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Archive for the 'National Security' Category

Krauthammer’s Forgotten Column

Published by William Beutler on June 4, 2008 in Bloggingheads.tv, Blogs vs. MSM, Foreign Policy, National Review, National Security and Newspaper Columnists. 2 Comments

Charles Krauthammer is one of the country’s most influential conservative thinkers, indeed one of the country’s most influential newspaper columnists. Right?

When I was on Bloggingheads a few weeks ago, I briefly mentioned a then-recent Krauthammer column that caught my attention and made me think hard about current U.S. (and European) policy toward Iran vis-à-vis its nuclear (weapons) program. I thiink it’s important enough to quote at length. Here’s how it began:

The era of nonproliferation is over. During the first half-century of the nuclear age, safety lay in restricting the weaponry to major powers and keeping it out of the hands of rogue states. This strategy was inevitably going to break down. The inevitable has arrived. …

The EU-3 negotiations (Britain, France and Germany) [with Iran] went nowhere. Each U.N. Security Council resolution enacting what passed for sanctions was more useless than the last. Uranium enrichment continues.

When Iran’s latest announcement that it was tripling its number of centrifuges to 9,000 elicited no discernible response from the Bush administration, the game was over. Everyone says Iran must be prevented from going nuclear. No one will bell the cat.

Krauthammer acknowledges, remarkably but rationally, that Iran will get its nuclear weapons whether we try to bribe them to do otherwise or not. And thanks in part to the pyrrhic invasion of Iraq and as well to North Korea’s development of WMD, preemption “is spent.” This is a huge concession from one of the standard-bearers of the political philosophy popularly, if somewhat erroneously, termed neoconservatism. So what to do?

Begin by making the retaliatory threat in response to Iranian nuclear aggression so unmistakable and so overwhelming that the non-millenarians in leadership would stay the hand or even remove those taking their country to the point of extinction. …

For the sake of argument, imagine a two-layered anti-missile system in which each layer is imperfect, with, say, a 90 percent shoot-down accuracy. That means one in 100 missiles gets through both layers. That infinitely strengthens deterrence by radically degrading the possibility of a successful first strike. Even Mahmoud Ahmadinejad might refrain from launching an arsenal of, say, 20 nukes if his scientific advisers showed him that there was only an 18.2 percent chance of any getting through — and a 100 percent chance that a retaliatory counterattack of hundreds of Israeli (and/or American) nukes would reduce the world’s first Islamic republic to a cinder.

Of course, one can get around missile defense by using terrorists. But anything short of a hermetically secret, perfectly executed, multiple-site attack would cause terrible, but not existential, destruction. The retaliatory destruction, on the other hand, would be existential.

This is hardly dovish, promising Iran that nuclear devastation of Israel (or any other ally) would mean the destruction of Iran — in effect, we would tell Iran that Israel’s safety is now very much in its interest.

But it’s also not quite what you’d expect from one of the strongest supporters of the Iraq war. My left-leaning roommate called it “uncharacteristically sharp and honest for him.” Maybe, just maybe, that’s part of the problem.

Because the column sank like a stone.

Krauthammer’s column regularly appears on more than one website, and when I searched then and again tonight, I found very little pickup. At WashingtonPost.com, the highest-profile of all, it received just 21 linkbacks from the blogosphere. At the high-traffic NRO.com, there were only 4 linkbacks. And at the lesser-read Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (at least some subset of Blog P.I. readers will probably find this association ironic) it was a whopping zero. (Of course, this post will bump each up by one.) Compare to his most recent column, taking a familiar position against cap-and-trade, which picked up 59 linkbacks just from its appearance on WashingtonPost.com.

