AMERICAN.COM

The Washington Post reports:

May 7, 2012, 3:01 pm

The behavior during their arraignment Saturday of the five defendants charged with orchestrating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks was a form of “peaceful resistance to an unjust system,” according to one of their attorneys who spoke at a news conference Sunday.

“The accused refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of the military commissions,” said James Connell, an attorney for Ali Abdul Aziz Ali [a.k.a. Wallid Bin Attash, who helped prepare the 1998 East Africa Embassy bombings, the bombing of the USS Cole and helped select and train several of the 9/11 hijackers]. The “arraignment demonstrates that this will be a long, hard-fought but peaceful struggle against secrecy, torture and the misguided institution of the military commission.”

To what actions was Connell referring that supposedly constitute “peaceful resistance to an unjust system”? The Post does not mention it, but CNN reports:

Bin ‘Attash made a paper airplane and placed it on top of a microphone. It was removed after a translator complained about the sound the airplane made.

This is not the first time Bin Attash had mocked his victims in this manner. Fox News national security correspondent Catherine Herridge describes Bin Attash’s last court appearance in her book, The Next Wave, where he did much the same thing:

Back in the Guantanamo courtroom, Bin Attash and [Ammar] al-Baluchi were laughing hard now. I was only twenty-five feet away, but I couldn’t hear them through the reinforced glass. The military guards were moving us along because the court was transitioning from an open to a classified session. The journalists had to go. Some days later, once I returned to Washington, D.C., a legal source explained that Bin Attash had written either the 9/11 flight numbers or the jet tail numbers inside a yellow foolscap airplane. My source was sketchy on the details because the information had been relayed to him by a military guard who had apparently retrieved the paper plane. The symbolism, and the flight numbers, in a military court laid bare the darkness of these men’s souls. It flashed before me in an instant, and the realization made me feel physically sick. You don’t see evil often, but when you do there is no mistaking it.

That was what Mr. Connell calls “peaceful resistance.” The rest of us call it sickening.

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Categories: Foreign and Defense, War on Terror | Tags: 9/11, terrorism, terrorist trials

Marc Thiessen

Ten burning questions for Obama’s secret terrorist release program

May 7, 2012, 11:16 am

The Washington Post reports this morning that the Obama administration “has for several years been secretly releasing high-level detainees from a military prison in Afghanistan as part of negotiations with insurgent groups”—a program “U.S. officials acknowledge poses substantial risks.” The Post writes:

[T]he releases are an inherent gamble: The freed detainees are often notorious fighters who would not be released under the traditional legal system for military prisoners in Afghanistan. They must promise to give up violence — and U.S. officials warn them that if they are caught attacking American troops, they will be detained once again.

I’m sure that threat is quite a deterrent. The paper continues:

[O]fficials would not say whether those who have been released under the program have later returned to attack U.S. and Afghan forces once again.… Unlike at Guantanamo, releasing prisoners from the Parwan detention center, the only American military prison in Afghanistan, does not require congressional approval and can be done clandestinely…. U.S. officials would not say how many detainees have been released under the program, though they said such cases are relatively rare. The program has existed for several years, but officials would not confirm exactly when it was established.

This is unacceptable. The Obama administration owes the American people some answers. Specifically:

1. The Obama administration has been openly critical of the Bush administration for its “secret detention” of captured terrorists. Now it turns out the Obama administration been conducting the “secret release” of captured terrorists. How long has it kept the existence of this program secret from the American people, and what is the justification for this secrecy?

2. Exactly who are these admittedly “notorious” detainees who have been released in Afghanistan and precisely how many has the Obama administration set free?

3. Did any of these released terrorists and insurgents have the blood of American service members on their hands?

4. Were any implicated in war crimes?

5. An administration official tells the Post that, “When the insurgency appears to be gathering steam in certain provinces, for instance, prisoners have been released to alleviate mounting tension.” Where has this been tried, how often has it succeeded, and how often has it failed?

6. How many of those released have, instead of helping us quell the insurgency, gone back to the fight instead?

7. The administration keeps recidivism statistics for detainees released from Guantanamo and makes them public on a regular basis. Why has it not done the same for detainees released from Parwan?

8. Have any of the high-value detainees released by the administration in Afghanistan been involved in the killing of American service members following their release? If so, how many?

9. Have any released detainees been recaptured and detained again, or killed on the battlefield? If so, how many and under what circumstances?

10. An administration official tells the Post that in some cases “the benefits of release could outweigh the reasons for keeping [the detainee] detained.” What evidence is there to back up this contention?

The administration owes the American people answers to these and other questions. Expect the House Armed Services and Intelligence Committees to demand those answers.

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Categories: Foreign and Defense, War on Terror | Tags: Obama Administration, terrorism

‘Ruin, eldest daughter of Zeus, she blinds us all, that fatal madness’

May 7, 2012, 11:11 am

A quick reminder of what AEI’s Desmond Lachman said last week:

Over the past three years, the Greek economy has contracted by a staggering 16 percent while unemployment has soared from around 7 percent to beyond 21 percent. A weak Greek government is the last thing that Greece now needs if it is to restore investor and consumer confidence as a necessary precondition for an end to Greece’s downward deflationary spiral. And without a stabilization of the Greek economy, there is no prospect that Greece can restore order to its tattered public finances.

At present, Greece’s only sources of external finance are the IMF, the European Union, and the European Central Bank. One has to wonder whether a new Greek government will have the mandate both to cut public spending by 5 ½ percent of GDP over the next two years and to implement the painful structural reforms that the IMF-EU is requiring of Greece as a precondition for the continued disbursement of funds under the IMF-EU program. And without IMF and EU funding, one would think that Greece would have little option but to default on its official loans and to start contemplating whether life outside of the Euro might be more in Greece’s long-term interest than remaining within the Euro straitjacket.

And here is the market’s take, via IHS Global Insight:

Markets fell across the world in response to the election result, and there are now serious doubts about the country’s ability to implement the EU- and IMF-mandated austerity measures. Samaras is determined to keep the country in the Euro, however, he may be unable to form a stable government with the other parliamentary parties—failure to do so will result in fresh elections. Any new government seems likely to attempt to renegotiate the country’s Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies agreed with its international creditors. Political uncertainty is likely to continue in Greece in the short and medium term.

Ruin, in Greek mythology, is the spirit of delusion, of rash impulse, of folly. As voters did in France, Greeks voted against the undeniable and unavoidable consequences of their own actions. Ruin brought them to crisis, and Ruin continues to pushes them during this crisis. Maybe the ECB will save the Greeks. Maybe German taxpayers will. But clearly the political system cannot tolerate more of the same. Not that a departure from the euro would be a walk in the park, as UBS has noted:

We estimate that a weak Euro country leaving the Euro would incur a cost of around EUR9,500 to EUR11,500 per person in the exiting country during the first year. That cost would then probably amount to EUR3,000 to EUR4,000 per person per year over subsequent years. That equates to a range of 40% to 50% of GDP in the first year.

Talk about a step into the darkness. No advanced economy has ever suffered such a cataclysmic economic decline.

