.

It remains to be seen if the Western polity can muster the attention span and fortitude to stay the course in a long-term asymmetrical conflict. It just doesn't fit with long-held mental models about warfare, and frustration is one result.

Castroism abides

The experts in the State Dept. say that dictatorial rule in Cuba will continue unabated. Seems like the same experts predicted the USSR wouldn't fall either. Either way, an increasingly risk-averse White House is listening.

The permanent successor to Fidel Castro will be his brother, Raul, Bush administration officials have concluded, and he will be enthusiastically assisted by the cadre of "young technocratic communist professionals" who have run Cuba's day-to-day government machine for decades.

The officials said in interviews that this layer of committed communists is a key reason that democracy is not likely to emerge in Havana soon after the dictator's death.

The Bush administration has debated making secret overtures to Cuba. One strategy toward democracy considered was an alliance with key military leaders in the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), the officials said. Some officials in the Pentagon backed the idea, but the State Department and White House said "no," calling it unlikely to succeed.

Mr. Castro's military was considered as a contact point because it is regarded as the "least of three evils" within the security apparatus, which also includes the regular police constabulary and the secret police.

Tri-Border Area still untamed

Here's reporting by the Houston Chronicle on the shadowy connection between Hezbollah and the "tri-border" area of South America. Populations of Middle Eastern immigrants offer support and shelter for the threats, even if only by a minority.

To keep a closer watch on the tri-border region — where the frontiers of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina converge and home to thousands of Lebanese Muslims — the Pentagon has dispatched small teams of U.S. troops to Paraguay, while the Department of Homeland Security has sent so-called "trade transparency units" to help crack down on money laundering and other financial crimes.

"Substantial financing for Hezbollah is coming from the tri-border area," said Daniel Glaser, the U.S. Treasury's assistant secretary of state for terrorist financing and financial crimes. "The problem very much has not been solved."

Since 9/11, U.S. officials have scoured the globe trying to shut down underground financial networks that support militant Islamic groups.

But their efforts in Ciudad del Este show how frustrating the task can be.

Scams range from contraband and cocaine smuggling to producing phony import-export invoices.

Tracking the tangle of paperwork is a nightmare.

Investigators say it's nearly impossible to penetrate the tight-knit Lebanese diaspora of around 30,000 that live and work in Ciudad del Este and Foz do Iguacu, just across the border in Brazil.

There have been few attempts to put the smuggling center out of business because so much commerce creates jobs, and well-to-do shop owners often bribe local officials and contribute to political candidates.

Related:

Terrorist and Organized Crime Groups in the Tri-Border Area (TBA) of South America (PDF)

Inferiority and guilt

Shelby Steele nails the issue of our time honestly and precisely.

The West is stymied by [Islamic] extremism because it is used to enemies that want to live. In Vietnam, America fought one whose communism was driven by an underlying nationalism, the desire to live free of the West. Whatever one may think of this, here was an enemy that truly wanted to live, that insisted on territory and sovereignty. But Osama bin Laden fights only to achieve a death that will enshrine him as a figure of awe. The gift he wants to leave his people is not freedom or even justice; it is consolation.

White guilt in the West -- especially in Europe and on the American left -- confuses all this by seeing Islamic extremism as a response to oppression. The West is so terrified of being charged with its old sins of racism, imperialism and colonialism that it makes oppression an automatic prism on the non-Western world, a politeness. But Islamic extremists don't hate the West because they are oppressed by it. They hate it precisely because the end of oppression and colonialism--not their continuance--forced the Muslim world to compete with the West. Less oppression, not more, opened this world to the sense of defeat that turned into extremism....

Over and over, white guilt turns the disparity in development between Israel and her neighbors into a case of Western bigotry. This despite the fact that Islamic extremism is the most explicit and dangerous expression of human bigotry since the Nazi era. Israel's historical contradiction, her torture, is to be a Western nation whose efforts to survive trap her in the moral mazes of white guilt. Its national defense will forever be white aggression.

But white guilt's most dangerous suppression is to keep from discussion the most conspicuous reality in the Middle East: that the Islamic world long ago fell out of history. Islamic extremism is the saber-rattling of an inferiority complex.

Do the right thing

Once again, it takes an election year to get some public issues back on the table.

With crumbling facilities, staffing shortages and reduced hours of operations at some sites, the 600,000-acre Texas state park system has become one of the hot political issues in the November election.

Candidates for governor are chiming in and state lawmakers are gearing up for what is sure to be a push for a major budget boost to get the state's canyons, rivers and trail parks cleaned, opened and restored to levels the public demands.