No major blog, liberal or conservative, gave his Iran column any serious thought. The only sustained discussion of the column was at the mid-level left-leaning blog Foreign Policy Watch, which simply disagreed with his premise:

Of course, one of the larger concerns surrounding the prospect of North Korea’s failure to disarm and the possibility of a nuclear-armed Iran is that they could inspire balancing, follow-on nuclear programs elsewhere in their immediate regions. But it’s not inevitable that this will happen. Nor is it inevitable, for that matter, that North Korea won’t see its disarmament obligations through to the very end, or that Iran is racing toward nuclear weapons acquisition and there is nothing capable of preventing this outcome. Such fatalism is misguided, to say the least, and would lead to very poor policy if taken seriously. …

That is not to say there aren’t potent concerns for the future of antiproliferation efforts; there are. But to translate this into such sweeping pessimism, going so far as to say “the era of nonproliferation is over,” is intellectually lazy and politically dangerous, particularly if it means adopting purely defensive responses as opposed to vigorous preventive diplomacy designed to blunt such outcomes in the first place.

Maybe they’re right and Krauthammer is wrong. But considering the perceived admission against interest, one would think this column would spark more debate.

Conceding that Iran will succeed in developing nuclear weapons is clearly an unpopular position to take, no matter which political party you belong to. The national consensus, international consensus even, is that Iran must be dissuaded from developing a nuclear arsenal. There are disagreements about how to do it, but the argument that “the era of nonproliferation is over” is clearly something that no one wants to hear.

Exclusiva! Debe Acreditar El Perez Hilton!

Published by William Beutler on August 24, 2007 in Breaking News, Entertainment, Foreign Policy, Journalist Bloggers, National Security and Newspapers. 0 Comments

I don’t know whether Fidel Castro es muerte and neither do you. James Taranto thinks he’s been dead since last year, and there is a pretty decent case to be made there. But this evening the Internet is buzzing about his putative demise, as Memeorandum goes to show.

What I do know is that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s news blog is admirably honest about admitting where they first heard the (possibly) big international news story:

Seattle Post-Intelligencer gets its international news from Perez Hilton

Yes, in fact Perez Hilton is even linked on Memeorandum, instead of just the sister site WeSmirch. Nevertheless, it most certainly is not a “big scoop” of Perez Hilton’s. If it’s anybody’s, it belongs to Babalu Blog. And if it turns out that Castro still está vivo, I guess the scoop goes to South Florida’s NBC 6.

P.S. If my Spanish is off, I trust that someone will tell me in the comments.

An Op-Ed We Just Might Blog

Published by William Beutler on July 30, 2007 in 9/11 Attacks, Blog Fights, Charts and Graphs, Iraq, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere, Middle East, National Security, New York Times, Terrorism and Tough Crowd. 2 Comments

Memeorandum is not my homepage, although it might as well be — if you want to know what’s going on in the political blogosphere right now, it beats the pants off Technorati or Google’s BlogSearch. Normally here I’d say something about its impressive signal-to-noise ratio, but the fact is, there’s no noise. (On sister site Techmeme once, I saw a weeks-old story linked once. Once.)

It’s good enough that I tend to think that just by eyeballing it you can tell how big a particular story is. If that’s the case, then the Michael O’Hanlon/Kenneth Pollack op-ed in today’s New York Times may be the most talked-about newspaper article this year, at least:

Michael O'Hanlon-Kenneth Pollack opinion piece in the NYT, "A War We Just Might Win"

Unlike many, perhaps most, stories listed by Memeorandum this one attracted attention from both the pro-war/conservative/righty bloggers as well as the anti-war/progressive/lefty bloggers. If you’ve read the op-ed, it’s not hard to see why. O’Hanlon and Pollack both supported the Iraq war at the outset — the latter expressly advocating it in an influential book — but changed their minds as the war continued and the rebuilding project went awry. Nowadays the right is grateful for any sign that the war might be winnable, especially if it comes from Democratic-aligned intellectuals, especially if it runs on the New York Times’ left-leaning op-ed page. Meanwhile, the left has at least as much invested in ending the very same war that the right wishes to continue, in discrediting Pollack and O’Hanlon’s work, by pointing out inconsistencies and oversights, not to mention disputing their anti-war credentials.

It is not, however, an even split.

