Israeli Arrow Missile

When I was working on missile proliferation at State under the George H. W. Bush administration, around 1990 the US began cooperating with Israel on the Arrow anti-missile missile. At that time the US was still a party to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which prevented the US from working on strategic ABMs. In theory the Arrow was exempted because it was intended for defense against smaller, shorter-range missiles. However, there was concern that the US was using the Israelis to do research on ABMs that would have been prohibited for the US to do under the ABM treaty. Now that George W. Bush has abrogated US adherence to the ABM treaty in 2001, the ABM treaty is no longer an issue. Hopefully the US gets something out of this cooperation with Israel and it is not just a one way street with all the technology flowing from the US to Israel. Israel is so advanced technologically they definitely could contribute, if they are willing to.

Financial Times Austerity Debate

The Financial Times is publishing an important series on the austerity debate: Do we currently need more stimulus, or do we need to start paying off national debts?

I believe we need more stimulus for the moment. The debt is bad, but we need to get out of the hole before we start filling it in. Somebody had an interesting point this morning: Europe doesn't need to provide stimulus, because it can count on the US and China to do so, and their imports will increase exports by Europe and thus provide the stimulus that Europe would have to provide itself. I'm not sure that's correct, but it sounds reasonable. I could be one reason why Europe is much less interested in stimulus than the US.

At some point we do need to start paying down the debt, and it will be painful. But the rich bankers in New York ran the world economy off the cliff, and they have benefited more than anybody from the bailout. The government needs to help the little guys who got clobbered by the bankers, meanwhile trying to keep the bankers under control. Once the middle and lower classes begin to share some of the government largess that has been bestowed on the New York bankers, then we can begin to start paying down the debt.

Somebody had the interesting idea of encouraging Americans to buy US government debt, rather than depending on the Chinese to do it. Americans did this during World War II, and the current debacle is not unlike the stresses we when through then, although it was created by Americans who were willing to destroy America to enrich themselves. This crisis stands on its head the old idea that business is what makes America strong. Business, in particular the banking business almost destroyed America; it certainly made it much weaker. But a handful of people became obscenely rich in the process.

The fact that labor is taxed so much more heavily than capital is a huge problem. The Republicans complain about the high taxes on the rich, but by historical measures they are low, unless you go back to the days before income tax. The rich may pay the lion's share of taxes, but they earn an even larger lion's share of income. In addition, they don't pay the tax rate they should on much of their income. For workers, gross income is usually pretty close to net income on which they pay taxes. The rich hide their gross income and then have huge reductions on the gross income that they grudgingly report. They hide their wealth in corporations, in off-shore accounts, with various tax loopholes, etc. They pay lawyers and accountants millions of dollars to reduce the taxes they pay by many more millions. One of the most egregious examples was the recent death of billionaire George Steinbrenner, whose estate paid no estate ("death') taxes. This is taking food out of the mouths of the unemployed and giving it to the filthy rich.

Republicans Made a Mess

The Washington Post story on the intelligence community shows that the community is a mess. But this is what the Republicans wanted. After 9/11, Bush and Cheney wanted somebody to blame, and they wanted intelligence to support their desire to go to war with Iraq, although Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. The CIA, which was the leading intelligence agency, with good reason, was vulnerable on both counts. It did not predict 9/11, although it did produce the famous President's Daily Brief article warning of a similar attack, and it warned of the danger from Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, which Richard Clark said were ignored. In addition, it did not have intel supporting going to war with Iraq, although when Colin Powell made his infamous speech to the UN, it scraped the bottom of the barrel and found intel to support him, although most of it turned out to be wrong. So Bush and Cheney set out to destroy the CIA, on the one hand by replacing the professional leadership with political hacks, and on the other by taking away CIA's leadership role and giving it to someone isolated from intelligence collection and, except for Negroponte, someone who tended to support the military over civilian intelligence.