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Categories: Europe and Russia, Foreign and Defense | Tags: debt, EU debt crisis, Greece

Occupy France

May 7, 2012, 10:17 am

Looks like the Occupy agenda just landed at Charles de Gaulle. As someone interested in economic policy, it will be fascinating to watch the natural economic experiment apparently about to be tried in France. Socialist Francois Hollande says he wants to crank up marginal tax rates, make public pensions more generous, and go after the banks. Non to austerity and non to neoliberalism, at least to the extent that France tried to embrace market-friendly policies under Nicolas Sarkozy.

Reminder: In 1980, France’s per capita GDP was 78% of America’s vs. 69% for the UK. In 2008, France was down to 71% vs. 77% for the UK. Hollande bills himself as a sort of Mr. Normal, promising the French version of a “return to normalcy.” Well, the normal way of doing things in France hasn’t work in a long, long time.

My guess is that if France really goes back down the Grand Delusion path Hollande has outlined, the French economy will be punished severely by global markets and economic reality.

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Categories: Economic Policy, Europe and Russia, Fiscal Policy and Taxes, Foreign and Defense | Tags: France

Zzzzzzz, Hollande

By Gary Schmitt and Danielle Pletka

May 7, 2012, 8:20 am

As predicted, socialist Francois Hollande ousted French incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy yesterday in the French elections. In the larger sense, France, like the rest of Europe’s more profligate spenders (see Greece, Spain, Italy etc), does not like austerity. Traditionally, the French like le spending. And les taxes. Hollande answers the mail on both counts: He has pledged to raise taxes on top earners from 41 to 75 percent and hike the corporate tax rate up as well (not, we should add, as high as the corporate tax rate in the United States). A la fin, France’s election was about domestic policies, not foreign policy.

Nonetheless, Hollande’s defeat of américain Sarkozy does matter when it comes to foreign policy because Sarkozy has arguably been the most alliance-friendly French leader in decades—perhaps ever. Cynics might argue that is not an especially high bar to clear to lay claim to such a title but, as in all things political, “better is always good.”

So what will President Hollande mean for foreign policy? Contrary to those who believe Sarko was the George Bush of France (“dragging” Obama into Libya, taking a hard line on Iran’s nuclear program), and have hopes that the long-time head of the French Socialist Party will take a severe turn to the left, Hollande is likely to disappoint.

First, his campaign stayed away from talking about foreign policy almost altogether. Hollande had a 60 point agenda, and only four of those points touched on foreign affairs. Hollande has said he might revisit Sarkozy’s decision to rejoin the military side of NATO, but in the end made little of that during the campaign. And he has made no noise about pulling out of the UK-French defense cooperation accord that Cameron and Sarkozy signed. Nor has he tried to distance himself from his predecessor’s intervention in Libya or his relatively hawkish policies toward Syria and Iran.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that France will not drift under Hollande in a less than helpful direction. As our friend Anne-Elizabeth Moutet notes over at The Weekly Standard about one possibility:

Because Hollande knows little of international affairs, he is likely to pick the staunchly anti-“anglo-saxon” Hubert Védrine, a former Mitterrand chief of staff who was an extremely capable foreign minister under Chirac and Jospin. Védrine, the son of a Mitterrand acolyte and junior Vichy official, Jean Védrine, is a clever, urbane ENA graduate with a clear vision of a foreign policy designed to reduce the West’s influence in global affairs. (He coined the word “hyperpower” to refer to Washington. It was not meant as a compliment.) Védrine has done much, like his political adversary Jacques Chirac, to foster the notion of “multipolarity,” in which many more international players can influence world affairs, U.N.-like.

The one policy change Hollande is specifically committed to (and which will be most noticed by conservatives in Washington) is his pledge to withdraw all French combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year. But, again, this is not a radical departure from Sarkozy, who had already pledged to bring those troops home in 2013, a full year ahead of the alliance’s agreement to stay until 2014. Still, the march to the exits by the large French contingent (the fourth largest in Afghanistan) can’t be counted as a net positive for either NATO or Obama’s efforts to maintain a coalition. Nor is Hollande’s brief allusion to a “return to NATO’s original mission of collective defense” (point 60) a good harbinger for NATO’s future relevance in the world’s hotspots. As for the French military capabilities, given Hollande’s desire to spend more at home but do so without upping France’s deficit, the bill payer is likely to be the country’s already shrinking military. Soon, perhaps by next year, France might no longer be able to say that it is one of the less than a handful of allies that spends more than the 2% floor that NATO members “pledged” to try and meet back in 2002.

If Hollande causes any immediate fuss it will be in an effort to rejigger the Sarkozy-Merkel negotiated pact to save the Euro. Hollande has argued that the plan puts too much on austerity measures and provides too few policies designed to generate economic growth. Always wary of anything that might smack of inflationary policies, Berlin is certain to push back. Should Hollande push too hard on this front, markets in Europe and elsewhere will tank, and hopes for saving the euro will likely be dashed. Given that outcome, it’s doubtful that Hollande, good Europeanist that he is, will want to be blamed for such an outcome. He has said the Berlin-Paris friendship is “indispensable for Europe,” and that friendship will not survive dumping the Sarko-Merkel compact. In the end, he might well extract some concessions from Berlin as Rome and Madrid weigh in on Paris’ side, but it will be small edits not wholesale redrafts to the agreement.

Add it all together, and the dry and cautious Hollande appears almost certain to pursue a dry and cautious presidency. Not too much socialism, not too much unilateralism, not too much leadership… Just a return to the slow and steady decline that candidate Sarkozy in 2007 seemed determined to reverse but, as president, barely slowed. ZZZZ.

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Categories: Europe and Russia, Foreign and Defense | Tags: Francois Hollande, French presidential election

Marc Thiessen

Best of the foreign policy blogs (April 28 to May 4)

May 4, 2012, 2:30 pm

Here is the best of what AEI’s foreign and defense policy scholars are reading this week:

John Hudson at The Atlantic Wire writes on Obama’s brutal war on terror in Ex-CIA Interrogator: Obama’s War on Terror Is Less Ethical Than Bush’s

Jamsheed K. Choksky in World Affairs writes about the divided Iranian state in Tehran Politics: Are the Mullahs Losing Their Grip?

The Economist’s Asian Banyan blog on the recent proposal to sell Taiwan American fighter jets in Arms Sales to Taiwan: Fighter Fleet Response

Donald Rumsfeld on Obama’s no-brainer to eliminate the world’s most-wanted terrorist in Not a Tough Decision to Kill bin Laden

Jonathan Kay on the blind Chinese activist’s opposition to the regime’s tyrannical population control measures in Chen Challenged China’s Abortion Regime

Rowan Callick writes on how China’s economic might does not come with moral superiority in Don’t Show China Deference

Michael A. Cohen at Foreign Policy on President Obama using Bin Laden’s death for political gain in Hi, I Killed Osama bin Laden and I Approve This Message

Joshua Keating at Foreign Policy’s Passport Blog on the weak reemergence of Al Qaeda’s English language magazine after Awlaki’s death in Al Qaeda Magazine Returns with Two New Issues

The Wall Street Journal on Al Qaeda’s media strategy ten years after 9/11 in Letter Excerpts: What al Qaeda Thought of Fox News, CNN, ABC

John Hudson at The Atlantic Wire writes about the market rush on China’s state-run media outlet in China’s Propaganda IPO Bubble

Max Boot at Commentary Magazine writes about al Qaeda’s fractiousness in Documents Show Bin Laden was Frustrated with Regional Jihadi Groups

The Foreign Policy Initiative offers a list of great Resources on Afghanistan and the Strategic Partnership Agreement

Erika Johnsen at Hot Air on President Obama’s neglect of military spending in Video: Why does our military need the best, really?

