Cloward-Piven Strategy: Obama's Undeclared War on America

The Cloward-Piven Strategy
Republican US House Speaker John Boehner, and US Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking minority member Richard Lugar, are both obsessed with bringing President Obama to account under the War Powers Act for his intervention in Libya.

Libya is typical of Obama's foreign policy: timid, tardy, aloof, and counterproductive. Accordingly, the outcome from Obama's Libyan humanitarian adventure has been predictable, needlessly adding over $1 billion to the US federal deficit while emboldening a stalemate benefitting Gaddafi, who continues to inflict civilian casualties with impunity.

Whatever Obama's disposition of the War Powers Act concerning Libya, it is still trivial stuff compared with Obama's undeclared War on America. Boehner and Lugar need to stand down from the snipe hunt over Libya and pay attention to Obama's destruction here at home.

Obama's undeclared War on America has been as intense, unrelenting, costly, and devastating as any undeclared war since Korea. Obama's carpet-bombing through taxes, regulations, energy policies, and pledging to do more of the same has paralyzed and bankrupted the nation, plunging it into a despondency not seen since eight decades ago.

Apart from James Buchanan, no president has been so ill-prepared and willfully ignorant as Obama when presented with an unprecedented national crisis. We are now mired in the 21st century Great Gloom, our nation's 2nd Great Depression, having identical features with the first one: millions of Americans are out of work with few prospects for any; millions more Americans have lost their homes with even more facing foreclosure and owing more on their mortgages than the homes are worth; the private sector is calcified; high taxes and regulations frustrate capital formation and job creation.

Obama's inability or unwillingness to read history, compounded by his stubborn big government ideology, has led him to adopt or advocate for the single most devastating tactic that doomed Herbert Hoover when the Great Depression began and plagued FDR as the wretchedness of the 1930s persisted for nearly another decade: higher taxes.

The Great Depression's illiquidity closed thousands of banks, wiped out savings, and obliterated home and farm ownership. High tariffs choked international trade, idling more businesses and spoiling more stockpiles of foodstuffs.

Today's analog -- regulatory fever -- has strangled job creation, demolished the real estate markets, and crushed any hope to restore self-confidence by heaping nearly $2 trillion of unrelieved costs on American business.

Except for taxes and tariffs -- as David M. Kennedy argues in his Freedom From Fear-The American People in Depression and War 1929-1945, at least President Herbert Hoover didn't deliberately make the Depression worse. Hoover was physically exhausted and mentally drained in tirelessly applying any remedy that would ease the suffering and stop the economic bleeding.

Says Kennedy ( p. 94) "He kept up a punishing regimen of rising at six and working without interruption until nearly midnight. His clothes were disheveled, his hair rumpled, his eyes bloodshot, complexion ashen.

"By the fall of 1932 he had lost all stomach for political campaigning...seemed to campaign more for vindication of the historical record than for the affection in the hearts of voters.

"Just four years earlier he had won one of the most lopsided victories in the history of presidential elections...The Great Engineer, so recently the most revered American, was the most loathed and scorned figure in the country."

Contrast that scene with Obama on another golf outing, wolfing down chilidogs and cheeseburgers, and launching his 2012 re-election campaign eighteen months in advance.

Hoover gets a bum rap for allowing a recession to turn into the Great Depression. He tried everything at his disposal that contemporaneous economists and banker/financiers thought would work. But as Kennedy further observes, through the lens of economist Herbert Stein, the federal government at the time was too small to be leveraged; state and local governments had collective budgets five times larger than the federal government and some states had statutory restrictions on incurring more indebtedness. According to Kennedy, even Pennsylvania by its own constitution could not borrow more than $1 million.

The federal budget in 1929 was only 3% of GDP. Obama's 2012 budget would approach 25% of GDP. Obama sees no limit to bloated bureaucracies, the size of government tenfold larger and growing even more immense than Hoover could ever have imagined, and the debt to go with it flirting with sovereign default.

In the beginning Hoover, not gregarious by nature, engaged every politician and business leader who he thought could be enlisted for advice or action. Only after exhausting all possibilities, while the nation's fortunes plummeted further, did Hoover become isolated and withdrawn. Kennedy relates a dark joke circulating at the lowest point of Hoover's presidency: "the president asked for a nickel to make a telephone call to a friend, an aide flipped him a dime and said 'call them both'."

Hoover was a man of broad and deep intellect, a voracious student of economics and finance. Kennedy (p 94) recounts a quote from Theodore Joslin, a secretary to Hoover:


His was a mathematical brain...Let banking officials for example come into his office and he would rattle off the number of banks in the country, list their liabilities and assets, describe the trend of fiscal affairs, and go into the liquidity or lack of it, of individual institutions, all from memory.

What a contrast to Obama's teleprompter presidency, uttering shopworn political clichés with it, occasionally unable to string together anything coherent without it.

Prior to becoming president, Hoover was regarded as the most experienced organization titan, ironically owing to his single-handed leadership in the acclaimed Belgian food relief program upon the outset of WWI. As Kennedy notes, at the end of the War, Hoover was President Wilson's personal advisor, "as much as any one man could he got the credit for reorganizing the war-shattered European economy."

Yes, Hoover is tagged with failure. Yet he was serious, purposeful, and above all, even willing to abandon his own ideology in search for a cure. Hoover's acquiescence to the formation of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation capped a sequence of measures harnessing the potential power of government intervention when it was clear private means were insufficient. In fact, as Kennedy continues, noted Columbia University economist Rexford Tugwell, FDR's behind-the-scenes architect for much of the New Deal, "later conceded that practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started[.]"

Obama shares but two likenesses with Hoover. The first one in public utterances prone to underestimating the severity of the crisis.

Remarked Hoover in his famous understatement in May 1930, "I am convinced we have passed the worst and with continued effort we shall rapidly recover...the depression is over[.]" Last week we heard from Obama that "the economy is taking a while to mend...and faces bumps on the road to recovery."

