Nuclear Non-Nuclear Powers

If the Bush Administration is going to make the world safer from weapons of mass destruction (WMD), it is going to have to figure out how to handle nuclear proliferation, which is the most serious type of proliferation in terms of the number of lives that are threatened by it. There is much talk of revising the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which has been relatively successful, but which has failed to prevent proliferation in a few very important cases -- India, Pakistan, and Israel.

The NPT differs in its treatment of nuclear weapons states and non-nuclear weapons states. Nuclear weapons states are those that exploded a nuclear devices before 1967 -- the US, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France and China. Russia took on the Soviet Union's designation as a nuclear weapons state. Everybody else is a non-nuclear weapons state. Cuba, India, Israel, and Pakistan have not signed the NPT, which is where the rub comes in, because India and Pakistan have both exploded nuclear devices, and Israel is widely known to possess a number of nuclear devices, although it may never exploded one. Israel may have tested one in South Africa in 1979, but exactly what happened when a US satellite reported that it saw a nuclear explosion in 1979 has never been unambiguously explained.

One problem is that the nuclearization since 1967 of these previously non-nuclear states has never been satisfactorily dealt with by the NPT. Their possession of nuclear weapons has been de facto accepted by the world, and they are not in violation of the NPT, because they never joined it. Iran is a member, and North Korea was a member.

A second problem is that the possession of nuclear weapons remains an indication of national greatness. Countries that aspire to world stage greatness, such as Brazil, are unlikely to say it is okay to accept India's nuclear status, but deny it to us. The NPT regime either has to sanction countries that go nuclear, or it has to allow other countries to go nuclear.

The third problem, then, is that the NPT calls on all nuclear powers to get rid of their nuclear arsenals, or at least to work toward disarmament, but they have not done so. There was progress for a while with the various SALT and START negotiations, but these are now ancient history. So, it's been accepted that once a country goes nuclear, it can stay nuclear.

The are a number of proposals to update or strengthen the NPT, but they don't deal with this problem. Until they do, it is unlikely that the NPT will be able to deal with the issue of new nuclear powers, which could include North Korea in the short term, Iran in the medium term, and perhaps Brazil in the long term.

Is Richard Perle Really Fagan from Oliver Twist?

Two commentaries on Pat Buchanan's book Where the Right Went Wrong (which I haven't read) have called him anti-Semitic for comparing Richard Perle to Fagan in Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist. The first was in an editorial in the L.A. Times by Jacob Heilbrunn. The second was in a review of the book in the New York Times Book Review by Michael Kazin.

I hadn't read Oliver Twist in a long time, and Fagan is a very unflattering portrait of a Jew. But if there is anybody who deserves an unflattering portrait, it is Richard Perle.

Dickens describes Fagan as, "a very old shrivelled Jew, whose villainous-looking and repulsive face was obscured by a quantity of matted red hair." Later Bill Sikes says to Fagan, "What are you up to? Ill-treating the boys, you covetous, avaricious, in-sa-ti-a-ble old fence?... I wonder they don't murder you! I would if I was them. If'd been your 'prentice, I have done it long ago, and -- no I couldn't have sold you afterwards, for you're fit for nothing but keeping as a curiosity of ugliness in a glass bottle, and I suppose they don't blow glass bottles large enough."

So, let's hear what Richard Perle's benefactor had to say about him. Lord Conrad Black, the CEO of Hollinger International Inc., was the subject of a study by his company of his misdeeds during his reign. The Washington Post headline for its report of the Hollinger study was "Report Details 'Kleptocracy' at Newspaper Firm." The article went on to say, "A report by a special board committee singled out director Richard N. Perle, a former Defense Department official, who received $5.4 million in bonuses and compensation. The report said Perle should return the money to the Chicago company."

Even more damning is an article in MSNBC's Slate about Conrad Black's personal comments about Perle:

Unchastened by the [previous] losses, Perle started his own private equity firm, Trireme Partners, which he founded in 2001 along with Gerald Hillman, a fellow member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board. Perle tried to hit up Hollinger for a $25 million commitment, with $2.5 million up front. Black resisted, in part because Black, a world-class chiseler himself, felt he was getting chiseled by Perle. On Feb. 1, 2002, Black wrote a memo questioning Perle's habit of submitting personal bills for reimbursement: "I have been consulted about your American Express account which has been sent to us for settlement. It varies from $1,000 to $6,000 per month and there is no substantiation of any of the items which include a great many restaurants, groceries and other matters."

In late 2002 and early 2003, negotiations between Black and Perle grew heated. Ultimately, Black seems to have concluded that $2.5 million was a small price to pay to get rid of Perle. In a Dec. 28, 2002, e-mail, he told colleagues the Trireme investment was, in the report's words, "a means to remove Perle from Digital's payroll."

