Thoughts on Orlando

The horrific events in Orlando were matched by an equally horrifying response by the Obama administration.   He continues to make strategic blunders on a grand scale that historians may be writing about for centuries.  Worse, as evidence piles up that his strategy is amiss, he simply doubles down and sticks with it.   Strategy is strategy, whether it is in sports, war, business or politics.  And every high school football coach in America knows that if the other team keeps scoring on you, you need to change something.

Right now, Radical Islam is beating Team Obama badly at the game of strategy.  

The first strategic blunder was the minimization of the threat.  Early on, President Obama dismissed ISIS as the “j.v.” and a “bunch of guys in pickup trucks.”  As late as last fall, Obama admitted he had no strategy for ISIS, and obscenely, on the eve of the Paris attacks, blithely declared that ISIS was contained.  He has made ludicrous statements such as asserting that the risk of dying in a slip and fall in a bathtub is greater than that of being killed in a terrorist incident.  He has released Gitmo detainees that are known killers and bombmakers.  He has continued to peddle the narrative that ISIS does not constitute an existential threat to the U.S.  His continued underestimation of the nature of their capabilities, their different forms, their reach, and their resilience is deeply troubling.  Worse, when the opposition party raises issues, he demonstrates more ire and more contempt for them than the enemy.  The U.S. military was able to obliterate the world’s 3^rd largest military in 100 days in the desert in 1991, yet after almost 15 years in Afghanistan, the Taliban controls more territory than it did 10 years ago in Afghanistan and ISIS is able to inflict casualties in Europe and our homeland.  Radical Islam’s ability to rebound and hit the West should end any threat minimization.  It is certain to evolve and become even more deadly.

The second strategic blunder has been the atrocious framing of the problem by the Obama administration.  Obama has twisted himself into a pretzel in his attempt to dissociate Islam from terror.   The business world is littered with failed companies that tragically dismissed smaller, more nimble competitors, misjudged the market, and were ambushed by technological advances that neutralized their advantages.  It is no different in the competition among countries and ideas.   Defining and framing the problem is everything.  It permits us to focus and expend resources wisely, build consensus, rally the nation and ease the fears of the citizens. 

“These aren’t religious warriors,” proclaimed Obama following the attack.  They problem is that THEY think they are and that’s all that matters. In Graeme Wood's seminal article, "What ISIS Really Wants," published in March of 2015 (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/), Wood noted bluntly, “ISIS is Islamic.   Very Islamic.”   Whether Obama thinks they are Islamic or not is not relevant, and, indeed, will frustrate attempts to develop a real strategy around it.  It is their belief system, their interpretation of the Qur’an, their worldview that we are countering.  His denial that the words “radical Islam” have meaning in this struggle is almost surreal.  As somebody who trained for his professional life in law school, and whose political ascendancy was largely through rhetoric, he now claims that words are unimportant.  Every student of history and of leadership knows that this is simply not true.   When framing issues, words matter greatly.   Loretta Lynch’s statement that the Orlando 911 calls will have references to Islamic terrorism redacted is simply a stunning obfuscation of what we all know to be true. 

Islam has sick and pathological aspects to it, and the darker parts of it—those that directly contravene Western values of tolerance, individual freedom, and democracy—have been latched onto by various groups to attempt to impose its will on the rest of the world.  The more realistic we are about it and its pervasiveness, the better chance we have of shrinking, controlling, and eventually defeating it.  My religion-- Catholicism has also had pathologies throughout its history.  Among them were the sale of indulgences and the child sex abuse scandals.  By claiming that it held the keys to the everlasting kingdom, the church enriched itself by selling passes to heaven until Martin Luther came along to expose the corruption of the scheme.  The child sex abuse scandal was even worse.  The abuse involved not just one parish, one diocese, or one country.  It was systemic, pervasive and global.  There were thousands of children that suffered a lifetime of shame and pain, lives ruined by alcoholism, drug abuse, and wrecked relationships until the Church’s mishandling of it was exposed through the press.  Of course, we did not condemn all Catholics or even all priests because of this scandal, but you could hardly be accused of being a “bigot” or “Catholi-phobic” if you declined to permit your 10 year old son to attend an overnight religious camp supervised only by priests.  That wouldn’t be bigoted. That would be prudent.  Similarly, we cannot shrink from calling out the necrotic parts of Islam and those that espouse it.