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Categories: Foreign and Defense | Tags: foreign policy

Al Qaeda determined to continue fight

By Ahmad Majidyar

May 4, 2012, 10:58 am

The release of a small sampling of the documents seized from bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan shows the terror group had ambitious plans for al Qaeda and was determined to continue the fight against the United States despite setbacks. Below are some highlights from the documents released by the U.S. Army’s Combating Terrorism Center on Thursday:

1. Terror Affiliates: Al Qaeda’s top leadership was suffering a management crisis. Its leaders were at odds over their relationship with terror affiliates around the world. Some, including al Qaeda’s current leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, wanted to integrate like-minded terrorist organizations into al Qaeda, while others were against such a move, arguing that incompetent groups with local agendas tarnished al Qaeda’s reputation. Bin Laden preferred a middle approach: maintaining a working relationship with affiliates and offering them guidance, but not formally incorporating them into al Qaeda.

2. Arab Spring: Bin Laden considered the Arab Spring a “tremendous event” and proposed a media campaign to incite “people who have not yet revolted and exhort them to rebel against the rulers.” He called for “guiding, educating and warning Muslim people” not to settle for “half solutions,” referring to secular democracy, and instead fight for the victory of Islam.

3. Afghanistan strategy: Bin Laden maintained close ties to the Afghan Taliban and discussed a strategy with the Quetta Shura Taliban and the Haqqani Network to topple the Kabul government and control Afghanistan after the international forces leave the country in 2014. The documents also reveal that bin Laden was in contact with Mohammed Tayeb Agha, the key Taliban negotiator who has recently met U.S. officials several times in Qatar and Germany. Bin Laden and Tayeb Agha had discussed al Qaeda’s safe haven in Afghanistan after U.S. departure.

4. Attack America: Until the end of his life, bin Laden considered the United States to be al Qaeda’s No.1 enemy and urged followers to focus on the U.S. and not to waste time and resources attacking enemies in Europe or in the Muslim world. “We want to cut this tree at the root. The problem is that our strength is limited, so our best way to cut the tree is to concentrate on sawing the trunk of the tree,” he explained. He even asked his top lieutenants to plot to kill President Obama, arguing that the ascension of “utterly unprepared” Vice President Biden to the presidency would thrust the U.S. into crisis.

The 17 documents released are only a small fraction of thousands of items recovered from bin Laden’s house last year, and thus it is difficult to make judgments about the current and future capabilities of al Qaeda based on them alone.

As these documents indicate, however, al Qaeda’s central leadership was suffering organizational and operational setbacks long before the killing of its leader. And bin Laden’s death undoubtedly further weakened the group. But it is a mistake for U.S. officials to downplay the threat al Qaeda is still posing to U.S. national security. Al Qaeda’s new leader Ayman al Zawahiri will make every effort possible to carry out a major attack in the United States in order to consolidate his position within the group and prove that al Qaeda is alive without bin Laden. And as Pakistan has severely restrained U.S. intelligence activities and is pressuring the U.S. to halt drone strikes, al Qaeda’s activities and strength in that country is likely to increase.

Moreover, al Qaeda has metastasized and spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa in the past years. Al Qaeda’s branches in Yemen and Somalia, for example, operate almost independently. These groups will continue to pose serious threats to the U.S. and its allies.

The Obama administration rightly credits itself for killing bin Laden and weakening the group’s leadership in the past years, but it will be a grave mistake to claim victory over al Qaeda and not to continue the fight against a vicious enemy that is still plotting to destroy America and its allies.

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Categories: Foreign and Defense | Tags: al qaeda, death of bin laden

Michael Mazza

The Chen debacle: Someone’s lying

By Michael Mazza

May 2, 2012, 4:02 pm

Those who have been paying attention to the Chen Guangcheng story awoke this morning to the welcome news that he had left the U.S. embassy of his own volition with guarantees from the Chinese government that he and his family would be safe. While it must have been somewhat difficult for U.S. authorities and Chen to believe Beijing was acting in good faith, such was the outcome Chen reportedly favored. To the extent that an activist in Communist China will never be allowed true freedom, this wasn’t a storybook ending. But it was perhaps the best that could be hoped for given Chen’s preference to remain in China.

Unfortunately, it turns out the story’s not over after all. There are now conflicting reports about just what it was that Chen wanted and whether he made his decision to leave the U.S. embassy under duress. The Washington Post reports:

Activists who had spoken with Chen said he had been told that his wife and children, who had been brought to the capital to be reunited with him, would be sent back to Shandong province and could be beaten to death if he did not exit the U.S. diplomatic compound.

Chen told The Associated Press that an unidentified American official conveyed the death threat to him. The State Department is denying the claim, though spokesperson Victoria Nuland did admit that “U.S. interlocutors did make clear that if Chen elected to stay in the embassy, Chinese officials had indicated to us that his family would be returned to Shandong, and they would lose their opportunity to negotiate for reunification.”

According to an activist friend of Chen’s, his wife convinced him to pursue a solution whereby he and his family would leave China together. Others have similarly suggested that Chen had changed his mind about staying in China.

Apparently, things went downhill quickly after Chen’s car ride from the embassy to the hospital where he is receiving medical treatment, with Chen telling friends of the threats to his family and conveying apprehension about his circumstances. After arriving at the hospital, Chen “soon found himself surrounded by Chinese plainclothes police, with no American diplomats in sight.” Chen told Britain’s Channel 4 from his hospital room, “Nobody from the (U.S.) embassy is here. I don’t understand why. They promised to be here.”

Bottom line: Someone’s lying about what went down in the embassy or shortly thereafter. Either a State Department official conveyed to Chen a Chinese death threat to his family or Chen, for reasons that don’t appear at all obvious, is making it up.

Still, two things are certain. First, the U.S. commitment—to remain “engaged with Mr. Chen and his family in the days, weeks, and years ahead” (Secretary of State Clinton’s words)—apparently ended once Chen was dropped off at the hospital and effectively delivered into the hands of the Chinese police state.

Second, with Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner descending on Beijing for the annual U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, the State Department was eager to resolve the Chen question as rapidly as possible. Did haste lead to an even bigger crisis?

