If you want to go work in Washington in foreign policy, you have to understand that the industry does not want good ideas, in fact it actively hates them. There are people in this town who do nothing but go around and actively try to crush any good idea before it gets momentum. Most of these people are the ones in positions responsible for implementing or generating new ideas.

Why? Because good ideas make them look bad. Imagine the gall of some 20-year-old from a flyover state coming to Washington and having the audacity to have an idea that blows away the stale, crusty, dysfunctional ones the old men in the room had 30 years ago. How dare he! Who does he think he is anyway? You have to go to Harvard and then kiss establishment ass for 20 years in order to rate having an idea!

Why not steal the good ideas from the kids and use them you say? Too much work. By the time you go to Harvard and spend 20+ years kissing establishment ass, you are so tired and drained by the ordeal you have no more energy to actually implement anything. Any good idea implies change, almost always. So what it would save the lives of soldiers and civilians? What are they anyway? Really, after you spend 20 years or so in the foreign policy establishment in Washington, they are just statistics to you anyway. Nothing but numbers. The “good” news about working for the government is that good numbers or bad numbers won’t get you fired or promoted like in the private sector, seniority is all that matters.

So you say, I have a complaint against the foreign policy establishment in Washington. I’ve worked on projects ranging from briefs on Suuni and Shia divisions to a victory plan in Afghanistan, a disarmament plan for Iran, and Israeli arms sales. I’ve met with a lot of think tank “thinkers” and foreign policy people, worked in a couple Congressional offices, and pitched books to academicians. Maybe I just have a personal grudge. Well, you have to understand, it isn’t just that the policy establishment is geared to not accept new ideas, it is that there is a big bully in the room that distorts the industry and destroys it’s ability to function. That bully is, ironically, the Federal Government.

Let’s say you have actually been to a conflict zone in the Middle East or elsewhere. You don’t think of American casualties as numbers or statistics, but as faces. Let’s say you know people in other countries, have traveled overseas, speak multiple languages, have dealt with a foreign government… You have the makings of someone who really knows a lot about international relations. You are a good candidate for a foreign policy expert in Washington, right? Wrong.

Sorry, but you won’t get a security clearance, because even if you check out, it is so much more work for some lazy, under-incentivized bureaucrat to check you out that they won’t bother. They will throw you in the reject pile and grab the guy who has never left his small home town in the middle of Iowa.

I have nothing against Iowa, but a guy who has been in the Middle East will be a better Middle East expert than a guy who has never left the Midwest. Problem is, if you’ve been to the Middle East, you are harder to check out and you can forget about working in foreign policy.

Now let’s add ideology. In order to determine who is a good candidate to become a new “expert” when one of the old men finally kicks off to his eternal reward after taking up a slot for 90 years, we select out of certain universities. These are universities that happen to have a huge ideological bent in one direction, and it shows in policy decisions.

The main thing people learn in these institutions is that nobody should ever be offended. Judgement between people groups is evil, morality is relative, no idea is necessarily better than any other, and that since we cannot judge between people (including based on actual performance), other substitutes to performance, like seniority, become the factors that lead to promotion.

Washington wants you dead because it dare not offend people by profiling them. Instead, it will use a less safe and more costly system of checking everybody, including grandma. I have been in and out of Ben Gurion International Airport many times. It happens to be the number one terror target of all time, if you count actually thwarted attempts or plans. It also happens to be very quick, efficient, convenient, and safe to use. You stand in line for security about half as long as a comparable American airport (they don’t like lines at Ben Gurion because they don’t want too many people packed into one spot in case a suicide bomber somehow gets through their outer rings of security).

This is possible because they use multiple, concretic rings of security based on the principle of profiling for likely terrorists. This is a system designed to stop a terror attack rather than just prosecuting the leftovers after the carnage is cleared. Men with automatic pistols wander about the loading areas, not intercepting everybody, but selectively striking up conversations with those they think look suspicious, others stand in doorways and don’t stop everybody, only those they have been trained to spot as being too nervous, with odd body language, or coming from groups likely to include terrorists. Then they screen the bags, and remember, they hate lines because they don’t want lots of people in one place. A security officer can and will move an entire line and ticketing counter over in order to reduce the people in one area, or demand that an airline provide more people to handle the ticketing faster if a long line is developing. I bet you never thought of a line at the ticketing counter as a security concern, huh?