Hoover's comments were accidents of timing, Obama's deliberate obfuscations.

And second, not unlike Hoover's (and later FDR's) addiction to tax hikes, Obama has overseen piles of costs heaped on everyday Americans from deliberately high energy prices to environmental regulatory roadblocks on energy production to $1 trillion in taxes and mandates under ObamaCare.

Who can objectively deny Obama has made the extant condition worse? Whether he has purposefully made things worse is up for some debate; after all he has no expertise in anything from which to conjure a sinister plan. Yet economic destruction derived from ignorance, folly, and neglect is still destruction. At least Hoover, by contrast, was a self-made economist who understood capital formation and liquidity, monetary and fiscal theory, and international trade, debt, and currency flows.

Arguably, international isolationism contributed to and prolonged the Great Depression. Obama's own personal isolationism, evidenced by his contempt for regular Americans and standoffish relations with foreign leaders, handmaiden to the scorn and hostility he shows towards Republicans, is a continual roadblock in finding solutions.

Even Obama's own erstwhile cheerleader for doomed Obamanomics, Austan Goolsbee, chief economic advisor to the president, has found either the task overwhelming or the companionship insufferable -- take your pick -- after only 10 months on the job.

Temperamentally Obama is a drone unleashing as much destruction on the American psyche as his drones have done to destroy military targets in Afghanistan. Devoid of honest analytics, Obama continues to issue phony reports from the domestic battlefront. Even the Washington Post, fiercely loyal to Obama's personality and politics, has had enough of his lies about the success from the auto industry bailouts.

If Obama's game is to perfect an undeclared War on America, he is succeeding. It remains to be seen whether the Republicans can summon enough nerve to reprise Gen McAuliffe's famous retort to the German demand for surrender at Bastogne in December of 1944, "Nuts."

Only Congress can now do what the voters sent them to do -- disarm and defund Obama's undeclared War on America. And for 2012, who shall be the Republicans' Gen Patton, coming to America's rescue?(source)

Cloward-Piven Strategy: US Is Nearing Even Worse Financial Crisis

The Cloward-Piven Strategy

The U.S. is approaching a financial crisis worse than 2008, Jim Rogers, chief executive, Rogers Holdings, warned CNBC Wednesday.

"The debts that are in this country are skyrocketing," he said. "In the last three years the government has spent staggering amounts of money and the Federal Reserve is taking on staggering amounts of debt.

"When the problems arise next time…what are they going to do? They can’t quadruple the debt again. They cannot print that much more money. It’s gonna be worse the next time around."

The well-known investor believes the government won't shut down in August if agreement isn't reached on raising the debt ceiling, but he did say "draconian cuts" are needed in taxes and spending, especially military spending.

"We’ve got troops in 150 countries around the world. They’re not doing us any good, they’re making enemies. They’re costing us a fortune," he said.

Rogers said he is "not long anything in the U.S." and short on American tech stocks. He owns Chinese stocks as well as commodities and would love the world price of silver and gold to come down so he could "pick up the phone and buy more."

He said he owns Chinese stocks, currencies and commodities, adding the Chinese yuan will be a safer currency than the dollar.

"The U.S. is the largest debtor nation in the history of the world," he said. "The debts are going through the roof. Would you keep lending money to somebody who's spending money and not doing anything about it? No you wouldn't."

The pound sterling lost 90% of its value when it was no longer the world's reserve currency, he said, and the dollar will, too. In keeping with his philosophy he said he owns the U.S. dollar and is waiting for a rally. "If it doesn't happen I'll have to sell and take my losses."

He called Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke a "disaster" who has "never been right about anything" since he's been in Washington. "I hope he doesn't come back with QE3 but that's all he knows. The only thing he knows is to print money."

He predicted that after the Fed ends its quantitative easing program, known as QE2, this month, it may come back under another name.

"They're gonna bring it back because [Bernanke will] be terrified and Washington will be terrified," he said. "There's an election coming in November 2012. Washington's gonna print more money."(source)

UNION TRUTH REVEALED: Crashing A Special Olympics Ceremony To Show Their Hate

Barry As President: Last Week Claims For State Jobless Benefits Increased 1,000 to 427,000

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Record exports in April tempered fears that the economic recovery was running off the rails, even though first-time claims for jobless benefits edged higher last week.

A Commerce Department report on Thursday showed the trade deficit narrowed unexpectedly in April, as exports rose to a new record and imports from Japan tumbled more than 25 percent after its earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster.

The trade gap totaled $43.7 billion despite a jump in oil prices to the highest since September 2008, down 6.7 percent from a revised estimate of $46.8 billion in March, suggesting stronger second-quarter economic growth than economists had expected.

"A lot of forecasters, ourselves included, had lowered expectations for the second quarter, and this will reverse some of that reduction in expectations," said David Resler, chief U.S. economist at Nomura Securities International in New York.

Oil prices slid in May from April peaks but are creeping higher again after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries on Wednesday failed to agree on production increases.

A second report from the Labor Department, however, showed the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment aid unexpectedly edged higher last week, reinforcing a view that the job market recovery has stalled.



Initial claims for state jobless benefits increased 1,000 to 427,000. Economists had forecast claims to drop.

First-time claims have now been perched above the 400,000 mark for nine weeks in a row. Analysts normally associate a level below that with steady job growth.

"It's the same dismal trend continuing. It's not getting worse, but it's not getting better either," said Keith Hembre, chief economist at Nuveen Asset Management in Minneapolis.

The U.S. government said on Friday the U.S. unemployment rate ticked up to 9.1 percent in May while nonfarm employers added a paltry 54,000 workers to their payrolls. The report was the latest and most stark sign of economic weakness.

