« March 2, 2008 - March 8, 2008 | Main | March 16, 2008 - March 22, 2008 »
5 posts: (1) Pentagon Agonistes: The Fall of Fallon--The Home Front; (2) Petro-Price Puzzle--"It's the Earth Stupid!"; (3) Red-Phone Racism?--The Home Front; (4) Sderot Under Fire: A Soothing Song--Us v. Them; (5) A Playwright Moves Right--Class & Crass.
Navy Admiral William "Fox" Fallon has retired, having finished his career as chief of Central Command, which includes the Mideast. Author Max Boot celebrates the departure of a man who opposed the surge, opposes any threat of force, let alone its use, against Iran and rejects the "Long War" label coined by General John Abizaid, his predecessor, without having any idea to replace it. Military author Mackubin Thomas Owens calls Fallon "George B. McFallon" after Lincoln's recalcitrant General George B. McClellan. Author Thomas P. Barnett defends Fallon in an Esquire article that reportedly sparked the President to fire him.
The Wall Street Journal places the Fallon firing in the framework of a broader contest within the Pentagon, pitting General David H. Petraeus against his critics, as to the pace of troop withdrawal from Iraq. The critics focus on the strain placed on the military--great--due to the Iraq deployment. The WSJ notes that the argument is a serious one, best resolved by increasing troop strength.
This is a decision that, the WSJ editors note, only President Bush can make. It is time he does so, and proposes a big increase. Let his proposal, which will stall in Congress, become a centerpiece of public debate in the fall election.
Oh, security policy maven Frank Gaffney speculates that Fallon might be a surprise V-P choice for Democrats.
Energy-environment maven Ronald Bailey assesses the oil price picture. Soaring prices, expanding supply and contracting demand, are not a typical market juxtaposition. This is especially true when volatility is less in the unstable countries that predominate among oil producers. A key factor is the declining dollar, down 30 percent since 2002, against a Federal Reserve index of major currencies. Bailey cites a market maven who states that commodity traders are now trading petroleum in such volume that market speculators move oil prices today. Bailey's expert sees prices collapsing in a year or two, down to around $60 - $70 per barrel. Columnist Robert Samuelson opines that OPEC countries, who reaped $670 billion in 2007, four times what they reaped in 1999, now can function as an effective cartel. A key factor, Samuelson writes, is America's own failure to curb demand and search domestically for increased sources of oil supply. Amen. We are paying the price of having failed, over a 35-year period covering 7 presidencies, to adopt a rational, coherent, serious energy policy.
Harvard sociology professor Orlando Patterson brands Hillary's red-phone ad as racist. He likens Hillary's ad to the D. W. Griffith film "Birth of a Nation" in the film's aiding the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan, by its negative portrayal of blacks lurking in the bushes, menacing whites. Patterson contends that the images of a mom and sleeping children coupled with the specter of mortal danger, was intended to imply that African-Americans cannot be trusted with national security matters. Had the kids in the ad been black, Patterson, says, he would not have felt that the ad was racist. If Obama is elected, he can begin his post-racial presidency with a visit to Harvard, and make Patterson his first pupil.
The WSJ editors go a step further, identifying a pattern showing Obama playing the race card to deflect criticism, and wonder if post-racial will be Obama's mantra this fall. (Answer: Nope.) Pulitzer Prize winner Dorothy Rabinowitz expands this theme, gives us a few more stunners from Michelle--my favorite: she says that we should be "changing the conversation...instead of protecting ourselves against terrorists"--and puts a softer cast on Hill's "as far as I know re Barack & Islam, suggesting it was an effort to fill airspace under persistent questioning. Her column is well worth a read.
BTW, has anyone told Michelle that a Pew poll shows support for the Iraq war among the American public to be at its highest level since August 2006? Seems the good news is getting around. Bet that Big Mac will play this theme come the fall. Will good news from the front be the next "racist" remark?
Highly successful playwright & director David Mamet writes in The Village Voice why he is no longer a (his phrase) "brain-dead liberal." I do not agree with all Mamet says about JFK or W, but his 4-pager is witty and insightful.
An Israeli school teacher in Sderot, the town most heavily beset by Gaza-sent rockets, has composed a song to soothe children, who have been suffering severe symptoms of emotional distress under the barbaric barrage from the Palestinians. The comparison between this and the Nazi-culture the Palestinians feed their children could not be clearer (save to those at aptly-named Foggy Bottom).
One post: (1) Savonarola Spitzer: Semi-Solutions--The Ap & The Cap.
The resignation of Eliot Spitzer has sparked much commentary about the tragedy it is for his family, which no one disputes, and equally, the overdue comeuppance of a self-styled "steamroller" crusading reformer who showed his victims no mercy. That mercy is properly reserved for the merciful, and denied the merciless, seems to be understood by most. Spitzer's resignation (effective March 17), if ultimately an aid to a plea agreement, would show that Spitzer does indeed possess the precious quality of mercy--for himself, at least. But the U.S. attorney, in a rare statement, said that there was no plea deal of any kind made; here is a list of charges Spitzer could face.
Legal eagle Alan Dershowitz sees entrapment in the Spitzer case, and worries of open-ended investigative excess. WSJ pundit John Fund notes that Spitzer self-styled himself as the Enforcer--on his kiddie soccer team!, that he often prosecuted low-level corporate types, below the radar screen and after coercing millions from their corporate chieftains, and that he often lost those cases.