Beyond that, there are other layers, one inside the other as you proceed. The basic principle though is that not everybody is checked in the same way. They discriminate based on statistical probabilities. They use police methodology to look for certain behavior and body language, and they profile everybody. This requires more skilled personnel who have to be paid more (and who are much more polite, knowledgable and professional than TSA screeners), but since they are not buying incredibly expensive full body scanners, they actually save money. Leave it to the Department of Homeland Security to make you less safe for more money.

So you are less safe, you are more likely to die. You are a human sacrifice. You will die, so that others need not be offended. Get used to it, Washington wants you to die.

You have people working in Washington who were chosen for their position because it was easier for a bureaucrat to do a background investigation on them than because of their expertise. They come from certain schools because they usually have the family contacts to do so. They are trained up in their field by an insular academia to whom humans are at best statistics and at worst, a plague on our green mother Earth that should decrease in number. They are given honors in school based on how well they emulate, parrot, and copy the ideas of the old establishment, and given jobs in Washington based on how well they kiss ass. And you wonder why we have no national security strategy to worth mentioning?

Grand strategy? Security of our citizens? Plan for dealing with border security? Plan for victory in our war against Islamism? Plan for exiting Afghanistan? What are you talking about? We operate under foreign policy ideas left over from the mid Cold War era because the geriocracy dates from that period. It is tainted with ideas like the TSA’s operating principle that it is better to kill you than offend someone else because the new generation comes from religiously ideological and insular schools, and has no experience in the field whatsoever. When a random good idea does pop up by some mistake, it is stomped on so that it doesn’t make others look bad, and the creator told to wait his turn for 20 years or so while Americans die.

This is how your foreign policy establishment operates. The real problem is you. You want bipartisanship even though it really means watering everything down to a lowest common denominator rather than going with a good idea. You want social justice even though it is costing you lives. You want to feel good about not offending people even though it compromises your own security. You have not made enough noise about foreign policy in Washington. Even this tea party movement of the last year has focused on taxes and the deficit, not security. You are ok with how things are going even as you are fondled at airports and your protectors in uniform are dying by the day. You have not demanded something better. Well, I hope you are happy!

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is on fire!.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,600 times in 2010. That’s about 4 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 26 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 88 posts.

The busiest day of the year was July 21st with 155 views. The most popular post that day was Middle East About To Explode.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were canadafreepress.com, alphainventions.com, youtube.com, en.wordpress.com, and linkedin.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for jubal biggs, mcchrystal for president, evils of oligopoly, biggs report, and mcchrystal for president 2012.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Middle East About To Explode June 2010
2 comments

Oligopoly; How We Can Beat Them December 2009

Iran’s Gonna Pop July 2010

McChrystal For President June 2010
10 comments

Petraeus Goes Too Far September 2010
3 comments

Builds a mosque

downtown

and there is shouting and noise

A pile of bones, roughly rectangular in shape

not quite linear

looming over a street

where men and women once fled

billowing clouds of dust and rubble

on a day

of shouting and noise

A bone white tower

Replacement for knocked out teeth of America

broken with the fist

of the religion of peace

Here, we will learn tolerance

where rubble bounced

and windows shattered

tolerance

for a religion that chases to our shores

critics as refugees from thuggery

tolerance

for a religion that murders film makers who document it

and journalists who write about it

and activists who try to help feed it’s hungry

and doctors who would care for it’s sick

and the mothers who give birth to it’s children

Let me then learn tolerance in this great stack of bleached bones

piled high near the gaping wound of my country

I who have seen men die fighting men who cry allahu akbar

who serve children to their parents on platters

let me learn tolerance from them

Philip Kennicott says to be awed by

technological power harnessed

like a symphony of Beethoven

in this skeletal refrigerator which will loom over us intolerant many

built by the tolerant few

who know better than we

that this is the religion of peace

Obviously, General Petraeus must do his utmost to protect the guys he commands in Afghanistan. That is part of his job, but as soon as he begins to use his high-profile position to communicate what is and is not acceptable speech by American citizens, he is way out of line.