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Categories: Asia Pacific, Foreign and Defense, Uncategorized | Tags: Chen Guangcheng, China, human rights

Michael Auslin

History repeats itself for the Air Force

By Michael Auslin

May 2, 2012, 4:02 pm

Today, the U.S. Air Force marks a milestone: the delivery of the last stealthy, 5th generation F-22 Raptor. Today is also the anniversary of the Air Force’s receipt of the first F101-A Voodoo fighter-bomber back in 1957. Disparate as the two seem, together they show how the Air Force, while being the most technologically advanced of the services, struggles to deal with the difficulties of development and procurement of next-generation aircraft.

The two planes, each the leading edge technology of their times, share a number of similarities. First, each took an inordinate amount of time to produce and deploy. The F101 was first conceived just after World War II, in 1946, but did not enter the service until 11 years later. The F-22 began as a Cold War program, in 1981, though it took the same amount of time, 11 years, just for the production contract to be awarded, in 1991. The plane did not enter operational service until 2005, nearly a quarter-century after first being proposed.

Secondly, despite suffering from various technological problems, both set operational speed records and were seen as the most advanced fighter aircraft of their time. The Voodoo required over 2,300 design improvements, and the Raptor continues to be plagued by an oxygen generation problem. Even so, the F-22 is the world’s finest air superiority fighter. Its unmatched aerodyanmics, supercruise capability, radar, and stealth aspects give it unparalleled performance in combat exercises. However, the Pentagon has so far refused to let it be flown in actual combat operations, some say so as not to highlight just how effective it is, which could give ammunition to those who want to restart the production line.

Third, both planes were produced in much smaller numbers than anticipated, due to their delayed production period and the cost associated with the plane. Only 479 of the F101-B version, the most numerous, were produced. The F-22 program was killed by Congress and the Obama Administration in 2009 after just 187 of the planes had been ordered (one has since crashed). This is an order of magnitude smaller than the original planned buy of 750 Raptors back in the 1990s, and wound up escalating the cost of the Raptors to $177 million per plane (according to a 2012 General Accounting Office report, the F-22 cost $412 million per plane if all research, development, and testing was considered). In addition, the Voodoo was sold only to one foreign partner, Canada, while the U.S. Congress banned any foreign sales of the F-22, thereby removing the potential to lower the unit cost by selling the plane abroad.

Fourth, because of its long production lead time, the F101 served for a relatively short period. After being introduced in 1957, the last active duty Voodoo was retired in 1972 (the Air National Guard flew it for another decade)—just a bit longer than its production process. The same fate might well befall the Raptor, as its small numbers mean it will be reserved only for the most difficult missions, and instead likely sit idly when the F-35 finally enters service later this decade. Already, there is discussion about a follow-on to the F-22, a 6th generation fighter, the F-X, that may be unmanned.

This leads to a final commonality between the F101 and the F-22: Both served as bridges to even more advanced fighter planes. The Voodoo was a stepping stone on the way to the much more successful F-4 Phantom of the 1960s, which is still being flown by Air Forces around the world, including that of Japan. If the F-X program does develop, then the F-22 will also have been an evolutionary step, even as it already has been for the smaller F-35, which faces numerous problems of its own.

Becoming a bridge to an even more effective fighter would be the best outcome for the F-22, a program that faced enormous difficulties, highlighted dysfunctional government procurement and initial industrial production processes, and attracted enough enemies to inflict on the high-flying Raptor a fatal wound.

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Categories: Foreign and Defense | Tags: Air Force, F-22 Raptor

AEI blog symposium: The death of Osama bin Laden, one year later

May 2, 2012, 1:47 pm

One year after Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. Navy SEAL Team Six, President Obama traveled to Afghanistan to sign an agreement to remain engaged in Afghanistan after U.S. combat forces come home in 2014. The president also acknowledged that American diplomats are directly engaged with the Taliban. AEI scholars Dany Pletka and John Yoo, as well as key lawmakers and CIA Director General Michael Hayden, weigh in on the aftermath of bin Laden’s death and what it means for the U.S. military, global security, and the president’s re-election. Hover over each name below to see their contribution.

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Categories: Bin Laden, Foreign and Defense, War on Terror | Tags: death of bin laden

Death of Osama bin Laden, one year later: Reflection from General Michael Hayden

May 2, 2012, 11:48 am

Former director of the Central Intelligence Agency General Michael Hayden was asked to weigh in on the death of Osama bin Laden, one year later, as a part of the Enterprise blog’s latest symposium.

Here is a great American victory, the product of more than a decade of relentless pursuit by American intelligence. Political debates about who would have made what decision cheapen the memory and obscure the significance of the entire matter. The president made a gutsy call, no question. But it is one that I think ANY American president would have made. And as far as al Qaeda goes, the raid is a powerful message to potential jihadists surfing radical web sites that these guys (that’s us) have great reach, great precision and—above all—very long memories.

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Categories: Bin Laden, Foreign and Defense, War on Terror | Tags: death of bin laden

John Yoo

Death of Osama bin Laden, one year later: Opportunities lost?

By John Yoo

May 2, 2012, 11:48 am

AEI visiting scholar John Yoo reflects on the death of Osama bin Laden, one year later, as a part of the Enterprise blog’s latest symposium.

Killing Osama bin Laden remains the Obama administration’s greatest—if not only—national security and foreign policy success. Obama’s agenda has otherwise met with setback after setback: Russian relations did not “reset” despite our unilateral withdrawal of an ABM system from Eastern Europe; Iran continues its quest for nuclear weapons while it destabilizes the Middle East; China’s rise to great power status remains undeterred; we have rushed for the exits in Iraq and Afghanistan; Latin American countries slide back into authoritarianism. In the face of these challenges, Obama’s vast expansion of the federal government at home threatens to impoverish the U.S. military for a generation.

Even the administration’s counter-terrorism success represents more opportunities lost. As the recent memoir by retired CIA officer Jose Rodriguez reminds us, the operation that killed bin Laden was made possible by an intelligence infrastructure that Obama has tried to dismantle. Information from the interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other al Qaeda operatives identified the sole courier with direct access to bin Laden. Electronic surveillance eventually located him, which allowed the CIA to pinpoint bin Laden’s compound in Abottabad. Without the intelligence obtained years before, the deadly Seal Team 6 would have had nowhere to fly. Bin Laden’s death came as a dividend to all of the Bush administration’s investment in intelligence gathering, primarily the exploitation of information held by al Qaeda leaders.

Bin Laden’s death, in fact, may be the last payment from those investments for some time to come. It is true that Obama kept, and even enhanced, the operations capabilities built by the Bush administration: The special forces teams and drones that can strike with stealth and accuracy, half-way around the world, at a moment’s notice. But even as Obama has kept the gun, he has deprived himself of the ability to aim. He has tried to shut down Guantanamo Bay, move terrorists to trial in downtown New York City rather than special military courts, and ended the enhanced interrogation of al Qaeda leaders. Instead, the administration has relied on drone attacks that kill rather than capture terrorists. The Obama administration has not captured a single high-ranking al Qaeda leader since taking office, surely because it has nowhere to put them (the administration detained the only al Qaeda operative of any note it has captured onboard a Navy ship until delivery to a federal court for trial) and has ended the harsh Bush administration interrogations.