So who wins this battle of wills? Well, if you trust Memeorandum creator Gabe Rivera’s secret sauce, and you trust my count (I’ve included the complete breakdown after the jump, if you’re feeling argumentative), and we focus on this iteration of the page (there were others), several more large blogs of the right hopped on this story than blogs of the left tried to burst it like a bubble: 37 to 18, with 10 online newspaper items and non-aligned bloggers making up the oft-overlooked third leg of the blogospheric debate. Still, take this with a grain of salt — The Huffington Post has more traffic than many of these blogs put together, while righty traffic leader Instapundit linked it approvingly, but as usual offered too little commentary to make the cut. And in the course of writing this, I have seen more than a few perfectly major blogs not linked here — but I still think it’s a pretty good representation.

If there’s nothing else to be said here, it’s a fitting story to capture (political) blogosphere-wide attention — the rightosphere came to be after 9/11 and to support war on terrorism, of which Iraq is consdidered a piece, while the leftosphere was built around opposition to the invasion, and frustration with moderate liberals who supported it — like, say, Kenneth Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon.

Continue reading ‘An Op-Ed We Just Might Blog’

A Sign of Things to Come

Published by Not Paul Begala on January 20, 2007 in Barack Obama, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, Iraq, National Security and White House '08. 4 Comments

So Hillary is in. Campaign lore says that your announcement is the best day you have in a presidential campaign. All the rest is downhill until you win or lose.

And what else happens today that will be right next to her announcement in every major newspaper tomorrow? 13 soldiers killed in a helicopter crash. The Internet already reflects that reality:

Hillary and Iraq on Google News

As Kerry was haunted by his 2002 vote to authorize the war in the 2004 campaign, Hillary Clinton will be haunted by this war every single day. Obama said in 2002 that the war wasn’t the right thing to do, and while many anti-war bloggers haven’t made much of the fact, at least some have.

The war in Iraq and the events on the ground are constantly driving the Bush presidency. No matter how much he tries, he can’t escape it. Given how close 41 and 42 have become, it’s more than a little ironic that those same events will be driving her campaign for the presidency. Days like today are just a hint of what she will have to face every day of the primary, until she wins or drops out.

Bolton Resigns, Bloggers Resigned

Published by William Beutler on December 4, 2006 in Foreign Policy, George W. Bush, Iran, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere, Middle East and National Security. 0 Comments

The big news this morning is that President Bush has accepted U.N. Ambassador John Bolton’s letter of resignation. As many have pointed out, this development is no great surprise — as Martini Republic put it, “This time it’s not to spend more time with the family. It’s for want of votes.”

In one sense, the reaction from the blogosphere is predictable — many a conservative blogger is calling this a “sad day” for the U.S., while the left is saying “good riddance” — Firedoglake has even posted a YouTube video of the Peanuts kids dancing.

United Nations building at Turtle BayWhat exactly Bolton has done wrong while serving as ambassador is not terribly clear; the knock against him seems to remain his brusque manner and outspoken disdain for the institution, as it was before his recess appointment, which is an issue itself. But nor is it clear what Bolton might get done that another U.N. Ambassador could not — and I think anyone would be hard-pressed to single out anything meaningful he has accomplished. One pro-Bolton blogger tried to do just that, but if the list doesn’t put you to sleep, you may find some irony in a conservative citing U.N. resolutions as “accomplishments.”

The theme of futility can be found in on both sides of the political divide. Here’s American Footprints, arguing that this is why Bolton was the wrong pick in the first place:

Bolton has been consistently ineffective in terms of achieving desired objectives, and most parties (including his cohorts in the Bush administration) prefer to circumvent his involvement rather than invite to the table. From forging beneficial arrangements with Libya, to advancing the non-proliferation regime, it has proven easier to get things done without him around.