So now we have this huge intelligence apparatus that no doubt pays a fortune to political hacks of all persuasions, but mainly Republicans, because Bush and Cheney had more time to get their guys in. No doubt there are still some well educated, skilled intelligence professionals in the ranks, but they are lost among the mediocre. I would guess that particularly the private companies, the loves of Republicans, are more willing to say whatever the bosses want them to say than career professionals, , who have some cover except in extreme cases, for example when Bush and Cheney ran a vendetta against them.

The good news is that the terrorist threat is not great, nothing like a more historical threat by another nation against the US. By and large these terrorists are poorly funded, not well trained, and poorly led. They may have access to hundreds of millions of dollars, but what is the US defense budget, something like a trillion dollars. It's non-conventional warfare, and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Indians inflicted some serious defeats on the white soldiers, but in the end the whites won easily.

Currently, the economic threat from China is much more serious. And if China ever decides to pose a military threat to the US, it will dwarf the terrorist threat from Muslims.

Article on Israeli Nuclear Program

This is sort of a "space cadet" article about the Israeli nuclear program, but it's interesting.

Lula, Celso Amorim and Me

Actually there's nothing about Lula and me, but I did have a run-in with his Foreign Minister, Celso Amorim. While I was the science officer at the US embassy in Brasilia, the US proposed a high level science exchange. At that time, Celso Amorim was the foreign policy advisor assigned to the Science Ministry. The Science Minister and I actually had a good working relationship. Things were going along relatively smoothly until Celso Amorim got involved. He was a real Brazilian nationalist, and was very suspicious that the US had some nefarious intention for promoting the cooperation. Brazil has been suspicious of US scientific cooperation for many years, since an American discovered the huge mountain of iron ore in Brazil that became Vale do Rio Doce, now one of the world's biggest iron producers.

When Celso Amorim became involved, the negotiations for the joint scientific meeting went from being cordial to adversarial. I finally felt that I had hit a dead end and asked the ambassador's office for some help. Presumably somebody from high up in Itamaraty, the Foreign Ministry, told Celso to be more cooperative, and we eventually reached agreement on the meeting. Celso and Lula probably share a Brazilian nationalism which was probably a factor in Brazil's recent involvement in Iran's offer to ship some enriched uranium to Turkey in return for more highly enriched uranium for its research reactor.

Brazil no doubt sympathizes with Iran because it faced a similar problem created by the United States. Back in the 1970s, Brazil bought a nuclear reactor from Westinghouse in the US. Just before the reactor was finished, then Senator John Glenn passed a law that prevented the US from supplying fuel for the reactor unless Brazil agreed to "full scope safeguards" under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which had not been part of the original agreement. Brazil was then a party to the Tlatelolco Treaty on peaceful uses of nuclear energy in Latin America, but not the NPT, which it considered discriminatory because of the different ways it treated nuclear and non-nuclear countries. When the US changed the terms of the sale, Brazil balked. It then had a billion dollar reactor, and no fuel for it. It embarked on a program to develop a fuel cycle to produce its own reactor fuel, which could have enabled it to produce weapons grade uranium, placing it in much the same situation Iran is today. The Brazilian situation was defused (I would like to think) partly due to my efforts while science officer there. But no doubt the Brazilians, including Celso Amorim who was in Itamarty at the time, have a keen appreciation for Iran's situation.

Draft Coming Back?

Today on "Morning Joe" both Joe Scarborough and John Meacham said they thought it might be worthwhile bringing back the draft because the people in power have no concern about sending people about whom they know nothing to Afghanistan. Hooray! The other side of it is that the military needs some people who would not otherwise serve in it. The military likes the current volunteer military, because by and large they are all "lifers," and thus tend to think alike. We need some people in the military who don't think like soldiers.

Elena Kagan is getting critized for keeping military recruiters out of Harvard Law School, but nobody at Harvard, much less Harvard Law School, is really interested in serving in the military. Probably nobody from a family with an income of more that $100,000 or maybe $200,000 is interested, except for a few individuals who will always want some excitement, and a very few who will feel some call of patriotism. It's not Kagan, it's America. How many of Sen. Sessions' affluent constituents have served in battle zones in the last ten years? Probably a lot of Alabamians, but probably not very many middle class and up Alabamians.