Al Qaeda has suffered a severe blow with the loss of bin Laden. The drone campaign has forced the terrorist group to disperse and decentralize, which deprives it of the ability to leverage its resources and organization as it had before 9-11. The Arab Spring has made al Qaeda’s political message increasingly irrelevant to the Middle East’s future. But these advances may be more rare as the Obama administration continues to live off the investments of the past rather than to make the difficult choices necessary to finish al Qaeda in the future.

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Categories: Bin Laden, Foreign and Defense, War on Terror | Tags: al qaeda, death of bin laden

Death of Osama bin Laden, one year later: House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon weighs in

May 2, 2012, 11:47 am

AEI’s interview with House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon is a part of the Enterprise blog’s latest symposium: Death of Osama bin Laden, one year later.

Q: What do you believe killing bin Laden achieved?

Chairman McKeon: Killing Osama bin Laden brought final justice to a terrorist leader who murdered thousands of innocent people around the world. He can no longer threaten the American people. That’s important. Terrorism is an ideological fight. Some of his followers believed he was invincible, and he served as an inspirational leader for the broader al Qaeda movement. So stripping away the mythology and mystique that Bin Laden’s followers built around him is important, so long as we remember he left a potent, global terrorist network in place.

Q: Is Al Qaeda finished?

Chairman McKeon: No. While Al Qaeda has certainly sustained heavy losses since 2001, they remain the number one threat to the United States. Their ideology continues to thrive in places like Yemen, Somalia, Algeria, and Iraq and remains a grave threat to America. Many of the recent foiled terror plots against the United States homeland have originated from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen. As long as these groups exist, we must continue to defend forward, keeping sustained pressure on terrorist groups. We also must continue to monitor and be watchful of terror groups in western Pakistan like the Haqqani network that continue to attack American troops, seek to destabilize Afghanistan, and has served as one of the most important protectors of al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan.

Q: Will we have the kind of military we need to catch the next bin Laden?

Chairman McKeon: I am confident that our military and intelligence community are focused on preventing the emergence of another bin Laden rather than catching the next one. However, I am concerned that the defense cuts resulting from sequestration could damage our most important capabilities in that fight. Sequestration represents an across-the-board cut to those sectors of our military most critical to fighting and preventing terrorism like special forces, intelligence, unmanned aircraft, and our naval forces, to name a few. It simply is not in our interest or safety to allow sequestration to stand, and we must take immediate action to ensure that we prevent those cuts from taking place.

Q: What do you think of the recent political uproar over political ads and claims of personal credit by the president?

Chairman McKeon: President Obama should be applauded for ordering the mission to kill Osama bin Laden. But members of the intelligence community have worked themselves to the bone trying to find and eliminate him. And it was the SEALs who risked their lives bringing him to justice. I’d be far more comfortable if the president acknowledged that this was a team effort, spanning two administrations, and various parts of the military and defense communities.

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Categories: Bin Laden, Foreign and Defense, War on Terror | Tags: buck mckeon, death of bin laden

Death of Osama bin Laden, one year later: Q&A with Congressman Mike Turner

May 2, 2012, 11:47 am

AEI’s interview with Congressman Mike Turner is a part of the Enterprise blog’s latest symposium: Death of Osama bin Laden, one year later.

What do you believe killing bin Laden achieved?

Bringing bin Laden to justice serves as an important milestone in the eyes of Americans. This is an individual who murdered thousands of innocent civilians across the globe. The fact that our servicemembers, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies did not stop their search, to have him answer for his crimes, serves as a warning to those who continue to seek to harm our citizens and our way of life. Our nation is one which has never backed down from a challenge and has risen to confront evil in whatever form it takes.

Will we have the kind of military we need to catch the next bin Laden?

The attacks of September 11^th and the now Global War on Terror have significantly changed our armed forces and the role they play in the defense of our nation. We have become more agile and better integrated across services. The raid that brought bin Laden to justice was a joint operation which utilized military assets as well as those of our intelligence community. We are dealing with groups which have no borders or uniforms. This continued innovation and cooperation amongst our national security structure is part of the future of our country’s defense.

What do you think of the recent political uproar over political ads and claims of personal credit by the president?

The president has every right to discuss what he has done in office. However, using a moment which unified the nation, where Americans came together to celebrate a terrorist being brought to justice, to divide us rather than unite us, is deplorable. The men and women who worked for years to find bin Laden didn’t carry out their mission as Republicans or Democrats, but as Americans. He shouldn’t be diminishing their efforts by using them as an election year ploy.

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Categories: Bin Laden, Foreign and Defense, War on Terror | Tags: death of bin laden, Mike Turner

Death of Osama bin Laden, one year later: A conversation with Congressman Allen West

May 2, 2012, 11:47 am

AEI’s interview with Congressman Allen West is a part of the Enterprise blog’s latest symposium: Death of Osama bin Laden, one year later.

Q: What do you believe the killing of Osama bin Laden achieved?

Congressman West: In a tactical sense, the achievement was that you took out the current leader or a figurehead for al Qaeda. But in a larger strategic sense, it doesn’t mean as much because the organization is still around and you know, we have to be concerned about the potential of body bombs being used on our aircraft. So we can’t be focused on this, it was a great thing that happened, all the credit goes to our men in Navy Seal uniforms that went across the border in that late night raid operation. But we still have to stay focused on—like the State Department official said—on the war on terrorism, which is a hollow misnomer, it is not over.

Q: Do you think, as some have suggested, “that the war on terrorism is over,” that al Qaeda is finished?

Congressman West: Well, this is why I get kind of upset—we are really narrowing the focus. Al Qaeda is just one terrorist organization. We have to realize that before al Qaeda, the Islamic terrorist organization that inflicted the most causalities on America was Hezbollah. So just because you are focused on al Qaeda… what about Hezbollah? What about Hamas? What about al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade? What about the al-Quds Brigade? What about the Muslim Brotherhood? What about Jamaat al-Islamiyya? What about Abu Sayyaf? We can go on ad nauseum. At a strategic level, we really are missing out on who we are fighting against, we are trying to narrow it down to one specific organization, which would be just like saying the United States of America is fighting about one infantry battalion.

Q: Do you believe that the United States has appropriately addressed the fact that bin Laden was found, having lived many years, just outside of Islamabad?

Congressman West: We have not appropriately looked at that. We have not appropriately dealt with the sanctuaries of the enemy that are within Pakistan. We all know that the Haqqani network, which is probably inflicting the most casualties right now, is right across the border in Pakistan and is operating freely. We have to be honest about the fact that now we come to find out that Osama bin Laden was bouncing around all over Pakistan for the last five to six years or so, we have to be serious about denying enemy sanctuaries wherever he is, we have to cordon off his ability to have a sphere of influence, and we have to win the information operations propaganda war, and we have got to, from a strategic level, cut off his men, material, and financial support. Those are the critical types of strategic level objectives that we should be looking at.

Q: Why do you think it took so long to find bin Laden? Do you think we failed to devote sufficient resources to the hunt?