Obama’s stubborn refusal to recognize the intertwining of Islam with terror and his abdication of leadership on the issue—from not attending the Paris march against terrorism to his instinctive rush to prevent the nonexistent backlash against Muslims---makes him sound at times more like the Executive Director of CAIR than the Commander In Chief of the U.S.   Most frightening to me is his willingness to subordinate Western values to avoid offending Islam.  He was at his worst when he asserted in his Cairo speech, “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”  The exact opposite is true and must be true.  In the West, no religion, no worldview is above criticism or parody.  Artistic works like “Jesus Christ Superstar,” “The Life of Brian,”  “The Book of Mormon,” and even the widely criticized “Piss Christ” were all allowed to be seen and distributed in the West.  And no incidents of violence resulted.   Would we even think about producing a parody on Muhammed with dancing girls in short burkas on Broadway without risk of violence? Not if the threats against Salman Rushdie, the cartoonists that parodied Muhammed, and the deaths of Theo van Gogh and the Charlie Hebdo staff are any indication.  If we value freedom, freedom of expression, women’s rights, gay rights, the future MUST belong to those who would slander the prophet of Islam.  Obama has it precisely backwards.

Defeating radical Islam will be a very tough strategic problem.  Like the creature in the classic sci-fi film Alien, radical Islam has adapted itself quite well to our defenses.  Because it wraps religion around itself, it is an ideal defense mechanism—our nation was founded in part on religious freedom, and we are revulsed by any form of racial or religious bigotry.  More recently, it has also wrapped itself in humanitarian causes—the refugee crisis and has said that it has infiltrated those refugees.  No country on the planet is more responsive to humanitarian need than the U.S. and radical Islam is poised to exploit that.   Another adaptation is its exploitation of new technologies.   Radical Islam is a 16^th century mindframe that has successfully hijacked 21^st century networking capability through social media.  (Ironically, Lenin famously said that “the capitalist will sell us the rope we hang them with.” Radical Islam is inflicting damage with the technology we generously enabled them to access.) It has several forms and branches, that sometimes cooperate and sometimes compete---ISIS, Hezbollah, the Taliban, Boko Haram, Al Shabab, and, of course, it has taken over the mechanisms of a state—Iran, the mother ship of all Islamic terror. 

Donald Trump has been widely criticized for his proposed policy to ban all Muslim immigration for a period of time as bigoted and overreaching.  And it is.  But he has gotten traction with this approach because people are scared and nervous and they see an administration that is almost willful in turning a blind eye to the issue that confronts us.   The surest way to avoid an overinclusive policy is to face this threat realistically, call it by its name, frame the problem correctly, and get our best, innovative strategic minds working on it.  If citizens do not feel adequately protected, they may ultimately opt for Trump’s approach.

We are faced with a multi-headed hydra.  Radical Islam is as totalitarian, brutal, dehumanizing and ruthless as Nazism.  We were able to defeat the Axis powers with raw industrial power.  We defeated Communism by fighting on several fronts—ideologically, militarily (through proxy wars) and economically.  Radical Islam is a tougher, more elusive, more resilient foe than Communism.  It is an idea, wrapped in a religion, armed with a network.  It has co-opted not just new recruits, but apologists in the Western media.  We should not be afraid to face it.  We need a comprehensive and realistic strategy to tackle this foe.  We need leadership that is willing to face truth.   In economic terms, we need to find ways of raising the cost to be a member of the radical Islam club.   We need to disrupt their ability to recruit and network while simultaneously respecting our own freedoms.  This will require a coordinated effort and innovative thinking on many fronts---economic, political, military, and ideological.  While Marie Harf’s solution is reflexively liberal and wrong (jobs for jihadis), her basic assertion is correct that fighting this solely along a military dimension will not likely be successful.  Blanket, simplistic solutions may have surface appeal but are not the answer—such as banning all Muslims or carpet bombing.  Even Islamic expert Daniel Pipes, who I respect a great deal, struggles with this when he says we should bank Islamists but not Muslims.   I agree, but telling them apart is THE issue.  But pretending that the problem does not exist, or recharacterizing it as something different than it is--a gun control problem, for instance, simply allows our adversary to retain the initiative.  This war will take innovative thinking, and the entrepreneurial minds in the West are more capable than anyone else in the world at this.  Unfortunately, we have an administration that is in deep denial and this is scary.  More attacks and more deaths are in our future (CIA director John Brennan directly contradicted Obama's assessment and said as much).  Perhaps it will take coordinated dirty bomb attacks on several cities before we get serious about strategy.

Delivering a blow aimed at the LGBT community just as the Obama administration was pushing hard for expanded LGBT rights was a message, and not merely coincidence.  Team Obama has underestimated radical Islam and has been outflanked.