Supreme Court Doesn't Believe in Rule of Law

The Supreme Court decision striking down Chicago's restrictions on handguns shows that it lacks confidence in the rule of law. It believes that the legal system of police and courts cannot protect citizens from bodily harm. Thus, each person needs to have a gun. It's sad when a court doesn't believe that the law functions.

McChrystal's Firing Not Black or White

As usual, a Financial Times columnist has one of the best insights into the news. Christopher Caldwell correctly says that the McChrystal episode is more like Gen. Patton's press problems than McArthur's. McChrystal was not insubordinate or disloyal. He was too much soldier and not enough politician.

I'm unhappy with McChrystal for his role in the Pat Tillman friendly fire cover-up. But I suspect that his special forces were largely responsible for eliminating much of al-Qaeda in Iraq and producing whatever "victory" we had there. He was just a good man doing his job. Perhaps given his "black" background, he got promoted beyond his competency level. Maybe he should never have been more than a colonel or brigadier general running relatively small teams of exceptionally brave men. And it's not clear that his "black" tactics would have worked as a strategy in Afghanistan. But he was loyal to his country and his superiors. His staff may have spoken improperly, but he was not insubordinate. He did not refuse to carry out any order that I'm aware of. As a veteran, not a particularly brave one but one nevertheless, I am worried that a lot of cowardly wusses in the press screamed for his head, and they got it. They, like most Americans today, have little idea what it means to serve this country. We should restore the draft.

Jews Against Zionism

I am encouraged by this NYT story on American Jews who reject Zionism. They see themselves as Americans first, and don't support all the horrible things that Israel is doing.

Richard Cohen Lies about Israel

Richard Cohen's op-ed criticism of Helen Thomas is incorrect about the creation of Israel. I presume that he, as a Jew, knows better and has lied about its creation to attack Thomas. He says,

It was the plight of Jews consigned to Displaced Persons camps in Europe that both moved and outraged President Harry Truman, who supported Jewish immigration to Palestine and, when the time came, the new state itself. Something had to be done for the Jews of Europe. They were still being murdered.

In fact, Truman supported the creation of Israel for domestic political reasons. He needed the Jewish vote to get re-elected, and traded recognition of Israel for Jewish votes. His Secretary of State, George Marshall, opposed recognition of Israel as a state because of the problems that he correctly foresaw it would create for the US. Opposing Marshall was Truman's domestic political adviser, Clark Clifford, who favored recognizing Israel.

Richard Cohen only needed to read his own newspaper, the Washington Post. A 2008 op-ed by Richard Holbrooke explained the machinations behind the American recognition of Israel much more accurately than Cohen did, although I don't think Holbrooke is totally unbiased about it. I, of course, agree with George Marshall, and every other important person at the State Department, according to Holbrooke's account. About the recognition of Israel, Holbrooke writes:

On May 12, [1948,] Truman held a meeting in the Oval Office to decide the issue. Marshall and his universally respected deputy, Robert Lovett, made the case for delaying recognition -- and "delay" really meant "deny." Truman asked his young aide, Clark Clifford, to present the case for immediate recognition. When Clifford finished, Marshall, uncharacteristically, exploded. "I don't even know why Clifford is here. He is a domestic adviser, and this is a foreign policy matter. The only reason Clifford is here is that he is pressing a political consideration."

Marshall then uttered what Clifford would later call "the most remarkable threat I ever heard anyone make directly to a President." In an unusual top-secret memorandum Marshall wrote for the historical files after the meeting, the great general recorded his own words: "I said bluntly that if the President were to follow Mr. Clifford's advice and if in the elections I were to vote, I would vote against the President."