Naturally, for our legislature and governor, the trouble is the result of budget sleight-of-hand.

$100 million generated by a tax on sporting goods on state parks... was allocated for parks in 1993, but lawmakers capped the parks' share at $32 million two years later and have since appropriated even less.

It's a puzzlement when conservatives can't see the wisdom of supporting conservation. Where's today's TR? We sure need him, in more ways than one.

Downer

Here's crummy news for science fiction fans: SCI-FI Channel has cancelled long-running series Stargate SG-1. It's one of the few series we watch regularly.

However, the show's producers say they will try to salvage the show in some form, yet to be announced.

Weather report from Mars

Here's interesting news from space: geysers on Mars, "unlike anything that occurs on earth," according to new research pulished last week.

Every spring, as the sun peeks above the horizon at the Martian south polar icecap, powerful jets of carbon dioxide gas erupt through the icecap’s topmost layer. The jets climb high into the thin, cold air, carrying fine, dark sand and spraying it for hundreds of feet around each jet....

The team began its research in an attempt to explain what caused mysterious dark spots, fan-like markings and spider-shaped features on the icecap at the Martian south pole. The dark spots – typically 50 to 150 feet wide and spaced several hundred feet apart – appear every southern spring as the sun rises over the icecap. They last for three or four months and then vanish, only to reappear the next year, after winter’s cold has deposd a fresh layer of ice on the cap. Most spots even seem to recur at the same locations.

When nobody's "next"

Mark Steyn explains how the U.S. seems to have reverted to pre-Sept. 11 thinking, and thus thrown away our power to force change on self-interested world leaders.

I happened to be in the Australian Parliament for Question Time last week. The matter of Iraq came up, and the foreign minister, Alexander Downer, thwacked the subject across the floor and over the opposition benches in a magnificent bravura display of political confidence culminating with the gleefully low jibe that "the Leader of the Opposition's constant companion is the white flag.'' The Iraq war is unpopular in Australia, as it is in America and in Britain. But the Aussie government is happy for the opposition to bring up the subject as often as they want because Downer and his prime minister understand very clearly that wanting to "cut and run" is even more unpopular. So in the broader narrative it's a political plus for them: Unlike Bush and Blair, they've succeeded in making the issue not whether the nation should have gone to war but whether the nation should lose the war.

That's not just good politics, but it's actually the heart of the question. Of course, if Bush sneered that John Kerry and Ted Kennedy and Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi's constant companion is the white flag, they'd huff about how dare he question their patriotism. But, if you can't question their patriotism when they want to lose a war, when can you? At one level, the issue is the same as it was on Sept. 11: American will and national purpose. But the reality is that it's worse than that -- for (as Israel is also learning) to begin something and be unable to stick with it to the finish is far more damaging to your reputation than if you'd never begun it in the first place.

Nitwit Democrats think anything that can be passed off as a failure in Iraq will somehow diminish only Bush and the neocons. In reality -- a concept with which Democrats seem only dimly acquainted -- it would diminish the nation, and all but certainly end the American moment. In late September 2001 the administration succeeded in teaching a critical lesson to tough hombres like Musharraf and Putin: In a scary world, America can be scarier. But it's all a long time ago now.

President Bush, dare to scare again. And dare to follow through.

Charm and steel?

Israel's failure to achieve a clear victory against Hezbollah has just begun to reverberate with consequences for us all. Charles Krauthammer understands how tenuous it is to depend on the UN. Are the Bushies on the same wavelength?

The charm of any U.N. Security Council resolution lies in the preamble, which invariably begins by "recalling" all previous resolutions on the same subject that have been entirely ignored, therefore necessitating the current resolution. Hence newly minted Resolution 1701: Before mandating the return of south Lebanon to Lebanese government control, it lists the seven Security Council resolutions going back 28 years that have demanded the same thing.

We are to believe, however, that this time the U.N. means it. Yet, the fact that responsibility for implementation is given to Kofi Annan's office — not known for integrity, competence or neutrality — betrays a certain unseriousness about the enterprise from the very beginning....

The stakes are high. Not so much for Israel, which in the end will take care of itself. By the now-inevitable Round Two, Israel will have rejected the failed Olmert-led exercise in hesitancy and will have new leadership, new tactics and new equipment (for example, expensive new plating for its tanks, which were so vulnerable to advanced Iranian antitank weaponry).

