July 19 2006

The world needs to understand what is going on here: the little flowers of democracy that were planted in Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian territories are being crushed by the boots of Syrian-backed Islamist militias who are desperate to keep real democracy from taking hold in this region and Iranian-backed Islamist militias desperate to keep modernism from taking hold.

It may be the skeptics are right: maybe democracy, while it is the most powerful form of legitimate government, simply can’t be implemented everywhere. It certainly is never going to work in the Arab-Muslim world if the U.S. and Britain are alone in pushing it in Iraq, if Europe dithers on the fence, if the moderate Arabs cannot come together and make a fist, and if Islamist parties are allowed to sit in governments and be treated with respect — while maintaining private armies.

The whole democracy experiment in the Arab-Muslim world is at stake here, and right now it’s going up in smoke.

Bush's action is also another example of what I have previously noted is a consistent White House modus operandi: That time and time again, Bush and his aides have selectively leaked or declassified secret intelligence findings that served their political agenda -- while aggressively asserting the need to keep secret the information that would tend to discredit them.

Marc Sandalow writes in the San Francisco Chronicle that "there is wide agreement that more than three years after attacking Iraq, the administration's mission to build a democracy that would foster stability -- the most often cited reason to go to war after ridding Hussein of his weapons of mass destruction -- is a long way from being accomplished. . . .

"According to Hisham Milhem, Washington correspondent for the Lebanese paper Al-Nahar, there is a sense that 'America's moment in the Middle East has come to an end, or to be specific, George Bush's moment in the Middle East is over . . . and that the Americans are drowning in Iraq's quicksand, that the American project, the drive to spread democracy in the Middle East, has reached a dead end.' "

According to Landis, "The Bush administration has two parallel policies: Bomb terrorists and encourage democracy in the Middle East."

In this case they were mutually exclusive in the short run. But rather than have patience and make some sacrifices -- rather than calling off Israel and calling up Damascus -- the U.S. sacrificed the Lebanese government, its greatest democratic success so far.

Via Romenesko, a Survey and Research Policy Institute poll finds: "Among those who watch Fox for their news, 59% approve of the job George W. Bush is doing as president and 29% disapprove. But among non-Fox viewers, just 25% approve of the president's performance and 66% disapprove."

The markets almost always rally on Fed dovishness, because to the average trader easy money is, well, easy money. When your investment time horizon is roughly 24 hours, and you're playing with borrowed chips, liquidity is always a good thing, while inflation is something for the little people to worry about.

Even during the '70s, when the markets were quite a bit stodgier, a loose Fed (and it was very loose) was treated like the party girl everyone wants to go home with -- that is, until the trend towards hyperinflation became too obvious to ignore and the little people finally started doing other things with their rapidly depreciating currency (like not lending it to Wall Street). And even then, the bond market's legendary inflation phobia didn't really kick in until Tall Paul Volcker, the Fed's answer to Luca Brasi, made it clear to all that he was going to snap inflation's spine with his bare hands if he had to, even if it sent the money supply to sleep with the fishes.

If Israel does attack Iran, the “summer of 1914” analogy may play itself out, catastrophically for the United States. As I have warned many times, war with Iran (Iran has publicly stated it would regard an Israeli attack as an attack by the U.S. also) could easily cost America the army it now has deployed in Iraq. It would almost certainly send shock waves through an already fragile world economy, potentially bringing that house of cards down. A Bush administration that has sneered at “stability” could find out just how high the price of instability can be.

The Summer of 1914

By William S. Lind

So far, Hezbollah is winning. As Arab states stood silent and helpless before Israel’s assault on Hamas, another non-state entity, Hezbollah, intervened to relieve the siege of Gaza by opening a second front. Its initial move, a brilliantly conducted raid that killed eight Israeli soldiers and captured two for the loss of one Hezbollah fighter, showed once again that Hezbollah can take on state armed forces on even terms (the Chechens are the only other 4GW force to demonstrate that capability). In both respects, the contrast with Arab states will be clear on the street, pushing the Arab and larger Islamic worlds further away from the state.

One of the reasons, I am pessimistic about November is that I don't see Democrats turning out in huge numbers in the contests we've had so far. Democrats are so afraid to lead and inspire, that rank and file Democrats are unmotivated to turn out.

And it won't matter how poorly Republicans do, and how many Republicans tune out of the electoral process, if we can't get our own people to vote.

Individuals within the State Department, I am told, have been reluctant to create an impression that the Israeli assault on Lebanon is as bad as it is or that civilian U.S. citizens are being threatened by U.S. ally Israel. If a conflict this severe had broken out in, say, Indonesia, the American embassy would have been shut down the next day and its personnel and families rapidly brought to safety....The diplomatic message sent by shutting down the U.S. embassy in the face of Israeli bombing would have contradicted the U.S. government message of support for the Israeli mission against Hezbollah terrorists.

Ledeen's utterly-untethered-from-reality "faster, please" theory of Middle East affairs — even after the various debacles associated with our Iraq policy — does reflect the persistent appeal of a vision of foreign policy in which supporting war, war, and more war provides an appealing clarity, and a sense of moral superiority, amid the otherwise-difficult problems of modern political life, and the perplexing complexities of the global stage. At home and abroad, it allows you to cast everyone who disagrees with you as either an appeaser or an apologist for tyrants.

Keret's short essay in the New York Times about how he and his countrymen feel about the current war in Lebanon:

It’s not that we Israelis long for war or death or grief, but we do long for those “old days” the taxi driver talked about. We long for a real war to take the place of all those exhausting years of intifada when there was no black or white, only gray....

Suddenly, the first salvo of missiles returned us to that familiar feeling of a war fought against a ruthless enemy who attacks our borders, a truly vicious enemy, not one fighting for its freedom and self-determination, not the kind that makes us stammer and throws us into confusion. Once again we’re confident about the rightness of our cause and we return

What this debate is really about is the mother of all chicken-and-egg problems. Can we use political reform to spark cultural change, or do we have to wait for cultural reformation before we can change politics?

Fiscal policy refers to the ways that governments collect (e.g., through taxes, royalties and user fees) and spend (e.g., through grants, tax credits, exemptions, refunds and rebates, and accelerated capital cost allowances) money. When these fiscal components are adjusted to better integrate environmental costs and benefits, ecological fiscal reform (EFR) is achieved. Financial incentives for environmentally beneficial behaviour are provided and economic, environmental and health benefits can result.

There is increasing interest in the use of EFR in Canada and elsewhere. Indeed, the OECD Environmental Strategy for the First Decade of the 21st Century, which Canada has adopted, calls for governments to give priority to ecological fiscal reform. Already in Canada there are a number of successful and innovative EFR policies in place.