At A Blog For All, Lawhawk recognizes the fact that Bolton has changed little, but gives him credit just for trying:

The ambassador position is not meant to advance the UN position in the US, but vice versa. Bolton understood this, and this meant tackling the issues of rampant corruption in the Secretariat and pushing for action on Darfur and other human rights crises. It meant standing up for the rights of our allies, including Israel that came under constant attack from Islamic terrorist groups, and the UN General Assembly instead sought to limit Israel’s response. Bolton tried to deal with Darfur, and ran into roadblocks in the form of China and Russia. The same thing happened on the issue of Iran’s nuclear program, which continues to proceed at full speed.

As the headline of this post indicates, the general atmosphere, at least on the right, is one of disappointed acceptance. Perhaps the most succinct is Allahpundit at Hot Air:

Not a surprise, really. Bad things happen when you lose your majority.

But there are a few on both sides who badly overstate the importance of this development. On the left, we have Middle Earth Journal calling Bolton a “national disaster for the country.” But the clear winner of this dubious contest is Macsmind, on the right, who writes:

Expected, but simply a foretaste of what danger the Democratic Party will be putting the country in in the next two years. … As for that ass-clown Rino Lincoln Chafee, if there were a death penalty for being a moral coward I would happily throw the switch.

Wow. If there was a death penalty for being a moral coward, the first order of business would have to be be removing cowardice from the list of capital crimes. Also, I’m not sure that “cowardice” best describes Chafee’s opposition to Bolton — is “obstinacy” not enough?

But back to the point — what danger does he refer to? I assume he means the Iranian nuclear program, and a nuclear Iran would indeed be a dangerous development. But there’s a lot more to it than John Bolton. Other than the fact that he currently occupies the ambassador position, why is he our last hope? Assuming Iran can be stopped at the United Nations, that is — isn’t the problem with the U.N. supposed to be that it’s ineffective?

It is possible that Bolton’s known dislike for the U.N. hampered his ability to work with other ambassadors and effect change, though the list of resolutions linked above indicates they can at least stand to be in the same room together. It’s also possible that U.N. incompetence and corruption simply cannot be overcome, or at least couldn’t in the last two years. As we try to advance our interests in the organization, so do fairweather friends such as China, Russia, France and non-friends such as Venezuela and, of course, Iran. Shouldn’t we expect a stalemate?

Whether Bolton was good for the country or bad for the country I don’t know enough to say. But one ambassador — let alone the Walrus himself — is not the difference between success (however that’s defined) and failure (which the U.N. seems quite good at).

Photo credit: This site.

Photoshop: Still Harder Than You Think

Published by William Beutler on October 8, 2006 in 9/11 Attacks, Blogs vs. MSM, DNC, Daily Kos, Earned Media, George W. Bush, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere, National Security, Photoshop and RNC. 15 Comments

Yesterday afternoon, Michelle Malkin and Charles Johnson reported more or less simultaneously on a curious image (since removed) from the front page of the DNC website, purporting to show a U.S. soldier “hurting” because of “GOP broken promises.” To wit:

Canadian soldier fauxtoshop job by the DNC

Only problem: The pictured soldier is actually Canadian, and Johnson’s readers quickly located more stills, providing conclusive evidence that a Democratic Photoshopper had doctored the image to remove a medal evidently believed to be a dead giveaway (but embarrassingly leaving another — the funny lapel pin).

This phenomenon is common enough now that such images have come to merit their own word: Fauxtoshop. In November 2005, MoveOn.org ran a TV spot conservative bloggers found politically outrageous, and which luckily happened to be an example of this burgeoning trend. Much like this latest imbroglio, the uniforms of foreign troops (this time, British) were modified to look more American:

British soldier fauxtoshop job by MoveOn (original)British soldier fauxtoshop job by MoveOn (doctored)

In both cases, one wonders just how hard it would be to find a genuine photograph of members of the U.S. armed services looking vaguely aggrieved or lining up for a plateful of slop. The circumstances were slightly different in one of the earliest instances of blog-era political fauxtoshoppery, an image from the front page of the Bush-Cheney ‘04 official website, offending sections encircled by an unidentified Kossack:

American soldier fauxtoshop job by RNC

Here, the idea was to make it look a lot cooler, as if this wall of troops just went on forever. Just as their counterparts on the right saw leftist perfidy in later fauxtoshop jobs, this manipulation was seized upon by the nascent netroots as another strike against A”W”OL.