What is most at stake, from the American perspective, is Lebanon. Lebanon was the most encouraging achievement of the democratization project launched with great risk with the invasion of Iraq. The Beirut Spring, the liberation from Syrian rule and the election of a pro-Western government marked the high point (together with the first Iraqi election that inspired the events in Lebanon) of the Bush doctrine.

Syria, Iran and Hezbollah have been working assiduously to reverse that great advance. Hezbollah insinuated itself into the government. The investigation of Syria for the murder of Rafiq Hariri has stalled. And now with the psychological success of the war with Israel, Hezbollah may soon become the dominant force in all of Lebanon. In the south, the Lebanese army will be taking orders from Hezbollah. Hezbollah is not just returning to being a "state within a state." It is becoming the state, with the Siniora government reduced to acting as its front.

That is why ensuring that Hezbollah is cut down to size by a robust international force with very strict enforcement of its disarmament is so critical.

For all its boasts, Hezbollah has suffered grievously militarily, with enormous losses of fighters, materiel and infrastructure. Now is its moment of maximum weakness. That moment will not last long.

Defeatism

Yep, area Republicans are as inept as expected.

Republican leaders hoping to preserve the party's hold on the district formerly represented by Tom DeLay disagreed Wednesday about a meeting scheduled tonight to seek consensus on a write-in candidate.

Fort Bend County Chairman Gary Gillen wrote a letter to prospective candidates in the county urging them not to attend the meeting, saying it excluded grass-roots Republicans. But his counterpart in Harris County, Jared Woodfill, said the gathering was the best way to unify the party behind a single Republican candidate.

The write-in option in 2006 is, at best, the longest of long shots anyway; it's amusing now to see them fighting over the crumbs of PR for 2008 that might be the only real benefit.

Uphill climb

Texas Republicans will have to demonstrate more electoral skill than they have up until now to win a November contest for Tom Delay's House seat. Color me dubious.

Mounting a successful write-in candidacy will be extremely difficult, according to political experts. First, the party will have to persuade straight-ticket Republican voters to individually select candidates in each race. And if there are several write-in candidates, the statistical probability for success also declines. There's also a question of how much money a candidate can raise in a shortened campaign cycle.

Democratic nominee Nick Lampson has had all summer to campaign and has $2.1 million in the bank.

"The whole write-in theory is ludicrous," Austin political consultant Bill Miller said. "It is handing the seat to the Democrats. Republicans cannot win this seat with a write-in candidate, I don't care what name they write in."

What a write-in candidate gains is a leg up in the next primary, Miller said. Even if the candidate loses, he or she will be able to build name identification and visibility. "Losing once is no big deal," Miller said. "Lose more than once, then you are branded a loser."

...Anyone who ran in the March primary is not eligible as a write-in candidate. And state representatives, who also are on the ballot this November, would have to withdraw from their races to run as a write-in candidate for the congressional seat.

That means Sugar Land lawyer Tom Campbell, who came in second in the March GOP primary, and state Reps. Robert Talton of Pasadena and Charlie Howard of Sugar Land are out of the running.

Insidious relativism

This exchange between Howard Kurtz and Tom Ricks, both of the Washington Post, on CNN's Reliable Sources is astounding in its careless defamation of the lone true democracy in the Middle East:

Tom Ricks, you've covered a number of military conflicts, including Iraq, as I just mentioned. Is civilian casualties increasingly going to be a major media issue? In conflicts where you don't have two standing armies shooting at each other?

THOMAS RICKS, REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": I think it will be. But I think civilian casualties are also part of the battlefield play for both sides here. One of the things that is going on, according to some U.S. military analysts, is that Israel purposely has left pockets of Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon, because as long as they're being rocketed, they can continue to have a sort of moral equivalency in their operations in Lebanon.

KURTZ: Hold on, you're suggesting that Israel has deliberately allowed Hezbollah to retain some of it's fire power, essentially for PR purposes, because having Israeli civilians killed helps them in the public relations war here?

RICKS: Yes, that's what military analysts have told me.

KURTZ: That's an extraordinary testament to the notion that having people on your own side killed actually works to your benefit in that nobody wants to see your own citizens killed but it works to your benefit in terms of the battle of perceptions here.

RICKS: Exactly. It helps you with the moral high ground problem, because you know your operations in Lebanon are going to be killing civilians as well.

How can a supposedly professional Western journalist make such an accusation on international television without attribution or corroboration? And how can the show's host just let it slide by? Answer: moral imbecility.

Tip via Rush Limbaugh.

UPDATE: Ricks tries to say "Never mind," but with weasel words.

Reliving the nightmare?