Hembre said the unemployment rate could rise to 9.2 percent in the June report. That would add to President Barack Obama's political woes heading into the 2012 race for the White House.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Tuesday acknowledged the economy had slowed but offered no hint the central bank was considering more stimulus to boost growth.

JAPAN SUPPLY DISRUPTIONS

The $3 billion drop in imports from Japan from March to April was the largest on record. U.S. auto and auto parts imports from Japan and other suppliers fell $2.8 billion, partly reflecting supply chain disruptions in the aftermath of the triple disaster.

Once those problems are worked through, many analysts expect the trade gap to widen again.

"Right now (the trade report) looks like it's going to be positive for Q2 GDP, but by the end of June the bounce back will be obvious I think," said Thomas Simons, money market economist for Jefferies & Co in New York.

A separate Commerce Department report showed U.S. wholesale inventories rose a less-than-expected 0.8 percent in April, as automotive stocks fell the most since December 2009.

After the reports, U.S. stocks edged higher after six days of losses while Treasury debt was mostly flat and the dollar was higher against the euro.

The trade gap narrowed despite the biggest month-to-month jump in prices for imported oil in nearly three years. The average price rose to $103.18 per barrel, the highest since September 2008.

However, the volume of crude oil imports fell, pushing the overall U.S. oil import bill lower in April. That, combined with the lower imports from Japan, helped trim total U.S. imports 0.4 percent to $219.2 billion, even as imports of foods, feeds and beverages set a record, the report showed.

U.S. crude futures extended gains in trading on Thursday, touching $101.74 per barrel.

U.S. exports, buoyed by a weakening of the U.S. dollar, rose 1.3 percent to a record $175.6 billion, led by record shipments of industrial supplies and materials and capital goods and smaller gains for food, feeds and beverages, consumer goods and autos and auto parts.

The closely watched U.S. trade deficit with China jumped nearly 20 percent in April to $21.6 billion. It continues at a pace to exceed last year's record of about $273 billion.(source)

A Lesson To Ralph Stanley

I was broken-hearted when I saw this ad for the first time in the Fall of 2008. A regional legend by the name of Ralph Stanley, bluegrass hero to millions of us from the Appalachian Mountains and beyond, actually endorsed Obama for president. If you know anything about the coal-mining territory in those mountains, it isn't surprising to learn that Democrat politics appeal to these poverty-stricken communities.

Despite living a rugged agrarian life in rocky terrain, forced to supplant their meager incomes by raising their own livestock, growing their own corn, and even by selling moonshine, many of these folks secretly yearn for any kind of government relief in whatever form it might take: a welfare check, food stamps, etc.

For those of us who have looked out past the horizon, though, we know that relying on government handouts is the road to ruin. The same politician who says, "I feel your pain", and offers no more than a 16 dollar increase in annual welfare payments to a family of four is also the same politician who wants to destroy your coal mining jobs.

When a misguided Ralph Stanley sits here and says, "I think I know a little something about the families of Southwest Virginia,...and we need a change from the past 8 years", I sadly shake my head and say, "Ralph, Ralph, Ralph. I hardly knew ya'. Don't you know that you're getting in bed with the devil?"

Coal Regs Would Kill Jobs, Boost Energy Bills

By Paul Bedard

Posted: June 8, 2011

Two new EPA pollution regulations will slam the coal industry so hard that hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost, and electric rates will skyrocket 11 percent to over 23 percent, according to a new study based on government data.

Overall, the rules aimed at making the air cleaner could cost the coal-fired power plant industry $180 billion, warns a trade group.

“Many of these severe impacts would hit families living in states already facing serious economic challenges,” said Steve Miller, president of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. “Because of these impacts, EPA should make major changes to the proposed regulations before they are finalized,” he said.

The EPA, however, tells Whispers that the hit the industry will suffer is worth the health benefits. “EPA has taken a number of sensible steps to protect public health, while also working with industry and other stakeholders to ensure that these important Clean Air Act standards—such as the first ever national Mercury and Air Toxics Standards for coal-fired power plants—are reasonable, common-sense, and achievable,” said spokesman Brendan Gilfillan. [Read Rep. Darrell Issa: Obama's Bad Policy, Harmful Regulations Add to Gas Prices.]

What’s more, officials said that just one of the rules to cut sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions will would yield up to $290 billion in annual health and welfare benefits in 2014. They say that amounts to preventing up to 36,000 premature deaths, 26,000 hospital and emergency room visits, and 240,000 cases of aggravated asthma. “This far outweighs the estimated annual costs,” says an official on background.

Still, the EPA did note that the two new antipollution rules are “pending” and that the agency has “accepted and are considering feedback” from the industry.

The industry says the costs and potential to lose four jobs for every new clean energy job created isn’t worth the rules, especially in a job-starved economy.

Referring to the analysis of the EPA regulations from National Economic Research Associates, Miller said they would be the most expensive rules ever imposed on power plants.

Coal-fired energy plants currently fuel about half of the nation’s energy supply.(source)

Arab spring: An Interactive Timeline of Middle East Protests

The Predictable Middle East Crisis

Can we know what will happen in the Middle East? William Gibson, an author and prophet of the information age, who, among other things, coined the word cyberspace, says that the future is predictable: "The future is already here -- it's just not evenly distributed."

Contemporary Jewish-Muslim relations are distributed so grotesquely unevenly that they provide plenty of hints at future trends. These relations vary wildly with the setting, numerical strength of each group, and context. Let us take four examples, moving from one extreme to the other.

Context 1. When prominent American Muslims appear on English-language TV to discuss issues like the Ground Zero Mosque, they love to play the Jewish card. They equate contemporary American society's treatment of the Muslims with what the American Jews experienced back in the '20s and '30s, hoping that this comparison will gain them more sympathy. Generally, when they face a largely skeptical Western audience, they project an enlightened and friendly attitude toward their Jewish brothers.