And while the report documents how Black spent company cash on himself, he resented it when Perle did the same. The report, again: Black "told [Hollinger executive Peter] Atkinson in an e-mail dated [Dec. 29, 2002] that he was 'well aware of what a trimmer and a sharper Richard is at times.' " Black wrote about Trireme. "As I suspected, there is a good deal of nest-feathering being conducted by Richard which I don't object to other than that there was some attempt to disguise it behind a good deal of dissembling and obfuscation." (In Black's book, it was OK to feather your nest but not OK to lie about it.)

Black admired—in a grudging way—how Perle worked on him. Black explained in a Jan. 7, 2003, e-mail to a colleague: "I have been exposed to Richard's full repertoire of histrionics, cajolery, and utilization of fine print. He hasn't been disingenuous exactly, but I understand how he finessed the Russians out of deployed missiles in exchange for non-eventual-deployment of half the number of missiles of unproven design." After discussing compensation with Perle, he wrote: "My feeling is that we are finally dealing with Richard Perle of Reykjavik and the Zero Option, who realizes that mental agility must be applied to bringing us into the coalition and not straight-arming us like a bunch of NATO-ninny psuedo-allies."

In the end, Hollinger did invest $2.5 million in February 2003 in Trireme Partners. True to its name, Perle's venture firm has set about to try to ream its partners. According to the Breeden report, Hollinger's $2.5 million investment in the fund is worth only $1.5 million—a loss of 40 percent in one year.

Lord Black is no anti-Semite; he owned the Jerusalem Post and put Perle on its editorial board. While Richard Perle may not have red hair, according to Lord Black he was "covetous" and "avaricious." He is certainly close enough to a Fagan to warrant Pat Buchanan's comparison.

Marine General Opposed Fallouja Attack

In fairness to the Marines regarding my previous posting, the Marine general in charge of Fallouja says he opposed the original Marine attack, in which the Marines were defeated. The description by Marine General Conway in the L.A. Times of what happened in Fallouja, after the killing of American private security guards and the desecration of their corpses, tracks with what I thought probably happened. The draft dodgers in Washington gave the Marines the order to attack Fallouja, and then when the fighting got tough and Arabs around the world began to protest the deaths, the draft dodgers told the Marines to stop fighting, making them take the rap as cowards, when in fact the cowards were in Washington, or at least in the safety of the Green Zone in Baghdad.

First, the Marines did not refuse to fight when told to do so, and secondly, they were not the ones who decided to run from the fight when the fighting got tough. To me the key quotation in the L.A. Times article from the general is this: "I would simply say that when you order elements of a Marine division to attack a city, that you really need to understand what the consequences are, and not perhaps vacillate in the middle of something like that," Conway said. "Once you commit, you've got to stay committed."

What about Bush's promises to stay the course, challenging the forces fighting the US in Iraq (whoever they are) to "bring it on." They brought it on, and we ran like cowards. But the Marines were not the cowards.

Why Do Republicans Hate Veterans, Especially Marines?

Apparently the Swift Boat Veterans have another commercial out. As a Vietnam veteran, I have had enough attacks on my patriotism. I don't like Kerry because he attacked veterans in the 1970s, but now I don't like Bush because he is attacking veterans vehemently today. An attack on Kerry because he is a veteran is an attack on all veterans. Claiming that it is an attack on him because of how he got his medals or what he did during some particular 15 minutes in country does not make it any less an attack on him because he is a veteran. Veterans deserve support from their country. I pity the poor soldiers in Iraq who have to come back as veterans reviled by Bush.

In particular, I pity the Marines, whose courage has been called into question by their tours in Iraq. The Marines were the main troops in Fallouja and Najaf, where the US ran into serious resistance and chickened out. It makes the Marines look like cowards, but I doubt that they are. The decision to retreat was probably made by somebody else, but, nevertheless, the Marine Corps' valor is called into question by their conduct in Iraq. An article in the L.A. Times says the whole Marine approach to Fallouja has turned out to be a "fiasco," quoting a Marine colonel. The article says that the Iraqi force that replaced the Marines was created "to avoid a bloodbath," which of course I don't wish on the Marines, but it looks like when they were faced with a bloody battle, the Marines chickened out. The Marines should not allow themselves to appear as cowards because of decisions made by others, who are probably civilian policy makers who have never seen combat and probably avoided service in Vietnam like Bush and Cheney, if they were old enough to face that prospect.

Although the Marines in the field may not be to blame, their senior commanders in Washington certainly are for knuckling under to their cowardly political overseers. The current Marine Corps commandant should resign. The only senior military commander who displayed the courage to stand up to Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith and company was former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, who was viciously attacked by them for standing up for his troops.