Hope

I attended college reunion festivities at the University of Chicago in Hyde Park recently, and had a grand time.  I began showing up regularly about 8 or 9 years ago and always run into old friends and make new ones that are doing interesting things.  The presentations are quite good—it’s electrifying to hear a lecture by a Nobel Prize winner and to be around so many intellectually engaged people.

But in this crazy, upside down, rancorous election year, I got something more important out of it---hope for the future.   It’s easy to be pretty morose about the times we are in.  We have had an economy that has been performing   below trend line for years.  International threats seem to be multiplying.  Race relations have gotten worse, not better.  No matter how you cut it, our two expected nominees are deeply flawed. 

Sure, it was fun to catch up with old classmates and listen to lectures.  But this year, there seemed to be more students mingling at the cocktail parties, perhaps because they have been told to start networking early.  This year, I also spent a little more time talking to them.  And what a treat it was.  I found them to be interesting, engaging, and of course, very, very bright.

Three of them caught my attention.

The first one was a gangly young man, sitting alone at a table in the beer garden, working at his laptop.  I was standing next to him, and he nudged me and asked, “Excuse me, sir, can I bother you for a few moments to show you the app I am developing?”   I sat down and he walked me through an impressive piece of work.  The young man studied the Great Books as an undergrad, and developed an app around them.  The app is designed to disseminate the Great Books through readings, games, and quotes.    There are quotes from Euripides, Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, Thoreau—in short, the great writers and thinkers that make up The Canon.   Those that scholars like Harold Bloom have determined are vital to our very humanity, and, sadly, the same ones that the PC-crazed students at Yale want to have removed from the curriculum for being “too white.”   But at The University of Chicago, not only are they still taught and revered,  a student has taken up the task of connecting these great works to modern technology to make them more accessible to others.  I marveled at his genuine passion for his work.

The second student I conversed with was a vivacious woman that was graduating.  She was forward to the start of her PhD program in neuroscience and bubbled over with enthusiasm over her impending stint at a Polish university where she planned to research in cat and dog reaction to anxiety and depression.  She went on and on about her academic work, and how excited she was to get to the next level.  In the midst of our conversation, her smile suddenly ran off her face and she grew very serious, lowered her voice and confided, “I’m really afraid to leave here.  I’m afraid that I will never find a place that I will love as much, as intellectually rich and be living with so many bright people.”  I paused, struggling to find the right response to her, “You are right to feel that way.  This university is a very special place.  You will likely not find a place with such a concentration of people that are as devoted to intellectual life.  As you get on in life, you will need to find other avenues, other ways to fill that need, but it will always be there.  And don’t forget to return for reunion weekend.” 

Finally, there was young woman presented her thesis on education in India.   She presented compelling evidence to show that merely having separate bathrooms for boys and girls (many schools have no bathrooms at all) raises the proportion of girls that stay in school by a statistically significant amount.  This effect is pronounced as girls hit puberty and begin menstruating.  Often, girls simply drop out of school rather than endure a lack of privacy.  Assuring safety, security and privacy turn out to be pivotal factors in keeping girls in school.  This young woman will be taking her results to organizations like the WTO to argue for an adjustment in spending priorities based on her research.

There were others, of course.  I just cited a couple of examples.  But it was terribly stimulating to connect with this next generation of brilliant, engaging minds,-young people that are consumed with the acquisition of new knowledge, of looking at the world in a new way, forming new connections, of making some contribution that advances our understanding of the world, and, indeed changes it.   The young man that was working on the app for the Classics –marrying the wisdom of the ancients to the digital age (instead of jumping on the bandwagon of those that would discard it)  is exactly the kind of young person that Chicago attracts, develops, grows, and then lets loose on the world.

Amidst this sometimes grim economic and political climate, those young scholars gave me reason to hope.

Tough Choices

Liberals have been successful in taking ownership of all things having to do with nature, wildlife, climate change and the environment.   The left has seized the moral high ground and it has given them great latitude and has empowered, for instance, the EPA and the Obama Administration to enter into international agreements without legislative input or oversight, and without cost/benefit analysis. By portraying capitalists and uncaring exploiters of the environment and people, they make the case that government alone is benign enough and represents a broad enough interest to control the disposition and allocation of resources.  Last year, Pope Francis jumped into the fray and clearly weighed in on the side of Big Government, harshly criticizing capitalism.  Never mind that the actual environmental record of state controlled economies is very poor—see, for instance, the old Eastern Bloc.  The actual track record of democratic capitalism is far superior to the alternative in efficient use of resources and caring for the environment.