If the good General wants to comment on the acceptability or riskiness of anti-Muslim protests, he should stop making blanket declarations that he will not run for elected office and move into a position that allows him to comment on the exercise of rights by American citizens. As it stands, as a man in uniform with a tremendous amount of credibility and authority behind him, it is inappropriate for him to make comments in this area. First, he does so with borrowed legitimacy from his Commander-in-Chief, not being an elected individual himself. Secondly, his job is to protect the persons and rights of American citizens, not tell them how to exercise those rights. Finally, he misunderstands the nature of the political (as opposed to kinetic) war if he thinks that it is the Koran burning per-se that risks American soldiers’ lives. After all, it is not enraged American citizens who would be attacking US troops… it is actually the predictable and likely reaction to the event that risks our people.

Let us assume for a moment that we aren’t talking about a Koran burning. Let’s say some newspaper in a Western country has a competition for cartoonists to draw Muhammad. Let’s say they publish the results of this competition. This would also threaten US troops (the reaction, not the newspaper), so, General Petraeus, should we ban newspapers from publishing pictures of Muhammad because publishing them might “risk US troops”? If you maintain your position logically, you would have to say yes.

Our problem here is not that somebody would dare to burn another religion’ holy book. Our problem is that any provocation, perceived provocation, assumed slight, or nasty look directed against Muslims will start bloody riots. The answer to this is not to never insult them. How do you never insult the most touchy civilization in the history of humankind anyway? The answer is to let it be known that bloody riots against our troops are not going to be quietly tolerated. We are not going to just watch as the Arab street (or in this case, the Afghani street) gets itself worked into a froth and roams about looking for someone to tear into pieces with their hands and hang the remains off a bridge (I refer to past acts of bloody Mideastern riots).

The Middle East responds to strength and will. It does not respond to being nice. The Ottoman Turks were universally hated by everyone in the region even as they maintained stability and peace for a thousand years. This is because they were feared and respected. The political act of forcing Americans to not conduct a (questionable) act of political speech on 9/11 is a statement of capitulation. From ten years spent in the Middle East, I can say with confidence that any statement of capitulation will result in more, not less, violence on the part of the “muslim street” over the long-term. If a little fit gets me a lollipop, what will a big fit get me?

Sure it sounds mean and nasty and politically incorrect and chauvinistic to compare Muslims rightfully incensed over the burning of their holy book to children throwing a tantrum, but there is an unfortunate and often overlooked grain of truth in the comparison. Yes, Christians would be angry if someone in Riyadh burned a Bible; but they would not lynch people by tearing them to pieces with their hands nor conduct suicide bombings. Try burning Buddhist holy books sometime and see what the reaction will be (probably a sternly worded letter at worst). Islam is its own worst enemy here and it is not a church in Florida that is threatening our soldiers.

David Petraeus must get a grip and remember what freedoms he is supposed to be fighting to protect, as well as understand the limitations of his own position before he decided to dictate what Americans can and cannot do to protest the worst attack on this nation in at least a century and a half.

Julian Assange, the guy who runs Wikileaks has said that he splashes the internet with classified information provided to him by various “traitors” or “whistleblowers” (depending on who you talk to) because he’s worried about the poor, innocent Afghanis who are caught up in the war over there and often end up as “collateral damage”. He wants to stop the war so people stop dying. Very admirable, but Mr. Assange doesn’t seem to mind the fact that he has leaked the names of probably thousands of Afghanis who have given the US Army information; which allows the Taliban to target them -which means he has as good as killed those guys in very nasty ways. I guess they are acceptable “collateral damage”. Can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, right? (I have operated in a combat area in the Middle East. In the West Bank, most of the intel the IDF uses is handed to them by Palestinians who don’t like the terrorists but are too scared to stand up in public. I know for a fact that people get beheaded, acid poured on them, lynched, tortured, and their children killed if their names are outed. I imagine it is similar in Afghanistan.)

Now Everybody knows all of this, right? Nothing new. This isn’t the “Pentagon Papers” that demonstrated that President Johnson was lying about our strategy in Vietnam, right? If anything, it shows us what we already know.