Spitzer was a supremely ruthless figure: his cold-blooded pursuit of political and prosecutorial power, his threatening to throw the awesome power of the state at targets who had the temerity to resist and protest their innocence, his coerced restructuring of companies by confronting them with Draconian penalties for the sin of resisting, his use of the press to convict victims in public without risking failure at trial, his calculated circumventing of the campaign finance laws so as to enable him to spend part of his vast family fortune. But most ruthless of all was his clandestine use of an unwitting friend's name as an alias to keep his trysts secret. It was a chilling negation of the very foundation of friendship, the marriage of trust and concern for the welfare of cherished others that makes for joy in life.
So what to do about post-Spitzer governance? His successor, David Paterson, solves New York State's immediate problem, gubernatorial succession. Notably, Peterson is personable and willing to listen respectfully to others, even those with whom he disagrees. The contrast is most welcome. But there are other problems yet to be faced, let alone, fixed.
The problem posed by the Spitzers of the world may be called the Savonarola Syndrome: extremes of ruthlessness used by political reformers, who treat and label their adversaries as evil, and thus to destroy them, literally as well as symbolically. The problem is especially acute when a public prosecutor has aspirations to higher political office, and pursues his legal career with political ambitions in mind.
At the root of Spitzer's career is an all-consuming ambition that, in its gross excess, is a danger to those who cross his path and, for public figures, to the public as well. It was best summed up in this timeless comment from Caesar to Antony in Act I, Scene II of Julius Caesar:
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look.
He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.
As with all problems of this kind, solutions will be at best imperfect, offering no universally satisfying answer. I propose the following: (1) public prosecutors should either be barred outright from running for higher political office, or else be barred for 5 to 10 years from running; (2) prosecutors should be required to seek special judicial approval, before using extraordinary tools against defendants; (3) prosecutors should be penalized for leaking evidence to the press, by being prosecuted themselves; (4) prosecutions, in extreme cases of trial by press, should be thrown out, or at minimum the prosecution should be barred from using leaked evidence in court; (5) successful defendants, save in cases certified as extraordinary, should be reimbursed for their legal costs.
Separating Law & Politics. Limiting or barring outright prosecutors from seeking higher office carries a cost: Talented prosecutors who could govern effectively would be denied opportunity, or at least face diminished chances for reaching higher office. Rudy Giuliani, New York's finest mayor ever, might never have been elected. But people who combine Rudy's talents as a top prosecutor and as a top executive are rare. All too common are less talented Savonarolas.
Special Case Authority. The routine use of special legal tools like RICO (Racketeer-Influenced Corrupt Organizations) for purposes other than originally intended (RICO targeted organized crime), can be curbed. Extreme asset forfeitures can coerce innocent defendants into negotiating a plea deal, that they may ultimately resume their lives. Put simply, extraordinary tools like instantaneous seizure of assets, loosened evidentiary standards as to establishing conspiracies, and the like, should be reserved for special cases against defendants in certain designated classes. Organized crime bosses, drug lords, terrorists, are the kinds of defendants who pose special problems for prosecutors, including their ability to cause great public harm by intimidating witnesses, and highly-skilled evasion of statutes. For such cases, advance judicial certification of a case as being in such a special class should be required, before such tools can be used. Assaults on ordinary defendants--even those with vast financial resources, should be prevented. Only where special public harm is in prospect should the awesome power of the State be unleashed in its full force.
Penalizing Prosecutorial Leaks. A common tactic of ruthless prosecutors is to artfully leak selected evidence to the press, thus sullying the reputation pf defendant. While this may be satisfying as to particularly evil targets, the danger of harm to the reputation of other defendants is too great. The First Amendment precludes forceful action against the press (whose unholy and eager cooperation with Spitzer is detailed by WSJ columnist Kimberely Strassel), so the abuse must be stopped at the source.
Limiting or Tossing Scarlet-Letter Prosecutions. Where public abuse bids fair to irreparably harm a defendant's reputation, the courts should toss the case out, or as a lesser remedy, exclude leaked evidence from trial. Consider it analogous to the rationale for the Exclusionary Rule, which bars the use of illegally-seized evidence from being used in court. The objective of the ER is to deter misconduct (its efficacy is debatable); a Scarlet-Letter ER might limit resort to trial by press.
Reimbursing Successful, Non-Special, Defendants. Finally, forcing the State to pay the costs of unsuccessful prosecutions might deter marginal cases from being brought. Defendants classed as special, as noted above, should be exempted: We don't want the State to underwrite the defense costs of crime bosses, drug lords and terrorists.
These I term semi-solutions, because nothing works perfectly. But by making a replay of Eliot Spitzer's crusading career less likely, there would be immense public benefit. Oh, and there is one more politician who loses--a little, at least: Spitzer was a super delegate, pledged to Hillary. He has stepped aside, leaving Hillary with one fewer super pledgor.
3 posts: (1) Iran: America Whiffs--Turtle Bay Tortoise; (2) Hillary v. Barack: The "Bombs Away!" Fusion Ticket?--The Home Front; (3) Palestinian Nazi TV--Us v. Them.
A Wall Street Journal editorial explains last week's Security Council adoption of a throed round of sanctions. Put simply, they add a few people to the list of bad actors, but impose no real added penalty on Iran. This happened despite tough language from the IAEA inspectors, on Iran's dissembling re its nuclear program. Not good news for those who fear of nuclear Iran.
Learn more in my new book: The Long War Ahead And
The Short War Upon Us