Context 2. This attitude changes drastically on American college campuses, where the Muslim groups feel emboldened by the left-wing professors and students. But they still have nothing against the Jewish people per se. They just demonize the Jewish state, which they call "criticism."

Context 3. The distinction between the Jews and Israel completely disappears when the Muslims become a sizable minority. For example, this is the case in Malmo, Sweden's third-largest city, where the Muslims make up 25% of the total population. Jew-hatred in Malmo has reached a point that even the BBC abandoned its usual political correctness and devoted one of its reports in December of 2010 specifically to the verbal and physical harassment of Malmo's tiny Jewish community by Muslim immigrants.

Context 4. If you think that the situation cannot get any uglier, you are mistaken. Let us go to a place where the Muslims are a majority. The screams "Jew! Jew!" served as a battle cry for the gang-rape of liberal journalist Lara Logan in Egypt. It was not an ordinary rape carried out in a secluded location. It took place in crowded Tahrir Square, and it went on for 25 minutes. She is not a Jew, but the mere labeling her as such was reason enough for the viciousness unleashed on her.

Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the West, fueled by immigration, higher birth rates and proselytizing, especially in prisons. If you are pondering the future of Jewish-Muslim relations, remember that the future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed yet.

Because of their relatively small numbers, Jews are a convenient target. But Christian-Muslim relations follow the same trajectory, to which the Egyptian Copts will readily attest. An Iraqi Christian has been quoted by the Christian Science Monitor as saying, "What's happening to us is what happened to the Jews."

Speaking of predictions, the Internet is currently abuzz with a recent report titled "The Next Middle East War." Its author, Chuck DeVore, has an impressive resume. He attended the American University in Cairo in the '80s. Then, he served as a US Army lieutenant colonel in military intelligence and worked as a Reagan-appointed special assistant for foreign affairs in the Pentagon. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, DeVore "beat the CIA" to predicting the current Arab crisis, a.k.a. the Arab Spring. In a word, his new report is definitely worth a brief review.

The report defies the conventional wisdom that a direct military attack on Israel will have to await the next presidential election in the US in 2012. It argues that two other events will precipitate the attack. They are the parliamentary elections in Egypt in September, where the Brotherhood wants to boost its popularity, and the pending release of the Hariri report by the UN, which Hezb'allah wants to prevent. Even though Hamas and Hezb'allah represent two opposing wings in the Muslim world, the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" mentality will bring them together.

Hence, the attack will occur in August of 2011, asserts the report. Here is the way it will unfold. Hamas and Hezb'allah declare a maritime blockade on Israel. They install anti-ship missile batteries in residential areas in Gaza and Lebanon, which attack Israeli ships. When Israel responds by hitting the batteries, the two terrorist groups invite Western media to report on casualties among civilians. International TV networks broadcast footage of bloodied women and children in Gaza.

The ensuing international indignation aroused by the Israeli 'atrocities' gives Hamas and Hezb'allah a "justification" to unleash a massive "retaliatory" rocket attack on major Israeli cities. Huge crowds in Tahrir Square in Cairo chant "Death to Israel, death to America!" The Obama administration calls for a "comprehensive settlement of the Palestinian question" and demands that Israel show more restraint. The UN Security Council calls for a ceasefire, while Egyptian parties pressure the military council to "teach Israel a lesson." Palestinian Authority President Abbas and Hamas leaders announce the creation of the Palestinian state. The media overlooks the part of the new state's charter proclaiming the intent to destroy Israel and institute Islamic law.

That was just the gist of Chuck DeVore's scenario. It sounds like a déjà vu, since we have already seen its main features, such as playing the victim card and using women and children for that reason. Another familiar feature is the dual role of the media. First, it is shamelessly manipulated to present a distorted view of reality. And second, once the distorted view is presented, this view actually shapes the reality by further inflaming Jew-hatred. In summary, the report paints a picture that is both chillingly dark and painfully familiar.

Eugene Veklerov is a scientist living in the Bay Area. (source)

Are Democratic Elections Feasible in the Middle East?

Americans are hopelessly infatuated with "democracy" and relentlessly try to export it. The recent "Arab Spring" testifies to the seductive power of our proselytizing. Protestors often demand "freedom and democracy" but mesmerizing slogans aside, why is "democracy" so valuable or what it does it mean to those risking life and limb for it? The hard truth is that tribalism prone Arab nations will not become democratic. Democracy cannot be commanded into existence; it requires a complex culture to flourish and that culture is in short supply in today's Middle East.


When American leaders implore others to embrace democracy they usually mean free, regular elections. Then add multiple political parties, a reasonably independent media to report events, and an honest counting of the vote, and voilà, there you have it -- instant democracy. What could be simpler? And, from time-to-time, thanks to American pressure (and bribery) such instant election-based democracies momentarily emerge (e.g., Afghanistan) before reverting to violence-filled, corrupt authoritarianism.


American champions of democracy ignore harsh cultural realities and without certain habits of mind, democracy is just brief interlude. Failures far outnumber successes. The democratic Weimar Republic lasted less than 15 years and was easily toppled by Hitler. In Italy Mussolini similarly almost effortlessly pushed aside a democracy with shallow roots. In innumerable Third World nations, from Zimbabwe to Venezuela, Kenya to Egypt, the pattern is "One Person, One Vote, One Time."


So, what are the extra ingredients necessary for an enduring election-based democracy? Three in particular strand out. For one, the election's outcome ends the battle for power until the next election -- losers don't continue on with suicide bombers. Political quarrels don't vanish, but the key question of who won is settled and the loser publicly concedes, thanks supporters, congratulates the winner, and then fades into the background. Think of the razor thin 1960 Kennedy/Nixon election in which Nixon graciously conceded despite clear irregularities in the Illinois vote. Recent violence in the Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and countless places elsewhere exemplify this problem -- the loser just fights on regardless of the verdict. A mini version of this occurred in the US after the 2000 presidential election. When the Senate, as per Constitution, was certifying Bush's victory, a few disgruntled Democratic House members vocally disrupted Senate proceedings, and refused to leave the Senate floor until threatened with forcible removal by Capitol security (and the Gore camp encouraged this culturally aberrant behavior with all the talk of a "stolen election").