Wrong. The documents demonstrate that Obama lied about Afghanistan. Here is part of President Obama’s speech on Dec. 01, 2009, at West Point Academy.

“…we will act with the full recognition that our success in Afghanistan is inextricably linked to our partnership with Pakistan.

…

“In the past, there have been those in Pakistan who’ve argued that the struggle against extremism is not their fight, and that Pakistan is better off doing little or seeking accommodation with those who use violence.  But in recent years, as innocents have been killed from Karachi to Islamabad, it has become clear that it is the Pakistani people who are the most endangered by extremism.  Public opinion has turned.  The Pakistani army has waged an offensive in Swat and South Waziristan.  And there is no doubt that the United States and Pakistan share a common enemy.

“In the past, we too often defined our relationship with Pakistan narrowly.  Those days are over.  Moving forward, we are committed to a partnership with Pakistan that is built on a foundation of mutual interest, mutual respect, and mutual trust. We will strengthen Pakistan’s capacity to target those groups that threaten our countries, and have made it clear that we cannot tolerate a safe haven for terrorists whose location is known and whose intentions are clear.  America is also providing substantial resources to support Pakistan’s democracy and development.  We are the largest international supporter for those Pakistanis displaced by the fighting.  And going forward, the Pakistan people must know America will remain a strong supporter of Pakistan’s security and prosperity long after the guns have fallen silent, so that the great potential of its people can be unleashed.

“These are the three core elements of our strategy:  a military effort to create the conditions for a transition; a civilian surge that reinforces positive action; and an effective partnership with Pakistan.

He lied when he said public opinion in Pakistan had “turned” toward supporting our war effort. It had not. He lied when he said our success is linked to our partnership with Pakistan. We do not, functionally, have a partnership with Pakistan. He lied when he said it is clear that Pakistan and the U.S. have a common enemy. It is not clear, and Pakistan does not act like it has a common enemy with us. In fact, they were the chief supporters of the Taliban before we toppled them, and, strangely enough, are the chief supporters of the Taliban today.

This article is a good background on Pakistan’s relationship with the Taliban.

Obama lied as well, by the way, when he said the U.S. will be a supporter of Pakistan long after the guns fall silent. Because we share no strategic goals, have no common enemy, and want very different things in South Asia, this is obviously not going to happen, just as we cut Pakistan off after the Cold War because they had been temporarily useful in opposing the USSR, but were a liability as an Islamist-nationalist state that supported radical Jihadi groups.

The wikileaks documents don’t necessarily show us things that people have not been saying (I’ve been saying this about Pakistan for years, and complained about how Bush lied about Pakistan being our ally just as Obama is now). What the documents do, however, is clearly demonstrate that our “partner” (at least Obama backed away from Bush’s word; “ally”) is supporting Taliban organizations that are killing our boys in Afghanistan. They support terror organizations that conduct bombings in India (a fellow democracy). They take our foreign aid money and use it to line the pockets of senior officials and support terrorism. We are literally funding terrorism through money allocated for the war on terror!

I was struck by an article in the Economist claiming the wikileaks documents are not the Pentagon Papers that showed Johnson was lying. Why not? Is it because Obama telling the truth? No. This is not the Pentagon papers for one reason and only one reason; the left-wing Progressive establishment is not against Obama’s Afghanistan war the way they were against Johnson’s Vietnam. The lie uncovered is not of any concern to them, so there is no lie. The lie has also been grossly obvious to many of us for years, so again, there is no lie.

Sorry, Obama lied about Afghanistan. He did it before he got elected, and he is still doing it right now.

In my last post, I showed what happens when the government builds a bridge-to-stimulus somewhere, how much it costs, and how it doesn’t add up mathematically. What I didn’t say is what is in it for the government, given that they have to know it doesn’t work.

What the politicians get is very simple; they get to be the one who “gives” us a bridge-to-stimulus. They get to be Santa Claus, handing out “free” jobs, “saving or creating” all kinds of paper jobs while the real economy sinks.

