The View From 1776

Tough talk on Pakistan from Obama

Reuters
Wed Aug 1, 2007 7:26pm EDT

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama said on Wednesday the United States must be willing to strike al Qaeda targets inside Pakistan, adopting a tough tone after a chief rival accused him of naivete in foreign policy…

Obama said if elected in November 2008 he would be willing to attack inside Pakistan with or without approval from the Pakistani government, a move that would likely cause anxiety in the already troubled region.

“If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will,” Obama said.

Quote from the Wall Street Journal opinion article:

In 2005, the Senate Banking Committee, then under Republican control, adopted a strong reform bill, introduced by Republican Sens. Elizabeth Dole, John Sununu and Chuck Hagel, and supported by then chairman Richard Shelby. The bill prohibited the GSEs from holding portfolios, and gave their regulator prudential authority (such as setting capital requirements) roughly equivalent to a bank regulator. In light of the current financial crisis, this bill was probably the most important piece of financial regulation before Congress in 2005 and 2006. All the Republicans on the Committee supported the bill, and all the Democrats voted against it. Mr. McCain endorsed the legislation in a speech on the Senate floor. Mr. Obama, like all other Democrats, remained silent.

Now the Democrats are blaming the financial crisis on “deregulation.” This is a canard. There has indeed been deregulation in our economy—in long-distance telephone rates, airline fares, securities brokerage and trucking, to name just a few—and this has produced much innovation and lower consumer prices. But the primary “deregulation” in the financial world in the last 30 years permitted banks to diversify their risks geographically and across different products, which is one of the things that has kept banks relatively stable in this storm.

As a result, U.S. commercial banks have been able to attract more than $100 billion of new capital in the past year to replace most of their subprime-related write-downs. Deregulation of branching restrictions and limitations on bank product offerings also made possible bank acquisition of Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch, saving billions in likely resolution costs for taxpayers.

If the Democrats had let the 2005 legislation come to a vote, the huge growth in the subprime and Alt-A loan portfolios of Fannie and Freddie could not have occurred, and the scale of the financial meltdown would have been substantially less. The same politicians who today decry the lack of intervention to stop excess risk taking in 2005-2006 were the ones who blocked the only legislative effort that could have stopped it.

Read all about it.

Bill Ayers is not just another liberal-progressive.  He is one of the most notorious of the 1960s student radicals and a founder of Weatherman, a group that murdered people and bombed targets that represented American values.

Ironically on September 11, 2001, the day of terrorist bombings of Manhattan’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a New York Times feature article appeared with the headline, “Life With the Weathermen: No Regrets for a Love of Explosives.” Its opening sentence reads, “"I don’t regret setting bombs,” Bill Ayers said. “I feel we didn’t do enough.” The Times adds, “Between 1970 and 1974 the Weathermen took responsibility for 12 bombings…… and also helped spring Timothy Leary (sentenced on marijuana charges) from jail.”

Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn were the two most notorious spokesmen for the Weatherman group of 1960s student radicals.  The Times article says that, “Mr. Ayers, who in 1970 was said to have summed up the Weatherman philosophy as: “Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that’s where it’s really at,” is today distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.” Bernardine Dohrn is director of the Legal Clinic’s Children and Family Justice Center of Northwestern University.

With “distinguished” professors like Ayers and Dohrn common on university campuses over the past three decades, one need not wonder what college students are being taught.

Nor need one wonder what Senator Obama’s atheistic, socialistic values are.

NATO’s Uncertain Future
By Jeff Lukens

Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August marked a return to their historic pattern of imperial conquest. Without confronting NATO directly, Vladimir Putin signaled he intends to keep Georgia and Ukraine in Russia’s sphere of influence, and keep them from joining NATO. Putin can now bully other Eastern European countries as well to sway their policies away from the West and toward Russia. If any of these countries fail to comply, the implied message is they can expect a fate similar to Georgia.

The European Union gets more that a quarter of its oil from Russia, and the pipeline through Georgia is the only oil from the Caspian oil fields not controlled by Russia or Iran. Putin now is able to shut it down anytime he wants to.

The attack on Georgia also exposed a dangerous overextension of NATO forces in Eastern Europe, and United States forces around the world. Power abhors a vacuum, and when there is any uncertainty about it in the Kremlin, instability follows. Putin has proven Russia will brutally fill any power void around them. NATO needs to reexamine its long-term strategic purpose, and determine what it should do about a newly aggressive and revitalized Russia.

There are two compelling sides to the debate over what to do. One line of reasoning says we should promote democracies everywhere, and holds that Russia must face the consequences for its actions. Naked aggression will happen again if unanswered. If Russia wants to act like the USSR, then NATO should treat it as it treated the USSR. For the alliance to cave now would only heighten the possibility of armed conflict later. Promoting democracy would ultimately mean supporting NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine. If we offer them membership, however, we must be prepared to defend them. And this we are not able to do.

The other line of thinking says we should recognize the Russian sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, and not tread on their turf. NATO has already committed more to the region than it is prepared to support. No one wants to go to war over Georgia or Ukraine, and the US cannot confront the Russians alone.