Democracy also requires that campaigns show self-restraint. Democratic elections are not about annihilating enemies. This is a murky line but there must be some limits lest conflicts escalate into civil war. Democratic elections are peaceful, routinized forms of civil conflict, not opportunities to settle scores violently. Yes, in some American states and cities voters may be enticed by free food and booze, even stuffing a ballot box or two, but bombing and kidnapping are impermissible. Not even our worst cases of voter intimidation, e.g., what occurred in Philadelphia with the New Black Panther Party, entails actually killing opponents.


Functioning democracies also possess what is called a "loyal opposition." That is, the defeated faction accepts its loss but still plays by the democratic rules, i.e., try again the next election. Winners must therefore restrain themselves when dealing with losers, a norm that rests on the supposition that today's winners may be tomorrow's losers. Even when electoral victories are decisive, majorities don't push too hard and in return expect the losers to behave themselves. The power of this norm becomes clear when it is violated. Conceivably, much of the public opposition to ObamaCare reflected the belief that the Democratic congressional majority, though technically within its rights, had over-stepped its power with backroom parliamentary maneuvers to enact hazy bloated legislation by razor thin margins that affected one-sixth of the US economy.


Lastly, democratic elections are not about replacing one kleptocracy with another. Think Zimbabwe where those elected to power enrich friends at the expense of the defeated. Again, moderation is essential. Yes, the winning side in democratic outcomes gains some economic advantages (e.g., Obama's tilt toward labor unions) but democracy and kleptocracies are incompatible. To proceed as if the winner deserves all the property of the loser almost guarantees elections that will quickly escalate into violence and ultimately, the end of democracy.


All of these necessary traits (and several others) are cultural, the results of decades of experience and punishing violators, and cannot be created by paper proclamations. Acculturating these norms runs counter to human nature. Modern humans have existed for perhaps 180,000 years and during that period, with tiny exceptions, power rested on naked force. Violent repression in Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain are reactions rooted in 9,000 generations of human existence, and are not aberrations. In evolutionary terms, the penchant for peaceful democratic elections might be likened to an exceedingly rare genetic mutation.


Americans seldom recognize how we have been "trained" toward a culture undergirding electoral democracy. We take the immense and successful effort for granted. Most Americans grew up regularly voting in well-scripted school elections and watching them on TV, and "let's vote and abide by majority rule" was the mechanism to settle disputes. Beauty pageants and award ceremonies (e.g., the Oscars) display a reoccurring pattern -- secret ballot votes, limits on campaign tactics while losers graciously accept the verdict. Moderation was learned via sports -- "good sportsmanship" included post-game rituals such as shaking hands to cool lingering animosities. I tell my political science graduate students that the informal pick-up basketball game usually typifies the strength of democratic norms -- players from both teams observe unwritten rules of fairness, quickly forget the game, even if a little rough, and then go off for beer and pizza. Conflict is restrained, bounded, and transitory, just as it is in the political realm.


I seriously doubt whether Arab nations possess this facilitating culture. Just observe hair-trigger recourse to violence, the infatuation with guns and militias, a willingness to fight to the death, cruelty toward defeated foes, and how the passion for revenge can trump everything, including peace and prosperity. The British wisely understood the region -- after the Ottoman Empire's demise following WWI, Britain installed monarchies in the region as the "natural" political arrangement. Judged by the subsequent peace, monarchy, not democracy, was the correct choice.


Though "democracy" is a popular slogan among rebellious Arabs, I suspect that they really want is not democracy but a more equitable re-distribution of wealth coupled with less brutal authoritarian rule -- more cars and TVs, fewer secret police. "Economic populism" is a more accurate description and this hardly requires the institutional bric-a-brac of electoral democracy. A benign tyrant will suffice. In the final analysis, then, election-based democracy should not be the gold standard when judging Middle East political progress. Let us not be blinded by political fantasies.

Robert Weissberg is professor of political science-emeritus, University of Illinois-Urbana. His latest book is Bad Students Not Bad Schools.(source)

Prospects for Liberal Democracy in the Middle East

The world has been mesmerized by the uprisings taking place in the Middle East against authoritarian regimes. Some speculation is that this effect was caused by the example of Iraq sustaining multiple democratic cycles. By force, the Bush administration annihilated Saddam's brutal regime and forced into place a democratic process. The speculation is that people in neighboring countries have been observant of the changes and now seek democracy for themselves. However, a liberal democracy is comprised of particular attributes such as representative government, rule of law, equality before the law, just punishment, property rights, and certain freedoms (e.g. religion, speech, association, etc.). It remains to be seen what the Iraqis and, for that matter, the rest of the Middle Eastern revolutionaries make of their opportunity.


Liberal democracy grows only in certain cultures. History has empirically demonstrated that cultures stemming from Christian, Eastern, and Far Eastern religions are compatible with stable, long term liberal democracies. On the other hand, it is not obvious that cultures emanating from an Islamic foundation are compatible with liberal democracy. This uncertainty is a key reason the European Union has resisted integrating Turkey. It may explain why there are no Muslim liberal democracies.