Another thing the government gets out of stimulus is control. Some bureaucrat has to be in charge of the “bridge-to-stimulus project, has to set regulations, has to write the project up, has to push all the paper. Bureaucrats are what they are because they don’t want to compete in the private market, so they need projects that the private market would never contemplate in order to have work. They also want power, which means bigger staffs and budgets. In order to keep increasing the size of their staffs and budgets, they have to keep expanding what the government does.

Politicians, particularly Democrats, benefit directly from all this. Democrats get a cut of all union dues from public employee union members. That means they are in charge of decisions to expand budgets that pay wages that become union dues and Democratic party contributions. This is a self-reinforcing cycle. Thus, Democrats who take campaign contributions from public employee unions really should recuse themselves from any decision that will increase bureaucrat staff numbers (which is almost any decision in Washington).

Roosevelt set up a very nice system that kept Democrats in possession of Congress for decades. He would send in his political advisor to check out a district and find out if any big projects could be built in the area; it would then be spread around all the relief offices that if everybody voted “the right way”, this project would be built. Roosevelt would get some local paper to do an article about the project, and would get himself and a local Democrat politician in the piece. The idea was simple and would be repeated endlessly in election campaigns; “you vote Republican, this big bridge-to-stimulus does not come to town, if you vote Democrat, it will”.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is corruption.

The math of stimulus doesn’t work for the US economy, but it does do one thing very effectively; it takes money from everybody and focuses it on one, lucky group. The ability to play favorites allows politicians to target a strategic district, state, or area, and follow the game plan laid down by Roosevelt in the New Deal Era. If you vote for us, you get free stuff. Of course, nothing is free, somebody is paying for it. In this case, we will all pay for the stimulus as the dollar loses value. This will hurt most the poor families that the Democrats have ironically, spent the most time courting.

There is an entire ecology of creepy crawly things that have evolved in the murky waters under Capitol Hill. They feed on “stimulus”; they need the flow to grow, not contract. That is why something that 80% of the American people do not want to happen will be approved by people who theoretically have to answer to those people. Stimulus feeds a political system of gerrymandered districts, union-fueled party machines, corrupt local officials, and a culture of complete cynicism on the part of our elected officials. In order to fix the economy, we need to stop the stimulus, but we also need to stop it in order to reform Washington.

Remember that when November ’10 and ’12 comes around. This isn’t about creating jobs for blue-collar workers, the stimulus is about creating jobs for government employees who send a kickback to the party machine.

I just have to break this down, because the stimulus is all over the news here in Washington again, and Omessiah is talking about more stimulus because the recession doesn’t seem to be obeying the rules. Unfortunately for him, the recession is obeying the rules of economics, he is not.

Economics is like math; which might explain why so many people hate to know anything about it. It is like math enough that it has basic rules and principles that work always in a predictable manner. Let me demonstrate one.

Lets say we have high unemployment; I am a benevolent government official, and I want to “create jobs”, so I decide to build something we don’t actually need in order to give unemployed people something to do. Let’s say I give this boondoggling a name. For the sake of argument, call it “stimulus”.

I either tax or borrow (or borrow now and tax later) to get together a $100 million. This is spent on a new bridge, and we can all see tangible benefits. A new bridge to someplace (which we didn’t really need), or nowhere as the case may be, a lot of people working on it, money those workers spend in stores, buying things with their paychecks from the project. Looks good, what’s the problem?

I had to tax $100 million to do it. That means I took $100 million from other things; the new suit a farmer wanted to buy, the new laptop a family was going to buy for a student in college, the new car for an accountant in New York, whatever. This $100 million worth of stuff will never be produced, will never create jobs, will never “stimulate” because of the bridge to nowhere I just built and put my Congressional name on.

It get’s worse. Say I tell you “we don’t need to take it from anywhere; we can just borrow it”. The problem with this is that it increases our national debt. The problem is, our dollar is valued based entirely and ONLY on what people THINK its value is. This means that the worth of our paper currency is only as good as the strength of the US economy. If our debt goes up, the value of our currency must go down. (Don’t you hate math?)