While Russia’s neighbors worry about the renewed threat, Western Europe, and Germany especially, care more about their oil. Eastern Europe has been under the Russian domination before and has no intention on going back to it again. This makes for a divide in NATO that is quite literally big enough to drive a tank through—which of course Putin is not above doing. This political fissure could ultimately unravel the alliance.

NATO served its purpose well until the collapse of the Soviet Union. But unlike the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia is currently flush with cash. With a declining population and a single source economy, Putin apparently believes he needs to act now because time is not on his side. He knows the US is overextended in the Middle East, and now is the time to reassert Russian dominance in Eastern Europe before the US can capably respond. 

Besides attacking Georgia, Putin has threatened to dismember large portions of Ukraine if it joins NATO. Even if Georgia had been a member of NATO, it is questionable whether any ally in Western Europe would have been willing to fight for them. As NATO has expanded its boundaries toward the Russian border, the military power that backs the alliance has become more diluted and less likely to honor its commitments. The alliance has written checks it is not able to cash.

The Baltic States present a special problem. These former Soviet republics all have large Russian populations within their borders. If Russia brings its armies to the borders of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, would anyone in NATO send troops there to honor the alliance’s guarantees? Possibly not. And definitely it would not in the numbers necessary to turn back an invasion.

In 1914, a series of misunderstandings and miscalculations that started in the Balkans lead to World War One. A similar set of misunderstandings and miscalculations may be awaiting us in the Baltics. With these countries already members of NATO, such uncertainty before a confrontive Russia could escalate into a larger war with the West.

Another piece on Putin’s chessboard is Iran. He knows the US wants out of Iraq, and to do so completely we will need to contain Iran. The US needs Russian support for economic sanctions to work against Teheran, which sets the stage for Putin to offer up a deal: The US gets its way with Iran in exchange for Russian domination of Georgia and Ukraine. It may be an offer we find hard to refuse.

The only diplomatic leverage we can exact on Russia now is to exclude them from the WTO, the G-8, and other international economic organizations, and such actions take time to work. And while the threat of exclusion is of no major concern to Putin, the flight of capital from the West is already exacting a toll in Russian financial markets as nervous investors pull back.

Global financial markets have punished Russia much more quickly than any diplomatic sanctions ever could. And the economic toll served on Russia has been severe. The RTS stock index in Moscow has fallen by more than half since May. The exodus of foreign capitol and the collapse of domestic credit have transformed the mood in Moscow from boldness to dismay. Putin is unlikely to reverse course, however, unless he is forced to by a collapse in the price of oil.

From any rational standpoint, the need for the US to more fully develop its petroleum resources has never been clearer. More immediately, some vital decisions need to be made about NATO’s future. By drawing clear lines between Russia and NATO, we can help stabilize the region. NATO must be firm with Russia about its respect for rules in dealing with other countries, or accept the position that Russian aggression is the price it must pay to keep oil flowing to Europe.

Russia’s attack on Georgia was not an isolated event. Their historic pattern of conquest will not go away because we wish it away. The events in August marked the return of geopolitics as it has been played since the dawn of civilization.

We cannot just say that NATO must adjust to new realities or fade away into irrelevancy. We may soon discover a greater danger lies in security promises made to Eastern European states that we cannot militarily support, which Putin misreads, and then becomes a major war. NATO must show commitment and clarity of purpose to prevent such a catastrophe.

Jeff Lukens is a Staff Writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc., a non-profit (501c3) coalition of writers and grass-roots media outlets. He can be contacted at HYPERLINK “http://www.jefflukens.com” http://www.jefflukens.com

The Commentary Magazine website has a link to a New York Times op-ed column that inadvertently sheds light upon Senator Obama’s lack of fitness for the job he seeks.

Gail Collins, formerly editorial page editor of the New York Times and now a regular columnist, uses her September 19, 2008, opinion column to cudgel President Bush about his handling of the current financial crisis.

In passing, however, she reveals how feckless and vague Senator Obama is when confronted with the need for decisiveness:

Down in Florida, Barack Obama was also endorsing a bipartisan approach to the rescue. For good measure, he also tacked on a call on both parties to join together in backing “an emergency economic plan” crafted out of a whole bunch of things that the Republicans are never going to support in a million years.

Obama declined to provide many specifics. The most notable thing about his performance this week — besides his really extraordinary skill in packing large numbers of economic advisers onto a stage — has been his calm. Even this late in the campaign, it’s hard to tell whether it’s the product of wise serenity or a low metabolism. But, under present circumstances, it was definitely soothing.

In Another Misguided Liberal-Progressive I wrote:

Democrat/Socialist Congressman Barney Frank has for many years blocked every attempt to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. 

Liberal-progressives, led by Congressman Frank, are directly responsible for the Treasury Department’s take-over of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and for the resulting huge cost to taxpayers.

Backing up that assertion, Maggie’s Farm has an indirect link to Virginia Shanahan’s post Bush Wanted Freddie and Fannie Oversight 5 years ago- Dems Said No, where she links to the following article published five years ago in the New York Times:

New York Times
September 11, 2003
New Agency Proposed to Oversee Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae
By STEPHEN LABATON

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.
Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.

The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt—is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates…

Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.

‘’These two entities—Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—are not facing any kind of financial crisis,’’ said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ‘’The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.’’