But conservatives have to do a much better job in making its case, and in helping to frame its policy decisions and positions.  I believe that environmental stewardship and the tradeoffs that need to be made will best be handled without massive empowerment of government.  But first, capitalists need to show themselves to be engaged on the issue, and to be pro-active with sane and sensible policies.

This weekend, a terrible incident occurred at the Cincinnati Zoo.   A young child fell into the gorilla exhibit and a western lowland gorilla that was lording over the child was shot by zoo authorities.  The incident sent off a storm of controversy, with, some calling for the prosecution of the mother that was overseeing the child and others finding fault with the zoo and its decision making.  Others advocated a boycotting of zoos.   The incident harkened back to a similar incident at Brookfield Zoo, near Chicago, where a child also fell into the gorilla habitat and was protected by one of the gorillas, and both came out unharmed.  In the Cincinnati incident, zoo personnel were faced with a terrible choice and elected to kill the gorilla.  As someone who works in a field in which there is sometimes limited information and time pressure to make a hard decision, I appreciate the difficulties with which the zoo authorities were faced.   It was a heartbreaking and saddening decision to have to make—to put down this rare and magnificent animal, that for all we know, may have similarly been investigating and protecting this child.  We will never know.

This is a hard, but teachable moment.  There have been several incidents in the past year that have surfaced in the media about human and animal interaction that had terrible outcomes.  In Yosemite, a baby bison was taken and put in an SUV because visitors thought it “looked cold” and had to be euthanized.   In Argentina, a baby dolphin was passed around to beachgoers and died as a result.  And a Minnesota dentist that shot Cecil the lion was driven out of business when the incident became public.  Most notably, SeaWorld has announced that it is phasing out the killer whale shows that have been a main attraction for decades.

Zoos have an important function.   Modern civilization has separated us from nature and the environment.   They are an important connection between human populations and the natural world.  They are vital to research and the continuation of endangered species.   Most humans will not be able to view these wonderful animals in the natural world.  By seeing animals in as natural surroundings as possible, people will be more likely to support conservation and animal protection efforts.  But zoos and entities like SeaWorld are NOT entertainment centers.  They need to migrate away from that business model—one which exploits animals and entertains.  They should refashion themselves more like universities—research institutions that educate, and introduce the young to knowledge and to connect them with animals and the natural world.

Conservatives need to lead on the issue of wildlife and the environment.  We have not been, and need to be.  Otherwise, the default position will be an ever expanding role of Big Government.

What Now?

Now that Donald Trump has sealed up the Republican nomination and Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee, what is a free market Constitutionalist to do?  

I don't know.  I just don't know.  I am suffering with the worst case of political cognitive dissonance of my adult life.

Do you cast your lot with Donald Trump (How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Trump), or, as conservative/libertarian humorist P.J. O'Rourke just declared, go with Hillary, rationalizing that she is "the second worst thing that could happen to our country."

Do you go with the woman with a rat's nest of conflict of interests, currently under F.B.I. investigation for her atrocious email server scandal, who shamelessly panders to interest groups, and who, while simultaneously claiming to be the vanguard of women's rights, enabled her husband to prey on several women?  Or do you go with bombastic iconoclast, the real estate and reality television guy, who has shown an ability to shake up the status quo at a time the status quo badly needs to be shaken?  And  shaken vigorously.

In my January 16 post, I spun out the reasons I thought Trump could take all the marbles and those turned out to be accurate.   Whatever he is doing appears to be working as he dismantled the entire Republican field one by one.  His ham-fisted crude bluntness, for instance, demolished the young conservative darling, Marco Rubio and he rattled him so badly that Rubio could do little more than repeat scripted talking points.  His "Make America Great Again" theme has great appeal and is in stark contrast to the current administration that has spent more time apologizing for America and talking about a borderless world than the virtues of America.  He is not afraid to take on hard issues ---a broken immigration policy, Islamic terror, political correctness that has gone way beyond common sense.   And, unlike Mitt Romney, he hits back... hard.   He has a number of appealing attributes, and potential (and I mean potential because he has never led in government) leadership capabilities.

We know Hillary all too well.  One of her major deficits is that we have Clinton fatigue.  The Clinton M.O. is well known-- play in the grey area, obfuscate, delay, distract, spin.  These are skills the family has perfected over decades of public life. We know her track record. Whitewater, Travelgate, Hillarycare, Benghazi, Russian reset, Assad the "reformer," and leading from behind in Libya.  Worst of all, she squandered a formidable lead to a community organizer with no executive experience and lost the nomination in 2008.