It gets even worse than that. Let’s say that the project for the bridge was $100 million, so you say I have to tax or borrow $100 million, right? Wrong. I have to tax or borrow at least $200 million or so to pay for the $100 million bridge to nowhere. Why? Because of what I call “friction”. To get the money from the sweaty clutches of the worker in the factory in South Carolina or Michigan and into the sweaty clutches of the construction worker on my bridge to stimulus, I have to use a thing called the IRS; one of the least efficient bureaucracies ever created by man. They add at least 20% to the cost because they have to pay a few thousand paper pushers in Washington. I have to pay somebody in the Department of Labor to make a report about my bridge, I have to pay the EPA to tell me the design is kosher, I have to get a few dozen agencies involved that all have staff and overhead costs and which do not function as efficiently as a private industry would. This adds a lot. Now, I don’t want to burden the economy with this activity, so I am borrowing the money from the Chinese, which means it accrues interest (you know, like a car payment), so I don’t pay back $100 million, but more like $160 million. Add in my bureaucratic “friction” and you have doubled the cost.

Now, there are other costs too; for example, I might raise taxes on the “wealthy” to pay for this. Well, when I do that, they will; find ways to not pay taxes by sheltering their money in various legal ways overseas, hire fewer people in the small businesses many of them own, buy less stuff, and even move overseas completely, none of which serves my purpose of hosing the rich at all. In fact, this depresses the economy.

And there’s more. An inflationary cycle (which is fancy talk for my borrowing too much and people selling off US dollars so the value of the currency goes down; also called “printing money”) makes the dollar in the pocket of every blue-collar family worth less. This hurts mostly poor people, not rich people. Poor people usually have all their money in cash form, so if cash decreases in value, they can’t buy as many groceries and have to hold off on getting the car fixed. Rich people (and plenty of upper middle class nowadays) own gold and stocks and bonds and various things to shield them from the currency problem. What else does inflation do? It drives up costs of business, which means they hire fewer people.

One other thing about that bridge. Because I had to take the $100 million (or $200 million as the case may be) from other areas to pay for my bridge-to-stimulus, that money won’t just not be spent on other things, it will be spent, by definition, on something less economically worth while for future growth than it would have been. See, we don’t need the government to build the bridge if some private individual wanted to do it for profit anyway. If nobody wanted to do it for profit, there wasn’t profit to be had (considering how much people like money). On the other hand, if people were going to spend that money on other things if it hadn’t been taxed or inflated out of them; those other things would have been profitable in some way, or at least very efficient, because people don’t like to spend money, and want to get a lot for what they spend. That means that we took away $200 million that would have been spent efficiently and profitably to stimulate the economy and gave back $100 million in a non-profitable, less efficient project. Why is this not working?

You know, I think, given the incredible amount already spent on stimulus and the rampant unemployment, that what we really need right now is more stimulus, right Omessiah?

What do you think?

[Note; a real economist would tell me the money spent on bureaucrats is not "lost" like friction in an engine, but government employees make very bad stimulators. Of course, such an economist would probably be paid by a federal grant anyway.]

The regime, bankrupt after redistributing the wealth in Iran to pay their political machine cronies (sounds like Washington huh?) desperately needs money to pay the thuggish revolutionary guard. They tried to impose a 70% tax hike on the bazaar merchants, and the merchants announced a strike. Predictably, this paralyzed the city of Teheran, which is the largest part of Iran’s population and economy. The Mullahs and Ahmadinejad backed down, but the Bazaaris stayed on strike. This is extremely bad news for the Iranian authorities.

To give some perspective; the 78-79 festivities started with a student revolt that looked in some ways quite similar to the recent Green revolution, with similarly young, idealistic Persians demanding freedom. This revolt was easily put down by the state apparatus, as was the Green revolution, but then, the Bazaaris got involved. They joined up with the clerics, the socialist/communists, and the students and suddenly all those unprofessional rabble rousers had real muscle. You could compare the Bazaaris to the unions, but they are even more important to the Iranian economy and tend conservative; they don’t like change and they don’t like anything that gets in the way of business. With out of control inflation, redistributionist policies, cronies getting hand out contracts from the government and now this tax hike to pay for it all, this regime has finally gotten in the way of business.