After World War I, Mustafa Ataturk brought the power of the Turkish state to bear against fundamentalist Islam. In an attempt to modernize, Ataturk forcibly introduced Western systems and required a secular bent. However, in current times, Recep Erdogan has leveraged public disapproval of government corruption, incompetence, and ineffectiveness to make gains in legislative representation. His Justice and Development Party, with ties to an earlier Islamist party, have been leading Turkey since 2002. While shair'a has not been formally declared the law of the land, a cultural shift is apparent by observing the effects of increased pressure on women to conform to Islamic dress styles (e.g. head scarves, veils) and public behaviors (fewer single women about, fewer women intermingling with men socially, etc.). In a downward trend, Freedom House notes the loss of freedoms of speech and the press. Even Turkey's president, Abdullah Gul, admits civil liberties are endangered. Within the last year, in foreign affairs, Turkey has distanced itself from Israel and moved closer to Syria, a client state of Iran. Also, Turkey instigated the attempt to break Israel's blockade of Gaza in order to aid the Muslim Brotherhood progeny Hamas. The Muslim Brotherhood aims to install totalitarian Islamist governments in all Muslim countries; oppression and persecution of non-believers is conjoined with their goals and not incidental.


New constitutions for both Afghanistan and Iraq were catalyzed by the United States. Unfortunately, both of their constitutions include diametrically opposed ideas. For example, both constitutions convey freedom of religion to citizens. But both also recognize the supremacy of Islamic law known as shair'a. Shair'a is opposed to freedom of religion. This tension suggests shair'a or the constitution must give. So far, in both countries, illiberal shair'a has prevailed. On several occasions, Afghanistan has attempted to impose the shair'a penalty of death on Afghans who converted to Christianity from Islam. And Iraq's Christian population has been targeted for violence to the extent that a small fraction of believers remain in their country today compared to several years ago.


Iran purports to be a democracy. But the current repression against the Green Movement after the corrupted 2009 presidential election indicates little tolerance for dissent against the theocracy. Following the fall in 1979 of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi by the Iranian Revolution, Khomeinists established a theocratic constitution. This has prevented any effective liberal opposition from forming legally. Now, that opposition is being brutally repressed even to the point of civilian deaths.


It is difficult to establish causality for the reason Muslim countries are inhospitable to liberal democracies. But there are many reasons shair'a is incompatible with classical liberalism. A leading reason is that shair'a is a totalitarian system brooking no dissent. Submission is required by shair'a of believers and non-believers alike. There is no quarter given for debate or reasoning.


One feature of liberal democracy is representative government. Juxtaposed against this is shair'a's imposition of poll taxes on non-believers in order to discourage participation. Also, there can be prohibitions against non-believers holding government office or judicial positions. Shair'a does not recognize the separation of mosque and state, so only particular political parties are allowed to form.


The rule of law is central to liberal democracy. However, shair'a doesn't consist of codified statutes per se. Rather, shair'a includes Koranic content and practices of Mohammed (sunna). Any fatwa, or religious ruling, issued by innumerous individuals, could result in an ex post facto hazard. Also, there are no trials by jury, but only trials before religious officials.


Equality before the law means that men and women have equal legal standing in a liberal democracy. But shair'a devalues the worth of women. As witnesses, a woman has half the value of a man. This means two women must contest one man's claims. A wife must prove her innocence if a husband accuses her of adultery, but a wife must prove her husband's guilt if she accuses. Wife beating is the prerogative of her husband's governance. Females are entitled to half the inheritance of males. Also, drawing the greatest distinction in inequality, shair'a countenances slavery. Enslavement can range from servitude to treatment as chattel (i.e. the slave does not retain even rights over his/her own body).


Liberal democracies eschew cruel and unusual punishments. But shair'a requires imprisonment and even severing of a hand of a thief, stoning to death for adultery by married men or women, and lashings for other sexual transgressions. Homosexual behavior and sodomy are punishable by death.


Property rights are not uniform under shair'a. For example, Saudi Arabia has no churches anywhere in the country. Elsewhere, in Muslim countries, it is not uncommon that Christians may not build churches. For churches that already exist, approval might be withheld to effect repairs.


Shair'a does not sanction freedom of speech or the press. The orchestrated worldwide violence protesting the Jyllands-Posten cartoons of September 30, 2005 depicting Mohammed is consistent with Islamic fundamentalism. Contesting Islamic beliefs is considered heresy and punishable by death. This is consistent with the lack of freedom of religion imposed by shair'a. Apostasy is a capital offense. The Koran encourages conversion at the point of the sword and permits killing non-believers who won't convert.


Optimists, multiculturalists, ignoramuses, and naifs think protesters in the Middle East will replace tyrannies with liberal democracies. Unfortunately, you can't get to there from where the protesters are starting. With the sole exception of Israel, cultures in the Middle East, dominated as they are by shair'a, are inimical to liberal democracy and liberty. Tyrants may fall, but any democracies that are established will devolve sooner or later into the totalitarian state that shair'a demands. In general, American foreign policy decisions should be informed by the constraints shair'a imposes on movement into modernity in the Middle East. In particular, Americans should not expend one drop of blood or any treasure on current or future uprisings in the Middle East. (source)

The Samson Option: Israel and Middle East Nuclear Strategy

In the always arcane discourse of nuclear strategy, dialectical thinking is a "net." Only those who cast will catch. To calculate Israel's best strategic options following President Barack Obama's plans for "Palestine," therefore, the capable strategist must continue to ask and answer difficult questions -- sequentially, persistently, patiently, and above all, systematically. Only by seamlessly drawing together this complex body of interrelated queries and replies can the serious strategist ever hope for a coherent and comprehensive body of military and diplomatic theory. The only alternative is the usual patchwork quilt of journalistic or reportorial "explanation," an arbitrary mélange of more or less disjointed information and factoids lacking even the rudiments of predictive thought. Now, after Mr. Obama's speech, more than ever, Israel needs "wise counsel."

Stubbornly following the twisted cartography of his Middle East Road Map, President Barack Obama remains determined to midwife the birth of a twenty-third Arab state. This certain-to-be fragmented and radically unstable country called "Palestine" would promptly become a bitter and irreconcilable enemy of the United States.