With all that baggage, it seems like jumping on the Trump Train would not be all that difficult.  Many have--- Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, the folks at Fox, and even Larry Kudlow is pretty open to him.

I'm with Paul Ryan.   I'm not ready yet.  And I don't know if I will ever be.

There are a host of things about him that trouble me deeply. 

He is NOT an advocate of free market principles.  He is open to a $15 minimum wage.  He is fine with more tax increases (without talking about how we are going to put government on a diet).  His recent suggestion that America's creditors might take a discount is nothing short of ludicrous.  Worst of all is his policy toward China.  I agree that a tougher negotiating stance is appropriate but he seems not to have heard of Smoot Hawley.  He may, in fact, be more progressive than Obama on health care.  Yes, it is true that while Trump is promising jobs, Bernie Sanders is promising "free stuff," but there is no evidence that suggests that a massive trade war will do the trick.

On foreign policy matters, it gets worse.  He really lost me with his assertion that "Bush lied." While "putting America first," rebuilding America's military that Obama gutted and regaining American sovereignty have great appeal after the Obama years, his suggestions that we withdraw from NATO or permit or encourage Japan and South Korea to arm themselves with nuclear weapons is simply nuts.   His proposed policy of completely ceding the Middle East to Russia makes no sense. His man crush on Vladimir Putin is perplexing.   In international affairs, we need to lead, and advocate the American virtues of individual liberty, democracy and free markets.  Trump is correct to say that P.C. is a big impediment to these principles.  He is utterly wrong in advocating American isolationism in these matters.   America needs to lead and the world needs America to lead.

In the final analysis, I cannot vote for Hillary under any condition. Conservatives P.J. O'Rourke and Jonathan Hoenig have cast their lot with her.  I simply cannot.   She is unprincipled and continues to advocate the growth of a welfare state that has no more room to grow (expanding Obamacare subsidies to illegals).

Neither of the candidates are addressing the core issues that need to be addressed: tax reform, entitlement reform, and regulatory reform (the out-of-control regulatory state that continues to suck the oxygen out of the economy), and their relation to economic growth and vitality.   

Finally, there is the Constitution.  Progressives continue to erode the structure and rights guaranteed under the Constitution.  In particular, they continue to chip away at the 1st Amendment (offensive speech, freedom of religion), and the 2nd (Hillary is focused on gun control).   I have been particularly harsh on Obama (the Constitutional law lecturer) for his "pen and phone" approach to governance.   Rather than do the hard work of hammering out a deal and compromise with Congress, he has attempted to exert his will through the executive and the judicial branches on major policy issues.  Whatever the vicissitudes of the electorate, it is vital that the next president respect the structure of the Constitution, and demonstrate and articulate a fidelity to our founding document that Obama did not. Unfortunately, I do not at present see Trump as the leader that will take us back to our core values and our core document.  So far, I see the opposite.  I see someone that is more likely to "game the system" just as Obama has done to achieve his ends.

Perhaps he will evolve now that he has sewn up the nomination, but I have not yet bought a ticket on the Trump Train.

Predators

Sexual misconduct among the political class has become so commonplace that it doesn't even herald the death knell of one's career in public life.  Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, Mark Sanford, Anthony Weiner and a number of other well known public figures have all had their dalliances exposed and have gone on to new lives after suffering some short term humiliation.  We've had call girls, sexting and cigars.  These sordid affairs caused a speed bump in their lives, but many of these transgressors more or less recovered.  

Not this time.  This time it was kids.

Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert was sentenced to 15 years in prison for molesting at least 4 boys while a teacher and wrestling coach at Yorkville High School.  He was caught paying hush money to some of the victims.  It is amazing to me that Hastert was able to get friends to write letters asking for leniency (the defense asked for probation).   And the judge rightfully threw the book at him.   Sex abuse of a minor is a horrific crime.  It steals their youth, and often their lives, leaving them scarred forever.

It occurred to me that this kind of deviant and despicable behavior may be more common than I thought among the coaching profession and that we need to be vigilant and alert in protecting our children.  As was the case in the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal (see the film Spotlight), predators often occupy a position of trust and authority.  It follows, then, that athletic coaches and trainers are in the perfect position to prey on kids.

Jerry Sandusky is the poster child for this monstrous behavior, having used his position at Penn State to abuse many, many children under the nose of Penn State, ultimately tarnishing the school and Joe Paterno.  

In the 2005 documentary film, The Heart of the Game, which chronicled a girls high school basketball team in Oregon, one of the athletes was suffering a myriad of behavior problems and ultimately had her basketball career derailed. Only later in the film did we learn that her adult personal coach and trainer was taking advantage of her.