Jew Hatred Got Helen Thomas

Jews demonstrated the depth of their hatred and their power by forcing Helen Thomas to retire as a White House correspondent for her remarks on the Israeli-Palestinian situation. I don't mind Jews talking about and responding to her comments, but their successful effort to destroy her career was evil. Jews think they are God's chosen people, but they have turned their back on God and cursed him. The state of Israel is an abomination to God. Jesus was sent by God to the Jews to show them the error of their ways 2,000 years ago, but they killed him rather than reform. They have chosen the same course today. They have rejected their heritage as the descendants of David.

Memorial Day Recognition

With all the talk about Memorial Day, I just thought I would remember the two members of my unit, the 2/94th Artillery, who were killed during my tour in Vietnam:

* Paul Jon Kosanke from Iowa, and

* Willie Austin, Jr., from Alabama.

They were killed at Firebase Barbara in I Corps, west of Quang Tri on April 29, 1970. You can find their names on the Vietnam Memorial by searching http://thewall-usa.com.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell Worked

I wrote the following to my Congressman and Senators:

"As a Vietnam veteran, I oppose ending 'Don't ask, don't tell.' I am sorry that Congress is celebrating Memorial Day by imposing a new hardship on our military.

"I realize that the military pioneered racial integration by allowing blacks to serve. But gays are allowed to serve; they just aren't allowed to talk about their sex lives while serving.

"I think the policy change could have an impact on our war-fighting ability while we are fighting two wars -- Afghanistan and Iraq. I'd say we're ready for a new policy when homosexual sex becomes as common in the Denver Broncos locker room as it is in the US Congress or most prisons."

Memorial Day - Who Cares?

There's all this furor over Richard Blumenthal's claims about Vietnam service. As I said, I don't really care. Blumenthal supports veterans and looks favorably on Vietnam service. In that respect he is a welcome change from the majority of Americans who still despise Vietnam service. The thing that gets me is the Swift boat movement that attacked John Kerry for his service on Swift boats in Vietnam. The Swift boaters are the people who really hate America. They attack someone for serving his country and make it a bad thing.

I was not even a Kerry supporter. I was for Howard Dean, and when the Democrats dropped him, I voted for Ralph Nader. But the Swift boat movement made me realize that being a Vietnam veteran is a lost cause. Kerry did all right because he had some money and connections and then married more money and connections twice. But the average veteran ended up disadvantaged vis-a-vis his cohorts who did not serve. The Swift boaters made that clear. I thought that was one of the lowest, most unpatriotic attacks ever.

I heard some pundit say that a lot of the Tea Party impetus comes from the old Swift boat attack groups. If that's so, I can't see ever having anything to do with them. I already have this picture of many of them as retirees on Medicare and Social Security saying, "The government better keep its hands off of my Medicare and Social Security." Where do they think their Medicare and Social Security come from?

Vietnam War, What Is It Good For?

As a Vietnam veteran, I'm not too upset by Richard Blumenthal's statements about being one, too. First, I'm more upset that Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Dick Cheney were draft dodgers, just like Blumemthal was. Blumenthal's and Bush's career were similar, except that Bush apparently did almost nothing for the Air Force reserve or National Guard unit that he was in, while Blumenthall at least helped with Toys for Tots.

But it does bring back some unpleasant memories. My mother was a Sunday School teacher. As I was preparing to go into the Army and later off to Vietnam, one of my fellow Sunday School classmates asked her to help his application for conscientious objector status. I'm reminded of this by another article in the New York Times quoting former Congressman Chris Shays, with whom I went to college. Shays says that he avoided Vietnam service as a conscientious objector. Also, I remember flying home to Alabama from Ft. Leonard Wood with Charlie Graddick, a former high school classmate who later became Attorney General of Alabama, as Blumenthal did in Connecticut. Graddick was our high school quarterback and played in a local band. He was a much more logical candidate to fight in Vietnam than I, a skinny bookworm, was. On that plane, we had both finished one year of law school, as Blumenthal had, when the draft deferment for grad school got much tougher. So, we all got called up, but of the three I was the only one who actually went. Like Blumenthal, Graddick got into some reserve or National Guard unit. We were both returning after basic training, but his active duty service was over, while mine was just starting.