There is further irony here. On the very same day that he praised members of the U.S. intelligence community for assassinating Osama bin Laden, Obama spoke forcefully on behalf of creating a new anti-American terror state. Should he succeed, the long-term security costs to this country from "Palestine" will likely outweigh even the most grievous new harms being conceived by al-Qaeda.

There is even a generally unrecognized nuclear dimension to probable "Palestine"-related harms. Despite Mr. Obama's expressly broad and plainly generic dislike of nuclear weapons -- a dislike based much more on visceral emotion and clichéd "wisdom" than on dialectical logic or considered reason -- any American-assisted birth of "Palestine" would substantially enlarge regional and worldwide risks of nuclear war and nuclear terrorism. In essence, before any such portentous birth could be performed, a gravedigger would have to wield the forceps.

In the best of all possible worlds, Prime Minister Netanyahu, guided by lucidity, would strongly oppose all forms of Palestinian statehood. This would include opposition to even Netanyahu's own proposal for a "demilitarized" Palestinian state. Disingenuous even to Israel's allies, intra-national and international, this idealized proposal for bilateral coexistence with "Palestine" stood no chance of success from the start. Inevitably, the new Palestinian government, supported by both codified and customary international law, would correctly assert its "inherent" right to national armed forces for "self defense." Palestine, after all, with President Obama's utterly misconceived blessing, would now be a fully sovereign state.

It is possible, of course, going forward, that persistently crude and not-so-subtle pressure from Washington to accept Palestine could prove geopolitically irresistible to Mr. Netanyahu. A basic question thus presents itself: in such threatening circumstances, what should Israel's operational and doctrinal response be? Importantly, one possible answer would concern Israel's nuclear strategy, especially its so-called "Samson Option."

On its face, a Palestinian state should have no direct bearing on Israel's nuclear posture. Yet, although non-nuclear itself, Palestine could still critically impair Israel's indispensable capacity to wage essential forms of conventional war. In turn, this impairment could enlarge the Jewish State's incentive to rely on unconventional weapons in certain assorted and dangerous strategic circumstances.

Significantly, a primary cause of any such impairment is apt to be the current and ongoing training of Palestinian Authority "security forces" by the United States. Recently underway in Jordan, this flagrantly self-defeating military program, commanded by U.S. Lt. General Keith Dayton, could contribute mightily to any post-state aggression by Palestinian fighters always determined to destroy Israel.

Credo quia absurdum. "I believe because it is absurd." Barack Obama is now creating conditions on the ground in which designated IDF units, in any post-Palestinian independence Middle East, would have to fight desperately against Fatah elements trained by the United States. With this incomprehensible program, therefore, we are arming and preparing the next generation of anti-Israel and anti-U.S. terrorists.

Credo quia absurdum. The guiding U.S. presumption is that these Fatah elements are relatively "moderate." A similar and equally foolish U.S. presumption is that there are now identifiably "moderate" elements functioning within the terrorist organization Hezbollah. Extending erroneous American strategic thinking to Lebanon, this curious idea has been expressed on several occasions by John Brennan, advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism to President Obama.

What is Israel to do? Confronting a new enemy Arab state that could act collaboratively and capably (thanks to the U.S.) with other Arab states, or possibly even with non-Arab Iran, and also confronting potentially serious synergies between the birth of Palestine and renewed terrorism from Lebanon, Israel could feel itself compelled to bring hitherto clandestine elements of its "ambiguous" nuclear strategy into the light of day. Here, leaving the "bomb in the basement" would no longer make strategic sense. For Israel, of course, the geostrategic rationale for some level of nuclear disclosure would lie not in stating the obvious (merely that Israel has the bomb), but rather, inter alia, in persuading all prospective attackers that Israel's nuclear weapons are usable, secure, and penetration-capable.

Palestine, too -- even if it would not actively seek collaboration with other Arab or Islamic countries -- could still be exploited militarily and geographically against Israel by different regional enemies of the Jewish State. Iran and Syria, of course, represent the most obvious candidates to carry out any such exploitations. One year ago, Iran reportedly transferred an undetermined number of Scud missiles to Syria. In Damascus, the "Arab Spring" notwithstanding, plans are being made to smuggle these Scuds into northern Lebanon, from where they could then strike any major city in Israel.

Israel's core nuclear strategy, however secret and ambiguous, must always remain oriented toward deterrence. The Samson Option refers to a presumed Israeli policy that is necessarily based upon an implicit threat of massive nuclear retaliation for certain specific enemy aggressions. This policy, to be sure, could be invoked credibly only where such aggressions would threaten Israel's very existence. For anticipated lesser harms, Samson threats would likely not appear believable.

In Jerusalem/Tel-Aviv, the main point of any Samson Option would not be to communicate the availability of any graduated Israeli nuclear deterrent -- that is, a deterrent (resembling what was once called "flexible response" in the U.S.) in which all possible reprisals would be more or less specifically calibrated to different and determinable levels of enemy aggression. Rather, it would intend to signal the more-or-less unstated promise of a counter-city ("counter value" in military parlance) reprisal.

The Samson Option, then, would be unlikely to deter any aggressions short of nuclear and/or certain biological first strike attacks upon the Jewish State.

In essence, Samson would "say" the following to all potential attackers: "We (Israel) may have to 'die,' but, this time, we don't intend to die alone."

A Samson Option could serve Israel better as an adjunct to particular deterrence and preemption options than as a core nuclear strategy. The Samson Option, therefore, should never be confused with Israel's main security objective. This core objective must always be to seek effective deterrence at the lowest possible levels of conflict.

To suitably strengthen Israeli nuclear deterrence, visible preparations for a Samson Option could help to convince enemy states that aggression would not be gainful. This would be most convincing if (1) Israeli Samson preparations were coupled with some level of visible nuclear disclosure (e.g., ending Israel's posture of nuclear ambiguity); (2) Israel's Samson weapons appeared sufficiently invulnerable to enemy first strikes; and (3) Israel's Samson weapons were recognizably "counter value" in mission function.