But what should we make of all this? Be assured, neither side is above manipulating images of American troops for political expediency. These incidents say a lot less about comparative patriotism than than about the primacy of images in propaganda. Good visuals are hard to come by, and if a deceptive visual is more striking than a real image, unfortunately, that’s considered good enough.

P.S. There is also, of course, the recent case of photo manipulation by Lebanese Reuters photographer Adnan Hajj, also brought to light at Little Green Footballs:

Adnan Hajj Reuters fauxtoshop job

While it falls beyond U.S. partisan considerations and does not involve soldiers per se, it is also probably the biggest Photoshop fraud uncovered by those pesky bloggers, and certainly deserves mention here.

P.P.S. Any journalism professor worth his whiskey makes sure freshman communications students hear about the distortive power of photographs. Already in the curriculum, I’m sure, is the recent case of an ambiguous photograph by Thomas Hoepker of young Brooklynites observing South Manhattan on Sept. 11, which has been the recent subject of debate at Slate:

Thomas Hoepker's 9/11 photo

Unlike the military-themed images above, this photo underwent no changes. When it’s hard enough to tell what undoctored images mean, one might hope that propagandists would use images in their proper contexts — but one might be hoping for an awful long time.

Upon Further Review, John Aravosis Is Only Half-Unserious About National Security

Published by William Beutler on August 11, 2006 in Blog Fights, Democrats, Lamont v. Lieberman, Midterms '06, National Security, Republicans and Terrorism. 15 Comments

I first ran across John Aravosis’ take on the British terror arrests via Conn Carroll in yesterday’s Blogometer. Carroll quoted Aravosis asking:

[I]sn’t it queer that the emergency [red alert on U.S. airlines] is declared within a day of Republican party leader Ken Mehlman launching an all-out offensive against Democrats following Joe Lieberman’s loss in Connecticut, an offensive in which Mehlman, the White House and Republican operatives are claiming that Democrats no longer care about national security or the war on terror.

Aravosis frames the events of the last 48 hours as the White House surreptitiously moving against against a) the Democratic party, and b) American business travelers. That Bush is using Lieberman’s defeat against Democrats, and second, that he’s imposing stifling aviation rules without justification. (Aravosis’ judgment on the credibility of the Scotland Yard-scotched terror plot has evolved, which I’ll get to a bit later.)

Look, I agree the color-coded system is capricious and unhelpful to the public, and if the no-water on airplanes policy persists past a few weeks, I’ll join him in decrying that (I would also endorse the notion that the shoe-checks have outlived their usefulness, though they were useful at first). But in dysfunctional government policy and hardball politics he sees actual malice. Take this post, filed early yesterday afternoon:

In today’s NY Times, Dick Cheney warned that the Lieberman loss would embolden “Al Qaeda types.” It is reasonable to assume that Cheney, like Bush, knew about the unfolding scandal in Great Britain. Think about this for a minute. It shows how evil the Bush/Cheney team really is. Knowing that this story was about to break, Cheney invoked Al Qaeda in purely political terms.

Cheney and Aravosis are actually making the same mistake on purpose, and both for political reasons. They both purport to believe that “al Qaeda types” are even following the primary defeat of a hawkish opposition party member, so they can politicize the war, for dovishness and calculation.

But what ground rules would Aravosis put on Cheney’s discussion of foreign policy matters? Only if he promises not to mention Democrats? Not within 15 days of an election? Aravosis isn’t criticizing the substance of Cheney’s remarks, but instead that he made any remarks at all.

And I don’t have time to check and see if Aravosis has criticized Bush for calling terrorists “evil,” but if thinking strategically about approaching elections is “evil,” then I don’t know what you’d call Jack Abramoff.