Congressman West: I can’t make that assessment because I don’t know what resources were allocated to it. Look, you were looking for a needle in a haystack. So you were piecing together many different leads and trying to pull this operation together. I think that when we did get the right, actionable intelligence and the 75-80% confirmed solution, our special operators did a magnificent job. These things are not very easy to do and when you go back and think about how during the Carter administration we gutted our CIA and those intelligence gathering capabilities and we had to be able to infiltrate some of these organizations—it was very hard to get them built back up.

Q: It is hard to know whether we devoted the appropriate resources, because so much was invisible to us. But right now we are seeing unprecedented disinvestment in our military. Do you think that the current trends in investment in the military and in all of our forces are going to have an impact on our ability to conduct these kind of operations in the future?

Congressman West: Absolutely. We are going in the wrong direction. This belief coming out of the State Department that the war on terrorism is over… you see a commander in chief in President Obama that is really not concerned about these additional sequestration cuts that could hit the military, that take us down to somewhat post-World War I levels when you see more volatility in the world right now. Strategically, we are not going in the right direction—you can’t take your Army from 45 combat brigade formations down to 32; you can’t take your Marine Corps down to 181,000, or take your Navy down to 230 naval war vessels when in the 1990s we were at 570. And you are cutting nine Air Force fighter squadrons. We are really not sitting down and doing what a prudent commander in chief would do, which is look at the geographical areas of responsibility and lay out the breadth of those AORs for the next 10-15 years and develop the right type of requirements, capabilities, and capacities to meet those threats. You can’t make the military the bill payer for the fiscal irresponsibility of Washington, DC. The defense budget is only about 19.4%; the true drivers of our debt are the mandatory spending programs—Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and the net interest on the debt—and that’s what we should be focused on.

Q: What is your view on the politicization of the capture of bin Laden and some of the recent uproar over Obama’s trip to Afghanistan and the ad that he cut claiming credit and saying Romney would not have done it?

Congressman West: I don’t know the inside baseball of what happened with that decision but I think that the Navy Seals said it best: Any president would have gone for the green light. I have been on operations and you know, there are many things that go on that presidents don’t know about and the men and women in uniform are the ones who get on the helicopter, they are the ones who get in the Stryker vehicles, the Humvees, and they execute these operations. I think that the most important thing is that, kind of like what coach Lou Holtz used to say: When you score a touchdown, you just act like you have been there before, that is a part of being a quiet professional, and I think that is what our men and women in uniform, especially our Navy Seals, would appreciate.

I find it very funny because you know, in the Bush/Cheney administration, there were liberal pundits like Keith Olbermann, who used to refer to Seal Team 6 as Dick Cheney’s “little black death squad.” But now all of a sudden they want to embrace them and they want to promote them. I think that having been a soldier for 22 years, we can sniff out a fake and a phony and a person who is disingenuous.

Q: Congressman West, anything else you would like to add?

Congressman West: I think the most important thing is that we really don’t have a national security strategy, we don’t have an energy strategy, we don’t have an economic strategy, and that is what concerns me the most. We are just floating along day by day in this country. Eventually, if you are a ship without a rudder or a captain at the helm and you are in a maelstrom, you may get tossed against the rocks. I don’t want to see this country get tossed against the rocks.

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Categories: Bin Laden, Foreign and Defense, War on Terror | Tags: Allen West

Danielle Pletka

Death of Osama bin Laden, one year later: President Cool hits Kabul

By Danielle Pletka

May 2, 2012, 11:46 am

AEI’s vice president of foreign and defense policy studies Danielle Pletka weighs in on the death of Osama bin Laden, one year later, as a part of the Enterprise blog’s latest symposium.

Many of us at AEI have criticized the president for failing to support the war in Afghanistan, for failing to make the case for the fight, for failing to make the case for the war to the American people. Well, last night, on the one-year anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death, the president did his best to make that case:

“… let us remember why we came here. It was here, in Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden established a safe-haven for his terrorist organization. It was here, in Afghanistan, where al Qaeda brought new recruits, trained them, and plotted acts of terror. It was here, from within these borders, that al Qaeda launched the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 innocent men, women and children.”

Gone was the claim–made (incredibly) the day before yesterday to a union audience that ”It is time we take some of the money that we spent on wars, use half of it to pay down our debt and then use the rest of it to do some nation-building right here at home.”

Let’s reckon out the ticktock here:

Day one: Obama cuts a political ad in which he suggests that only he is man enough to have ordered the SEALs to hit bin Laden. Romney, he suggests, wouldn’t have made the call.

Day two: Obama doubles down on his accusation at a presser with the Japanese prime minister.

Day three: Obama heads to Afghanistan to ink a post-conflict deal with Afghan president Hamid Karzai, hammer home the notion that he’s the commander with the cojones to take it to al Qaeda.

Unfortunately, the man who did the right thing (order bin Laden killed, commit to Afghanistan, make the case for staying the course) cannot be separated from the “despicable,” “sleazy” politician who waved the bloody shroud this week. (And those epithets were from the Left.) Ultimately, that’s the problem with Barack Obama the president. He cannot separate himself from Barack Obama the campaigner. And he should not expect that the American people will, either.

Should we fight the war and win (a word anathema to Obama)? Or should we “nation build at home”? Should we make the case to the Afghan people, to the Taliban, al Qaeda, and to our nation, that America does not “end war,” we defeat the enemy? Or should we harp on exit strategies and cut corners in battle? Should we preen about a clean “kill” or should we quietly take the battle to the rest of al Qaeda? For the next six months, those choices will be Obama’s alone. He appears to believe he can, Janus-like, speak as commander and campaigner without consequence.

More than a few have compared Obama’s Afghan trip to George W. Bush’s dreadful “Mission Accomplished” speech. But they’re wrong. The Afghan trip was the right call; everything else was the disgrace.

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Categories: Foreign and Defense | Tags: death of bin laden, president obama

What’s the matter with South America?

May 2, 2012, 9:25 am

Reuters:

The European Union and Spain criticised the Bolivian government’s nationalisation of a local unit of Spain’s Red Electrica Española, raising questions about the security of investing in the South American country.

Bolivia’s leftist President Evo Morales on Tuesday ordered the army to take over the Cochabamba headquarters of power transmission company Empresa Transportadora de Electricidad (TdE).

The move follows Argentina’s decision to expropriate Spanish energy group Repsol’s major stake in YPF.

Critics of the deep magic of free-market, entrepreneurial capitalism — of “neoliberalism” — often point to South America as place where its supposed wonder-working power has come up short over the past 30 years. But too often nations there talked the anti-statist game better than they played it. And now many are playing the old game of state intervention. But where countries embraced markets, economies improved. Economist Scott Sumner:

It’s certainly true that neoliberal reforms have not worked miracles in Latin America. But a major part of the reason is that despite reforms such as trade liberalization, most economies in that region remain strikingly statist. Among Latin American nations, Chile has by far the best record of neoliberal reforms. It ranks tenth on the Heritage Index of Economic Freedom and is the only Latin American country, other than St. Lucia, to make the top 30. In contrast, Argentina ranks 135th. Chilean incomes were barely half those of Argentineans in 1980, but by 2008, Chile had actually become slightly richer.