Samson could also support Israeli nuclear deterrence by demonstrating a greater Israeli willingness to take existential risks. In matters of nuclear strategy, it may sometimes be better to feign irrationality than to purposefully project complete rationality. Earlier, in IDF history, Moshe Dayan had genuinely understood this strangely counterintuitive injunction: "Israel must be like a mad dog," said Dayan, "too dangerous to bother."

In our topsy-turvy nuclear world, it can be perfectly rational to pretend irrationality. But in any given Middle East conflict situation, the precise nuclear deterrence benefits of pretended irrationality would have to depend in large part upon prior enemy state awareness of Israel's counter value targeting posture. Rejecting nuclear war as a purposeful strategic option, the Project Daniel Group, in its then-confidential report to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon more than seven years ago (January 16, 2003), recommended exactly such a deterrence posture.

To strengthen possible strategies of preemption, preparations for a Samson Option could help to convince Israel's own leadership that certain defensive first strikes would be cost-effective. These leaders would then expect that any Israeli preemptive strikes, known under international law as expressions of "anticipatory self-defense," could be launched with reduced apprehensions of unacceptably damaging enemy retaliations. This complex expectation would depend upon many pertinent factors, including (1) previous Israeli decisions on nuclear disclosure; (2) Israeli perceptions of the effects of such nuclear disclosure on enemy retaliatory intentions; (3) Israeli judgments about enemy perceptions of Samson weapons vulnerability; and (4) a presumed enemy awareness of Samson's counter value force posture.

As with Samson-based enhancements of Israeli nuclear deterrence, any identifiably last-resort nuclear preparations could support Israel's critical preemption options by displaying a bold national willingness to take existential risks. In this connection, the steady and undisturbed nuclearization of Iran should come immediately to mind.

But pretended irrationality can be a double-edged sword. Brandished too "irrationally," Israeli preparations for a Samson Option could encourage enemy preemptions. Here, again, the specter of a nuclear Iran should emerge front and center.

Left to themselves, neither deterred nor preempted, certain Arab and/or other Islamic enemies of Israel, especially after the U.S.-assisted creation of a Palestinian state, could bring the Jewish State face-to-face with the palpable torments of Dante's Inferno, "[i]nto the eternal darkness, into fire, into ice." Israeli strategic planners and political leaders, therefore, should soon begin to acknowledge an absolutely primary obligation to (a) strengthen their country's nuclear security posture and (b) ensure that any failure of nuclear deterrence would not spark nuclear war or nuclear terror.

One way for Israel to partially meet this obligation, particularly after President Obama's undimmed support for Palestine and equally misguided support for "a world free of nuclear weapons," would be to focus more openly and precisely on the Samson Option. In so doing, considerable attention will need to be directed to the presumed rationality of enemy leaderships, both state and sub-state. How can the capable IDF strategist recognize the difference between real and pretended irrationality?

This will become an urgent question. In those rare cases where an enemy state or terror group might not value its own physical survival more highly than any other preference or combination of preferences, the standard logic of deterrence would be rendered inoperable. In such cases, all bets would be off regarding probable enemy reactions to Israeli threats of retaliation. The probability of any such case arising may be very low, but the attendant disutility of any single case could still be intolerably high.

IDF planners and other interested strategists should now consider also the cumulative capabilities and intentions of Israel's non-state enemies -- that is, the entire configuration of anti-Israel terrorist groups. Such assessments should now offer more than a simple group by group inventory of enemy assets and intentions. These groups should also now be considered in their entirety, collectively, as they may interrelate with one another vis-à-vis Israel.

These several hostile non-state organizations will also need to be examined in their interactive relationships with core enemy states. Recalling, for example, the discussion of Palestine (above), it is important to recognize and understand all possible synergies with Iran and Syria in particular.

In the matter of synergies, interested strategists will also need to consider critical "force multipliers." A force multiplier is a collection of related characteristics, other than weapons and size of force, that may make any military organization more effective in combat. A force multiplier may be generalship, tactical surprise, tactical mobility, or particular command/control system enhancements.

Seeking improved force multipliers for Israel, strategic thinkers should now assess well-integrated elements of cyber-warfare, and a reciprocal capacity to prevent and blunt any incoming cyber-attacks. Today, this particular force multiplier could even prove to be decisive.

In a world of growing international anarchy, IDF planners should now investigate all pertinent enemy force multipliers, challenging and undermining enemy force multipliers, and developing/refining its own force multipliers. More specifically, this means an appropriately heavy IDF emphasis on air superiority, communications, intelligence, and surprise. Again, recalling Moshe Dayan's counterintuitive injunction, it may also mean a heightened awareness of the possible benefits of pretended irrationality (Samson Option).

The state system of international statecraft came into being in the 17 th century, after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. For the most part, our "Westphalian" system remains almost entirely anarchic. Several emerging hazards to Israeli national security will be shaped by this primary condition.

Nonetheless, to observant strategists, there will also be a discernible geometry of chaos, and calculating the implications of this particular "geometry" will prove to be an important and cost-effective task. Before this can happen, interested strategists must take steps to ensure that their analyses and recommendations are detached from any false hopes. Recalling Thucydides, writing prophetically (416 BCE) on the ultimatum of the Athenians to the Melians during the Peloponnesian War: "Hope is by nature an expensive commodity, and those who are risking their all on one cast find out what it means only when they are already ruined[.]"

To the extent that these forthcoming strategic difficulties are related to the now-impending creation of a Palestinian state, they are problems largely created by U.S. President Barack Obama. For Israel, it follows that the very best current path to prevent existentially perilous interactions between enemy state nuclearization and Palestinian statehood is to oppose the latter immediately and totally.

Louis René Beres was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is Professor of International Law at Purdue. He is the author of some of the earliest major books on Israeli nuclear strategy. (source)