Flash forward to this morning, where Aravosis starts walking back from his verdict on the terror arrests yesterday: That the threat was not legitimate, and the U.S./British reaction was wildly overblown. Conservative bloggers seized on his coments — see Stephen Bainbridge and Pejman Yousefzadeh, plus George Gooding with a bigger picture view — identifying it as more evidence that the left-wing blogosphere is unserious about terrorism, as charged. Carroll put a “tin-foil hat” on him; earlier this week, Jacob Weisberg made a similar argument, saying Ned Lamont’s supporters “appear not to take the wider, global battle against Islamic fanaticism seriously.”

And Aravosis even wrote it like he knew he was mistaking bad timing as a conspiracy:

Do I sound as if I don’t believe this alert? Why, yes, that would be correct. I just don’t believe it. Read the article. They say the plot had an “Al Qaeda footprint.” Ooh, are you scared yet? What that really means is that they found NO evidence whatsoever that the plot had anything to do at all with Al Qaeda, but the plot simply made them think “gosh, this is something Al Qaeda would do.” That’s what a footprint means. Nice, but no cigar.

That’s increasingly untenable, as more information comes out and more arrests are made. Today Aravosis writes:

Intelligence successes are generally more effective when they remain private, but of course if a threat still exists, and can be minimized through public disclosure, that’s a legitimate reason for exposure. Still, considering the past (and present) political use of terror threats, I think skepticism about timing and motives is understandable. They boy who cried wolf writ large.

Well, that’s better. Still, he doesn’t really address his previous exculpation of previous U.S. terrorism arrests:

Were these guys totally innocent? Probably not. But there’s no reason to believe they were any more Osama’s right-hand than Jose Padilla, the famed dirty-bomber who I think is now only being charged with jay-walking or something. Then there were the famous six Muslim-American guys in New York state, supposedly operating their own al Qaeda cell. Not so much. Or how about the Al Qaeda cell in Florida trying to blow up the Sears Tower? Oh that’s right, they were just some demented friends squatting in a warehouse and “thinking” about it. And then there’s the famous plot to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge - with a single blow torch.

Padilla didn’t get very far as a prospective terrorist, but the legal battle surrounding him has been about how to handle al Qaeda arrestees, not about whether he committed conspiracy to commit jaywalking. In the case of the Buffalo Six, all six were convicted of providing material support to al Qaeda, and one was later killed by a U.S. Hellfire missile in Yemen. He identifies correctly the Miami case as one where there really was no case, and I’ll grant him that. Hey, I’ll even throw in Joel Hinrichs, the Sooner Boomer, the suicidal Oklahoma sudent who detonated himself outside Memorial Stadium during a football game in 2005, of whom conservative bloggers fanned many erroneous rumors. But as for the Brooklyn Bridge, I’m not sure where “a single blow torch” comes from, but Iyman Faris knew Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and he too was convicted.

Besides, there’s no proof that the 7/7 suicide bombers received practical support from Osama bin Laden either, but they were deadly nonetheless.

It’s more problematic that he doesn’t mention Richard Reid [Update: Spelling corrected; see this comment] or Lockerbie. Maybe terrorists haven’t had much luck with blowtorches or crop dusters, but for Aravosis to leave out all previous terrorist attacks involving planes in favor of other, lesser examples of terrorist attempt or intent, while blithely dismissing those and mangling the facts, sure, it’s fair to say that John Aravosis, for one, is not very serious about terrorism.

I will at least allow that he is serious about his opposition to Bush because he disagrees strenuously with his national security policy. I just don’t think Aravosis has any idea what to replace it with, and he’s not above sticking to bad conclusions that make Republicans out to sound as bad as possible.

P.S. Jim Treacher asks: “Why do the beverages hate us?” Along with other clever lines that would’ve made a good header to this post. [Update: He's now hosting a poll asking: What do we call this un-quenching imbroglio?]

P.P.S. Greetings, Instapundit readers! Is there a better Instalanche than a pre-lunch time link before the professor heads to class (I presume) for three hours? Nay, I believe there is not. Well, maybe on a Monday.