Here is essential reading: Victor Davis Hanson explains how we are, in fact, reliving the nightmare of 1930s appeasement, with all its tragic implications.

When I used to read about the 1930s — the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, the rise of fascism in Italy, Spain, and Germany, the appeasement in France and Britain, the murderous duplicity of the Soviet Union, and the racist Japanese murdering in China — I never could quite figure out why, during those bleak years, Western Europeans and those in the United States did not speak out and condemn the growing madness, if only to defend the millennia-long promise of Western liberalism....

Not any longer.

Our present generation too is on the brink of moral insanity. That has never been more evident than in the last three weeks, as the West has proven utterly unable to distinguish between an attacked democracy that seeks to strike back at terrorist combatants, and terrorist aggressors who seek to kill civilians.

...

It is now a cliché to rant about the spread of postmodernism, cultural relativism, utopian pacifism, and moral equivalence among the affluent and leisured societies of the West. But we are seeing the insidious wages of such pernicious theories as they filter down from our media, universities, and government — and never more so than in the general public’s nonchalance since Hezbollah attacked Israel.

These past few days the inability of millions of Westerners, both here and in Europe, to condemn fascist terrorists who start wars, spread racial hatred, and despise Western democracies is the real story, not the “quarter-ton” Israeli bombs that inadvertently hit civilians in Lebanon who live among rocket launchers that send missiles into Israeli cities and suburbs.

Yes, perhaps Israel should have hit more quickly, harder, and on the ground; yes, it has run an inept public relations campaign; yes, to these criticisms and more. But what is lost sight of is the central moral issue of our times: a humane democracy mired in an asymmetrical war is trying to protect itself against terrorists from the 7th century, while under the scrutiny of a corrupt world that needs oil, is largely anti-Semitic and deathly afraid of Islamic terrorists, and finds psychic enjoyment in seeing successful Western societies under duress.

In short, if we wish to learn what was going on in Europe in 1938, just look around.

Read the whole thing and ask what it will take to shake off our collective torpor.

Vacation

In SC again, this time for a wedding and family reunion. And back to the BBQ and lemon meringue diet. Yum.

Into the caves

Israel is pushing deep into Lebanon in its newly invigorated campaign against Hezbollah. Austin-based Stratfor is watching closely and offers this interesting historical analogy about the terrorists' warplan.

Hezbollah is now fighting the war it wanted and prepared for. Its forces are well-dispersed and dug into bunkers. Supplies for extended combat have undoubtedly been distributed in these strongholds so they require no re-supply. Certainly the Israelis will do everything they can to prevent it. Command has clearly devolved to the lowest possible unit, so contact with central headquarters is not necessary for fighting. Hezbollah is not going to be engaged in maneuver. It will fight where it stands.

As we have said before, the strategy looks more like the way the Japanese defended Pacific islands against the U.S. Marines during World War II than anything else. Hezbollah fighters are defending in depth from interlocking strong points. They have constructed these strong points in order to survive artillery and airstrikes. They are forcing the Israelis to close with the strong points and take them in close combat. The Japanese did not necessarily expect to survive the battles. Their goal was to inflict disproportionate casualties on the attacking troops in order to force reconsideration of the strategy of island-hopping and set the stage for a political settlement. The Japanese failed because they underestimated the U.S. capacity for absorbing casualties and the size of the force available. But the strategy, while ineffective, was based on a real confidence that their own forces would be willing to engage in battles of annihilation when it was their own annihilation that was certain, and when their mission was to delay and impose casualties on the enemy.

There are many differences here, but Hezbollah's core strategy appears to be the same. Its deployment has enormous value if its forces are prepared to fight to the end, imposing time penalties and casualties on Israel. If its strong points can hold out for extended periods of time, some of them firing missiles at Israel, then the Israelis have no option but to close and engage in intense sequential firefights that will take time and cost lives. If it can fight a battle of annihilation yet delay and hurt the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Hezbollah might well force a political settlement. If not, it can still gain a political victory by being the first Arab force to force Israel into high attrition combat.

Israel certainly has the fortitude to do what's needed. Otherwise they would not have reacted to Hezbollah's provocation the way they have. The questions are: does the IDF have the capability to deliver results on the battlefield, and in time to prevent world opinion from crushing their hopes? And will America stand with them all the way?

Blogging success

Kudos: John Little of Blogs of War fame now has a second and high-profile gig - he's become a "citizen journalist" among the Houston Chronicle cadre of "reader bloggers." Say what you will about the Chron, but they're trying new things.

Check out Chronicles of War.