Argentina did some neoliberal reforms in the early 1990s and grew rapidly between 1991 and 1998. But Argentina slipped into a highly deflationary monetary policy in the late 1990s. The resulting depression led to a backlash against neoliberalism, and a more left-wing government moved Argentina back toward statism after 2002. One lesson of both Argentina after 1998 and the United States after 1929 is that even a fairly efficient free-market economy cannot easily adapt to deflationary monetary policies.

The following chart, from Sumner, shows per capita income in terms of purchasing power parity. All data are from the World Bank and are expressed as a ratio to U.S. per capita income. And it illustrates how one country moved forward, and the other shifted into reverse:

But I am sure many national leaders, especially those from countries with a thin democratic-capitalist legacy, look favorably at China’s state capitalism and hope to replicate its success formula: authoritarian government + state control of leading sectors.

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Categories: Latin America | Tags: economic freedom, free-market capitalism

Marc Thiessen

Interrogation ‘truthers’ Feinstein and Levin call top former CIA officials ‘misinformed’

May 1, 2012, 11:44 am

This would be hilarious if it were not so sad. Senators Diane Feinstein and Carl Levin have issued a statement calling former CIA counterterrorism chief Jose Rodriguez “misguided and misinformed” for his assertions that intelligence derived from detainees in the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program played a key role in the operation that killed Osama bin Laden. They also take on former CIA Director Mike Hayden and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, calling their statements about the role CIA interrogations played “wrong.”

We are disappointed that Mr. Rodriguez and others, who left government positions prior to the UBL operation and are not privy to all of the intelligence that led to the raid, continue to insist that the CIA’ s so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” used many years ago were a central component of our success. This view is misguided and misinformed.

So let’s get this straight: The man who actually led the CIA’s counterterrorism center that produced the intelligence that put us on bin Laden’s trail is “misinformed,” whereas these two legislators sitting up on Capitol Hill know the true facts?

Conveniently, Feinstein and Levin forgot to mention one former CIA official who is also apparently “wrong” and “misinformed” about the role EITs played in the bin Laden operation: Former Obama CIA Director, and current Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta.

As Rodriguez points out in his new memoir, Hard Measures:

In the immediate aftermath, some of the president’s senior staff “committed truth”—they confirmed the role the EITs played in bringing UBL to his much-deserved demise. Then–CIA director Leon Panetta told NBC’s Brian Williams, “We had multiple series of sources that provided information with regards to this situation … clearly some of it came from detainees [and] they used these enhanced interrogation techniques against some of those detainees.” Williams followed up by asking Panetta if waterboarding was part of the “enhanced interrogation techniques” that he had just mentioned and Panetta said: “That’s correct.”

So, when asked a direct question about whether EITs played a role in the bin Laden operation, Panetta confirmed that they did. If it were not true, wouldn’t Panetta and other Obama administration officials be shouting it from the rooftops? Of course they would. They don’t because they can’t.

Mike Hayden has compared those like Feinstein and Levin who deny the role CIA detainees played in the bin Laden operation to “9/11 ‘truthers’ who, lacking any evidence whatsoever, claim that 9/11 was a Bush administration plot” and “’birthers’ who, even in the face of clear contrary evidence, take as an article of faith that President Obama was not born in the United States and hence is not eligible to hold his current office.”

How sad that we have a pair of interrogation “truthers” chairing the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services Committees.

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Categories: Bin Laden, Foreign and Defense, War on Terror | Tags: enhanced interrogation, osama bin laden

No, Europe shouldn’t abandon austerity

May 1, 2012, 10:50 am

FT columnist Gideon Rachman offers a snappy and persuasive counter to those calling for Europe to abandon its fiscal austerity drive.

1. More Keynesian spending? Really?

If building great roads and trains were the route to lasting prosperity, Greece and Spain would be booming. The past 30 years have seen a huge splurge in infrastructure spending, often funded by the EU. The Athens metro is excellent. The AVE fast-trains in Spain are a marvel. But this kind of spending has done very little to change the fundamental problems that now plague both Greece and Spain – in particular, youth unemployment.

2. You know, there is a reason these countries are cutting debt.

As for Italy and Spain, they are not cutting their budgets out of some crazed desire to drive their own economies into the ground. Their austerity drives were a reaction to the fact that markets were demanding unsustainably high interest rates to lend to them. There is no reason to believe that the markets are now suddenly prepared to fund wider deficits in southern Europe. … Even in France, the centre of the revolt against austerity, it is hard to argue that the problem is that the state is not doing enough. This is a country where the state already consumes 56 per cent of gross domestic product, which has not balanced a budget since the mid-1970s, and which has some of the highest taxes in the world.

3. It’s supposed to be austerity + pro-growth reforms.

For while the Germans are often portrayed as knuckleheaded advocates of endless austerity, their real message is more sophisticated and convincing. It is that the drive to balance budgets within Europe must be combined with reforms that will encourage private-sector job creation.

The scope for such reforms is enormous. Taxes on labour in France are very high. To his credit, Mr Hollande is promising tax breaks for employers who hire young people. But it would be better simply to cut charges on labour across the board. This is one tax cut that really might pay for itself, by creating jobs.

European businesses are also hobbled by red tape. My favourite recent example was a story in the New York Times of a Greek entrepreneur, whose efforts to start an internet business involved an odyssey of form-filling, culminating in an official demand for a stool sample. High rates of youth unemployment in countries such as Spain and Italy are closely connected to the excessive protections and benefits for workers on full-time contracts – which make employers wary of taking on new hires. As one Spanish businessman recently complained: “In this country, it is easier to divorce your wife than to sack an employee.”

So not only should Europe not abandon austerity, the U.S should follow its lead. Cut regulation. Reform the tax code. Devote fewer national resources to low-productivity government. Less statism. Shrink government and grow the private sector. Not a bad economic formula.

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Categories: Europe and Russia, Foreign and Defense, U.S. Economy | Tags: austerity, EU debt crisis

Get ready for the EU debt crisis to reignite

May 1, 2012, 10:15 am

AEI’s Desmond Lachman:

On May 6, all eyes will be focused on the second round of the French presidential election, which Socialist challenger Francois Hollande is likely to win. Equally important for Europe’s future is the Greek parliamentary election scheduled for the very same day. The Greek election could deliver a government with the slenderest of parliamentary majorities, making it difficult for Greece to honor its official debt obligations and to remain within the Eurozone.

A Francois Hollande election victory would constitute a serious setback for efforts to defuse the European sovereign debt crisis. A Hollande presidency would raise doubts about a united French-German front to address the crisis because Hollande is likely to press for more growth-oriented policies in Europe and for a less restrictive European Central Bank than Germany would be prepared to countenance. It would also raise doubts about the future direction of the French economy, in response to Hollande’s proposals to impose a 75 percent tax on the highest income brackets, to raise the minimum wage, and to reduce the retirement age. …

On the eve of the Greek election, the most recent electoral polls are far from encouraging. They show that the combined votes of the New Democratic Party and PASOK, the current ruling coalition government, would amount to only about 36 percent of the votes. Such an outcome would be less than half the combined votes that those two parties polled in elections only two years ago. It would also not be much more than the combined votes likely to be polled by Greece’s hard Left political parties.