Now, all the elements are in place that were there in 1979 except for one thing; a single, populist leader in exile waiting in Paris (he had been in Iraq, but had made too much trouble there) who represents all the frustrations the Persian people have with the regime. We don’t see an Ayatollah Khomeini waiting in the wings to take power. That may be a very good thing though, since he became a strong man and set up a brutal theocracy. If multiple factions have to fight out who gets what after the fall of the Mullahs, maybe they will develop some kind of checks and balances or pluralistic system. If it were some African state, I wouldn’t bet on it, but this is Iran, and they have done things like that before.

In 1905, the Constitutional Revolution in Iran started with the merchants closing the bazaar. This led to huge changes in the state and the constitution that Iran still (theoretically) holds to. In 1891, it was the bazaaris who began the protests against the tobacco tax that led to the tobacco revolt. Again, a big time political event. Notice a pattern here?

The heart of Iran, it is said by some, is in the bazaar. If the bazaar merchants are now siding with the Green movement youths, the Mullah’s regime is probably finished.

I would predict that something significant will happen in the next few months; either a Tiananmen Square type resurgence of the regime backed by naked force, or a much bigger, more organized, more powerful, and far more effective version of the Green protests we have seen up till now, probably ending with the toppling of the Mullahs.

Well, my prediction is out there, tell me if you think I’m wrong. I have been saying something in the Middle East was going to blow up for a while now, I just thought it would be because of the pressure Iran is putting on the rest of the Middle East, but if it collapses due to internal problems before the region reaches a boiling point, that could save us the inevitable bloodletting that was going to occur.

One more thing; don’t be surprised if the Tiananmen Square scenario happens and it involves military or financial aid from China. China has invested a lot in the current Iranian regime and all bets are off if it changes. They have a good thing going with Iran and want its oil. They have backed up other clients, like Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, keeping tyrants in power who serve their interests. Iran is a big and difficult to control, sophisticated and educated population, so they won’t be easily cowed, but don’t be too surprised if China sends Iran the necessary military aid to do just that.

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Update;

Caroline Glick has written in her piece for Jerusalem Post; “A War On Whose Terms?” (07/13/2010) that

As is its wont, the regime has chosen to defend itself against this threat by repressing its internal enemies and attacking its external enemies. In an article last month in Forbes, Reza Kahlili, a former CIA spy in the IRGC who maintains connections inside the regime, claimed that the IRGC has set up concentration camps throughout the country in anticipation of mass arrests in any future opposition campaign against the regime.

(Link to her article here)

This looks like the “Tiananmen” option I mentioned. It could also get fairly ugly pretty fast. We have to remember we are talking about the Middle East here.

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He has a lot more real government experience than Obama had when he ran, he knows something about economics, he is articulate, and he is the only Republican who has actually offered a credible plan to change the direction of the country. We need a change in direction, and Paul Ryan could actually do it if he gets a chance.

He also has charisma and talks to people like they are grownups, not kindergarteners (sorry Bobby Jindal). He would be better if he had executive experience, and he seems to know that; he has hinted that he may run for Governor of Wisconsin. I think that would be a mistake, since being a small state governor would pull him out of the issues that are important to the country for too long. I think Obama has changed the political paradigm. We need a real change in direction, real substance, and not just a good-looking face that doesn’t seem to stand for anything in particular (like Romney), or that doesn’t seem to face a political challenge without folding (like Palin). Ryan may have a good-looking face, but watch him destroy Obama’s health care plan right in front of him and tell me he doesn’t have substance or the heart for a real fight.
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Now obviously, his “time for choosing” is not Reagan’s “time for choosing”, and he has had little opportunity to deal with foreign policy issues, but Ryan could really put forward a constructive program that could lead the Republican Party to a reawakening based on ideas and not inertia in 2012.

You will note that a few posts ago, I mentioned McCrystal’s opportunity to run for president if he wanted to, but did not say he would be a good president. I will now say that Ryan can run for president if he wants to and I am confident that he will absolutely be a good president. He’d be the best we’d had since Reagan.