At the high school where I coached in the early 1980's, 3 athletes brought a suit several decades after the alleged instances occurred against one of the coaches for sexual abuse.   One of those athletes, Arny Alberts, wrote a book about these incidents (Burnt Cookies--available on amazon.com) and the lifelong problems it caused ---depression, alcohol abuse, guilt and shame.  

Brooke de Lench of MomsTeam Team Institute for Youth Sports Safety has a good blog post on warning signs for sexual abuse by a coach (http://momsteam.com/health-safety/sexual-abuse/warning-signs-sexual-abuse-by-coach-of-child).  Her post should be read by anyone whose child is participating in organized sports.

It's hard to say how prevalent sexual abuse is among the coaching profession but these incidents suggest that it may be more widespread than is generally thought and parents should be vigilant and pay attention at all times.   Violating the public trust is one matter, violating the coach/young athlete relationship is another.   Hastert caused a great deal of pain among some young athletes and he will and should pay a heavy price. Shame on those that wrote letters on his behalf urging leniency.

Mythology

The Left often gets policy dreadfully wrong, but is rarely apologetic about it.   Liberals like Ted Kennedy were so certain about policies and outcomes and were prepared to impose tremendous costs on us, expose us to risks, and in some cases, erode our freedoms and livelihoods to pursue a path to nowhere. 

Once again, we are being asked to make large sacrifices in the name of climate change.   With Al Gore as the great proselytizer, we are told that climate change is “settled science,” and that anyone that questions it is a “climate change denier,” (language that associated with Holocaust deniers), and is relegated to the same intellectual status as fundamentalist Christians that chose the book of Genesis over Evolution.

However, before we blindly accept the Left’s demands that we kill certain industries (e.g. coal), use public funds to fund others (solar) and agree to impose large costs on ourselves, it is worthwhile to remind ourselves of  a few of the big misses the Left has had during our lifetime.

·         Population Bomb. Certainly, Paul Ehrlich was at the forefront of this looney bomb of an idea.  I remember reading his book Population, Resources, Environment in the early 70’s.  The basic notion was that earth had a fixed “carrying capacity” and that population growth was exponentially headed to a place that would exceed earth’s capacity (today’s stepchild idea is “sustainability.”  There would be dire consequences if population growth was not arrested—widespread famine, depletion and social unrest.  He proposed   Ehrlich and his progeny proposed zero population growth (ZPG) and, if voluntary measures weren’t sufficient, proposed mandatory sterilization.  What we are learning now is that the truth is the exact opposite.  Population growth is vital to a growing economy.  And growing, vibrant economies are gentler on the environment.   And Ehrlich and “intellectuals” of his ilk assume that science, technology and business processes do not advance.   They most certainly do.  Almost a half century after his landmark book, the Population Bomb, we are now worried more about population crashes.  Europe, Japan, China and Russia face tremendous economic problems not because of overpopulation, but because of an aging one with fertilization rates down dramatically.  The same has occurred in the Muslim world as Muslim populations are crashing from 7 births per woman a generation ago to 2 now.  Compared to other countries, America is in decent shape, especially with immigration.  If we would have followed the prescriptions of Ehrlich and his ilk, we would have been in deeper trouble and it would have taken a Nazi-like government to execute them.

·         Peak Oil.  This is my personal favorite.  Peak oil is the ugly cousin of ZPG—the foundational notion is that we are a planet whose population is outrunning its resources.  The idea of peak oil really got lift during the oil embargo and gained momentum during the disastrous Carter years.  Even as recently as a few years ago, when gas was hovering at $4/gallon, President Obama, defending his energy policies, piously announce, “We can’t drill our way out of this problem.”


Uh, we kinda did. 

We are now drowning in the stuff.  We don’t have enough storage capacity. Banks balance sheets are in pretty good shape now, except for loans to oil related companies.  Osama bin Laden is dead and so is OPEC.   As sanctions have been dropped, Iranian oil is coming on line as well.  All those smug Middle East regimes that thought they could freeze America out are looking at an oil exporting America now—despite the restrictions that Obama put on leases permitting drilling on federal land and offshore drilling.  At the root of this is good old American innovation—sideways drilling and fracking.   The oil industry, ever a demonic icon of the Left has done a great job of marginalizing the importance of those odious Middle Eastern regimes.  Unleashed, American industry and technological innovation have a pretty good track record of problem solving.  The Left has been very quiet about this lately (except for the extremists that want to ban fracking with no evidence to support why it makes sense).