It is unclear whether a new Greek government will have the mandate both to cut public spending by 5.5 percent of GDP over the next two years and to implement the painful structural reforms that the IMF-EU is requiring as a precondition for the continued disbursement of funds under their program. And without IMF and EU funding, Greece would have little option but to default on its official loans and to start contemplating whether life outside of the euro might be more in Greece’s long-term interest than remaining within that straitjacket.

The stakes for the future of the euro zone are extremely high in the French and Greek elections on May 6. One has to hope that the electoral polls suggesting a Hollande victory in France and a collapse of the political center in Greece prove to be wrong. If those polls prove to be right, Europe should start bracing itself for a renewed intensification of the European sovereign debt crisis that has been plaguing it for over two years and that has already forced much of the continent into a double-dip recession.

And how would that affect the U.S.? One “transmission channel” is confidence, even though Paul Krugman says that doesn’t matter. Here, via Business Insider, is what Schwab’s rich clients are worrying about these days:

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Categories: Europe and Russia, U.S. Economy | Tags: EU debt crisis

Iran on the brink: By the (correct) numbers

By Maseh Zarif

May 1, 2012, 8:55 am

Dany noted in an extended Twitter conversation last week (on the question of whether Governor Romney’s advisers were right that Iran is on the brink of having a nuclear weapon) that the Iranian regime is on the brink of a nuclear weapons capability, citing figures for the amount of 20% enriched uranium it has produced at its declared facilities and the threshold amount required to convert that material into fuel for a nuclear weapon.

A commentator, Royal United Services Institute fellow Shashank Joshi, took issue with those figures, drawing invalid comparisons and accepting a debatable assumption as fact in the process.

There are two main issues here with Joshi’s post:

• Anyone attempting to compare enriched uranium figures must avoid the apples-versus-oranges pitfall. Referencing either gas or solid form figures are both acceptable so long as there is consistency. The figure Dany correctly cited (73 kg) is the amount of 20% enriched uranium Iran had produced at its two enrichment facilities as of the February 2012 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report. The IAEA reports Iran’s stockpiles in terms of enriched uranium hexafluoride (the gaseous form spinning in centrifuges). This gas would need to be converted into a solid once further enriched to weapons-grade levels for use in a nuclear weapon; 1 kg of enriched uranium gas is equal to approximately 0.67 kg enriched uranium (solid). Hence, the 109.2 kg 20% enriched uranium gas reported by the IAEA is equivalent to about 73.1 kg 20% enriched uranium (109.2 x 0.67 = 73.1). Joshi erroneously implied that the figure Dany gave was incorrect because he was comparing a gas-based figure used by other analysts to the solid-based figure used by Dany and included in our assessment.

• The exact amount of weapons-grade uranium Iran would need to build a nuclear weapon is dependent on numerous variables, but it is possible to accurately assess breakout capability by examining plausible lower- and higher-end thresholds for that amount. In writing that Dany’s reference to an 85 kg threshold of 20% enriched uranium for breakout “is clearly untenable,” Joshi dismisses the possibility that Iran could build a weapon with 15 kg of weapons-grade uranium (90%). The article that Joshi cites to support that conclusion actually concedes that the IAEA’s “significant quantity” threshold of 25 kg weapons-grade uranium “is not a perfect measure” and that it has been criticized for overestimating nuclear weapons fuel requirements. It is possible that Iran could build a weapon with a considerable explosive yield by converting 85 kg of 20% enriched uranium into 15 kg 90% weapons-grade uranium. This breakout can be achieved within months using the more-efficient interconnected cascades at the Fordow facility or within weeks if Iran uses the larger Natanz facility (details here). Our assessment includes estimates and timelines for both 15 kg and 25 kg requirements; however, Joshi only quotes the upper threshold timeline from the assessment and ignores the lower end in order to support his assertion.

The important thing to understand about the Iranian nuclear threat is that the regime has dramatically shortened the time it would need to produce fuel for an atomic weapon in the two-plus years that it has been enriching uranium at a higher level. It is on the brink because it can produce weapons-grade uranium—the most difficult component of a nuclear weapon to obtain—in short order.

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Categories: Critical Threats, Foreign and Defense, Middle East | Tags: iran, nuclear weapons

Danielle Pletka

President Cool redux: Where’s Mitt?

By Danielle Pletka

April 30, 2012, 4:39 pm

My friend Jennifer Rubin has been working valiantly to light a fire under the Romney campaign on foreign policy, to little evident result as yet. In Washington’s lemming-like spirit of piling on, let me add another voice to the calls for a more lively debate on the issues:

• Really, Mitt Romney? All you can muster to the accusation that you wouldn’t have had the manhood to take out Osama bin Laden is “Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order”?

Here’s what you might have said: This isn’t college, and I’m not in Barack Obama’s fraternity. Notches on the belt are not what makes a great American leader. What the American people should understand is that a serious leader will do anything and everything to protect the American people without polling, hiding behind the United Nations, or standing on a deck with a sign behind him every time he does the right thing. I won’t make commercials about what a man I was when I ordered troops to take out our enemies, and I sure as hell won’t offload Guantanamo prisoners to domestic courts, sympathetic foreign governments, or avoid taking in high value targets for fear the CIA might violate their human rights.

• Really, Romney campaign? You had nothing to say about the fact that the Obama administration wants to strike an “appropriate balance” between human rights and U.S. interests in China?

Here’s what you might have said: The equation with China is pretty simple: either you believe, as Mr. Obama does, that China is a rising power to our failing one, or you believe we cannot afford to subjugate our economy and our morals to a dictatorship that seeks to dominate the Pacific and global business. Either you believe there’s an “appropriate balance” between U.S. interests and human rights, or you believe U.S. interests are embodied by a commitment to human rights.

I realize that for Team Romney, the election is going to be about staggering unemployment and Obama’s economic incompetence. But there are some hot foreign policy potatoes out there including Iran, al Qaeda, and Syria. And there are some easy issues on which to draw a contrast with the current White House management, including aid to the Palestinians (really, it’s in our national security interest to fork over millions?), indifference to the Islamist take-over of the Arab Spring (apparently we can’t affect anyone, anywhere, anytime), and more. There’s no need to be defensive; the president made a good call on bin Laden, but his courage in that instance pales next to a record that includes his embrace of American decline, his fear of American leadership, his degradation of the military (and not just the Navy, as the Romney campaign appears to think).

I said it last week and I’ll keep saying it: Give the American people a choice between President “Cool” and President Grown-up. Then let us make the call.

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Categories: Foreign and Defense, U.S. Politics | Tags: 2012 campaign, mitt romney

Marc Thiessen

Former CIA counterterrorism chief offers new details of how detainees led us to Bin Laden