Oh, and if you doubt his viability, ask the man who knows the most about Obama’s vulnerability in 2012; Barack Obama. He directly attacked Ryan by name after Ryan destroyed him in the health care conference, indicating that Obama was nervous about him and also elevating him to the president’s level instantly. (BO has done this before; remember Joe the Plumber? This time he elevated an extremely competent, intelligent, and experienced Congressman who is probably the leading light in the Republican Party. This one will not drift off after he flounders in the national spotlight.)

Just as Republicans have begun to realize that while this year may be similar to 1994 in many respects, they do not possess a Newt Gingrich to develop intelligent and creative out of the box policy ideas in the House or Senate, so the conservative movement as a whole will face a real void in intellectual capability when we no longer have Cheney.

The huge impact Dick Cheney has had on many levels of policy in this country is hard to overestimate. I am sure I don’t even know the half of it, but what I do know tells me that he is severely “misunderestimated” today (to use a Bushism I happen to like).

Just one example is his role in appointing Aaron Friedberg as Director of Policy Planning and Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs. That long and complicated title means that Friedberg had a significant impact on foreign policy for a good part of Bush’s Presidency. This is the guy who had written a piece about China’s probable strategy vis-a-vis the USA in East Asia back in 2000 that today reads like a history of East Asian relations for the past 10 years. It is amazing to look at some of his scholarship and consider it’s prescience. As Cheney’s and Friedberg’s influence waned, the USA drifted back into a pointless, endless six party talks routine that, powered by energizer bunny like State Department bureaucrats will probably never end until the final coming of the Messiah.

Cheney is largely to credit for the “Bush tax cut” from what I hear. I have read that when Cheney came on board in 2000, he talked to Bush about tax cuts and Bush was not extremely enthusiastic at first, but let himself be talked around and eventually pushed for the biggest thing he managed to do for our economy in his entire eight years. It probably would not have happened without Cheney.

“Darth Vader” came out of retirement after the end of the Bush administration because Obama was declassifying interrogation methods but not declassifying reports that demonstrated how effective the interrogations had been. In effect, the new President was making political hay by attacking the personnel who staff our intelligence and military apparatus, and who literally put their lives on the line to protect us on a daily basis. In the wake of successive beatings in 2006, and the recent Presidential contest in 2008, conservatives appeared almost cowed. They were nowhere to be heard when it came to defending the unpopular “war on terrorism” (which, despite being badly named, is worthy of our support). Nobody wanted to take on the entire media establishment until Dick Cheney and soon, his daughter, Elizabeth stepped forward to pick up the fight. Not only did they change the “issues environment” as weak-kneed conservatives found their voice, but it changed policy. The Obama White House largely backed down and pedaled away from the logical outcome of its initial statements; prosecuting US Intelligence and Bush administration officials for doing their jobs.

These three examples are only a few of the major impacts that Dick Cheney has had. In addition to the substantive stuff, who can forget his spanking of a debate against John Edwards in 2004, where the vacuous Democratic VP candidate looked like a rather dim high schooler being lectured by a rather above average Ivy League professor about the way the World really works.

This man has been more vilified than any other in our political history (if we exclude those Americans accused of actually shooting Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy), he has been labeled “Darth Vader” and had the grace to wear the slur as a badge of honor. He was painted as the “evil mastermind” behind a “naive” Bush, and every problem faced by the entire country, up to and including thunderstorms, was laid at his feet. Through it all he remained calm, collected, and always able to clearly articulate a conservative viewpoint that made so much sense that his political opponents were often reduced to sputtered, panicked, bluster within moments of his opening his mouth. Cheney does not let this get to him and focuses on building up a conservative movement that is prepared to govern responsibly when the time comes. He does more for the country more actively than people half his age on a regular basis, and has been so influential in a low-key way for so long that he is essentially taken for granted by Republicans and Conservatives who nevertheless benefit from his shadow. Dick Cheney is one of those people we are not going to realize how much we rely on until they are no longer with us.

They say we have a new guard coming up now. I am not convinced that they are the same caliber nor have the same mettle. Sure we do have guys like Tom McClintock in the House and we have Liz Cheney (who has apparently inherited a good part of her father’s intellect and drive) working in conservative circles, but I still feel unease when I read about the former VP in the hospital. It reminds me of the mortality that stalks us all, and I start to think…

What will we do without Cheney?