·     Giving the Palestinians a homeland will end terrorism.   This idea has been the conventional wisdom since the 1972 Olympics, and still echoes around the Obama administration.  It makes about as much sense as Marie Harf’s assertion that “we can’t kill our way out of this problem [Islamism],” and that what is needed is more economic opportunity (derided as “jobs for jihadis”).  This idea accelerated after the first Gulf War and a deal was almost reached in 1993 and ended with the Israelis giving up large concessions and Arafat walking away from the deal.  But bad actors from Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden routinely cited “the plight of the Palestinians” on their list of grievances to justify their bad acts.

We now know that the Palestinian issue is a red herring.    Every Jew in Israel could agree to pack up and move to Miami and New York, hand the deed to the Palestinians and never come back, and Islamic terrorism would continue unabated.  Funded by the Iranians, Hamas and Hezbollah will continue to harass Israel and seek its destruction.    Despite liberal attempts to punish Israel (even pushing for boycotts and disinvestment) and frame the Israelis as the oppressors, the Palestinian issue is, and has been, a sideshow since the Iranian revolution.  Islamic terror wouldn’t even slow down if a two state solution could even be reached.  But that doesn’t keep the Left from trying.  As recently as a few years ago, Obama was calling on Israel to pull back to its 1967 borders and just last week Biden was bashing Netanyahu’s policies.  “Land for peace”  is illusory.  It won’t stop attacks on Israel and certainly won’t affect the Islamist’s ardor for attacking the West anywhere else.

·         SDI.  Just as Obama mocked Romney in the 2012 debates for asserting that Russia was our greatest existential threat (“the 80’s are calling and want their foreign policy back”—now Russia is buzzing our warships and surveillance planes), the Left mocked Reagan’s plan for a defensive shield as “Star Wars.”   But missile defense has made great strides in the 33 years since Reagan proposed it.  SDI has not, of course, turned out exactly the way Reagan envisioned it.  But it has already had three large victories under its belt.  First, the very idea was instrumental in ending the Cold War.  Reagan would not bargain it away to the Soviets at Reykjavik, even though he did not even have it to bargain away.  But the mere idea of an effective shield using US technology was more than the Soviets could bear.  Second was the success of the Patriot missile system in the Persian Gulf War.  Its actual effectiveness was somewhat limited, but it was enough to keep the Israelis from being dragged into the war.  Third was the Iron Dome.  Using technologies developed from SDI, the Israelis have developed their own missile system that has been effective at intercepting Hamas rockets and keeping them from inflicting more Israeli casualties.   Recently, I saw a presentation by James Syring, head of the US Missile Defense Agency.  I was impressed with our capabilities and they keep improving.  With Iran and North Korea plowing ahead with their missile programs, the vision of Ronald Reagan is still very much alive, although in different form.  Ted Kennedy and other liberal Democrats worked hard to defund and kill the program and it is easily foreseeable that we will be happy if it is even somewhat effective.  It does not have to be close to 100% effective (although that would be nice).   But if it is enough to change the probabilities, these bad actors might have second thoughts about attacking us first.

And if we are successful in knocking down an Iranian or North Korean strike, people will forget how dreadfully wrong those on the Left were. These examples were huge whiffs by policy advocates that either had or could have had costly implications including the loss of human life on a grand scale.  Before we dive right in and merely accept policy prescriptions on climate change, we ought to think about the Left’s track record on some of these big issues  as we confront their push to restrict freedom and enlarge government power in the name of climate change.  They couldn’t have been more wrong.

Juxtapositions

The other day, I awoke, sipped coffee and in my drowsy state, checked Twitter and saw the initial news reports of the terrorist attack in Brussels.  I padded downstairs to retrieve the morning paper, unfolded it and saw this photo of Barack and Raul splashed across the front page.

Similarly, another photo of Obama standing at attention directly under a wall mural of Che Guevara was circulating.  As I noted in my earlier post "Words and Symbols," symbols matter greatly, in my view. Symbolism was not lost on Obama when Nikki Haley and the rest of the country after the church shooting in South Carolina as we went into hysteria over the Confederate.  Amidst great fanfare, the Confederate flag was removed from the state capitol and  schools municipalities removed statues of Confederate generals and war heroes.  Yet somehow, the symbol of  the leader of the Free World standing under Che eluded Team Obama.

I wish I could find a word to describe, "Way Beyond Tone Deaf."

But he was not finished.  Later, as the body count in Brussels rose, and we learned that Americans were among the injured and missing, did Obama cut short his visit and meet with his national security team and confer with European allies?  Nope. We later saw him doing the wave at a baseball game with Communist thug, Raul Castro, unaffected by events that sent Europe reeling, breezily laughing and joking with the leader of the regime that almost started a nuclear holocaust, and just hours earlier jailed dissidents and forcibly removed the courageous "Ladies in White."

And another juxtaposition that caught my attention was the scene of the nuns of the Little Sisters of the Poor at the Supreme Court steps fighting for religious liberty as they took the Obama Administration to court over the birth control mandate of the ACA.  With fines totaling $70 million hanging over the charity's head, it is clear that the Obama administration may not have a clear strategy to fight ISIS, but it does have one to fight the Little Sisters of the Poor.

Of course, not to be outdone, the Republican candidates had their own overlays.  The day before the Brussels attacks, Donald Trump announced that we should get out NATO and that we should consider using tactical nuclear weapons against ISIS.  It's hard to imagine two worse options to exercise. Nukes are not terribly effective at defeating surreptitious guerrilla wars. And we should be leading and strengthening NATO, not pulling out.  Ted Cruz was not doing much better a few weeks ago, advocating carpet bombing to defeat ISIS. Meanwhile, the leading Republican candidates were making unseemly and nasty comments about each other's wives in an exchange more appropriate to the Jerry Springer Show than a contest for the leadership of the free world.

While reports surfaced that 400 ISIS fighters have been dispatched to Europe, Obama was smiling and doing the tango in Argentina.   In ordinary times, the photos of a U.S. president would be of him looking pensively across the table at the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, peppering him with questions about his ISIS Action Plan.  Not this president.  Instead, he casually announced that, "ISIS was on the top of his priority list (details to follow)," but then followed up quickly with his statement that "ISIS is not an existential threat" to the U.S.  Apparently,  Cuba has been removed from the "state sponsors of terrorism," list and the entire European continent has been removed from the "vital to Western Civilization" list.   The President promptly returned to cha-cha-cha-ing and telling the Argentinians that Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism are basically co-equals and that they should "chose what works."  Oh, and he didn't fail to issue the obligatory apology for America's past sins toward Argentina.

But, wait, there's more.  Today, it was announced that 7 Iranians were indicted for hacking into U.S. banks, only a day after it was reported that the Obama administration is in secret negotiations with Iran for the release of another $2 billion to them.  The Iranians haven't yet caught on to the fact that with this administration, you don't have to do computer espionage to get money--just make them a lot of false promises of things you say you will do in the future and they will GIVE it to you.

In summary, with the world in chaos, the Obama administration's reaction was to make a perfunctory statement about the attack and on the West tell the world that "if people's lives get interrupted, the terrorists win." He evidently missed the nuance that HIS life is SUPPOSED to be interrupted so that the rest of us can feel safe enough to go on with ours.  The Republicans, on the other hand, expressed a desire to either nuke or carpet bomb them, which is sure to win the hearts and minds of moderate Muslims world over.

John Kerry chimed in, too, this week, stating that the "presidential campaign has been an embarrassment for the U.S."  This is the same John Kerry who, when informed that a former Gitmo prisoner was engaged in terrorist activity, said, "He's not supposed to be doing that."  And the same John Kerry that thanked Iran for returning our captured sailors that they held at gunpoint and videotaped for worldwide propaganda distribution.  John Kerry is somewhat an authority on embarrassing the U.S.

And if that isn't enough, while Obama was cavorting with one Communist dictator, the other one was vying for his attention as Kim Jong-un spent the week firing off missiles, showing off a miniature warhead and threatening to launch a first strike against the U.S.  This is the other regime that a Democrat negotiated a nonproliferation agreement with, as you will recall.  So, if we follow Obama logic---that 60 years of isolation isn't working and we should unilaterally change course, we would expect a delegation from the U.S. to visit Pyongyang, profusely apologize for the imperialist aggression of General MacArthur, drop the embargo, and bring Dennis Rodman with to accompany Dear Leader to a basketball game. After all, whatever we are doing isn't working.

This was probably the worst week in foreign affairs that I remember in the past 40 years.  The once proud and strong America of Ronald Reagan and George Shultz has turned into the Keystone Kops.  I recall the tensions over the shootdown of KAL 007 by the Soviets.  If that had occurred with this team in charge, you can bet Obama would not have canceled his tee time and Kerry would have mumbled meekly, "They're not supposed to do that."

These are dark days for the West and I do not see anyone in the field of candidates right now that I am confident will put us on a saner path.