It's not all bad. I had basically run out of money to stay in law school. After Vietnam, I had enough saved, together with the little I got from the VA and odd jobs, to finish the last two years and get my law degree.

To me the real problem is that most of the elites in the Vietnam generation avoided service, and now many of them, like Blumenthal, have mixed feelings about it. It's certainly arguable that the Vietnam war was immoral and that they were right to avoid fighting it. But it's not clear that it was any more immoral than the Iraq or Afghanistan wars, which today receive a lot of lip-service praise from people who never served. You can argue that there are just wars, like World War II, but even there, what about the firebombing of Dresden or the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? War is hell; it's also the ultimate sport that makes cage fighting look like dodge ball, or the ultimate mental challenge -- chess with living pieces that don't always do what the rules say they should do. Because of that, some veterans come back stronger than before, others come back broken for the rest of their lives, and others don't come back at all.

Because American elites refused to fight in Vietnam, a disproportionate amount of the fighting was borne by poor, black soldiers, who didn't have the benefit of educational deferments and political connections to get into reserve units. Today, because American elites still won't fight, and the US has declared war on Muslims, the bulk of the fighting is borne by poor, white rednecks. There is no draft and many blacks have too much sympathy for Muslims to wage some holy war against them for George Bush and the Republican Party, now carried on by Obama and the Democrats. I think Obama is doing the right thing not to cut and run in Afghanistan, although he's a black man whose father was a Muslim. We may not be able to win in Afghanistan, but we can certainly lose, and Obama is trying not to lose.

Unfortunately, the Blumenthal saga illustrates another possible divide in the war fighting people of the US. In general, Jews don't fight for America, although they will fight for Israel. Blumenthal is Jewish. You would think that the US offering homes to so many Holocaust victims would make Jews want to fight for the US, but they don't seem to. I don't remember meeting one Jew in my two years in the Army. I don't see very many stars of David in among the graves of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. My poster boy is Rahm Emanuel, who served in the Israeli army (although not in uniform), rather than in the American army. I've tried off and on to find statistical data on this, but it's hard to find because of privacy protections. I think there were a relatively high percentage of Jews who fought in World War II, because the draft was so pervasive. But I'm guessing you wouldn't find nearly as high a percentage in Korea, just a few years later.

English Anti-Semitism

This book review equates criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, which has the effect of making Israel above reproach. In the process, the book he reviews reviles some of the greatest writers in English -- Shakespeare, Dickens, and T.S. Eliot. If you are not Jewish, it's a stretch. What Jews need to do is clean up their act -- quit persecuting Palestinians, deal honestly in commercial matters, etc. It doesn't help that so many of the people involved in the latest financial meltdown were Jews. By no means all of them were. In Europe there was criticism of the Anglo-Saxon way of doing business, but in America there were a disproportionate percentage of prominent Jews, from Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke to Lloyd Blankfein and John Paulson, among many others.

So the idea is that Jews can do anything, and if you criticize them, you are anti-Semitic. And if things get testy, there's always the cry of "Holocaust!" I don't buy it. Israel and the Jews need to get their house in order.

Israel and Non-Proliferation

I am worried that the Western world, including the US in particular, is too unconcerned about Israel's nuclear status. The Arabs and Muslims, particularly Egypt and Iran, will make a run at Israel during the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference at the UN, but are unlikely to achieve much. The US will be instrumental in running interference for Israel, which will not be there because it is not a member of the NPT. There is a lot of racial, religious and national acrimony between the Muslims and the Jews, but there are some genuine issues that get overlooked because people concentrate so much on the religious aspect.

Israel is the panic room for Jews all over the world. It is the place where they can go if they are threatened again by something like the Holocaust. Thus, Israel's bomb is really a Jew bomb that could be used in defense of Jews anywhere. An unusual question is under what conditions Israel would use it's nuclear weapons in defense of Jews in another country, as well as the more typical question of when it would use nuclear weapons in defense of Israel itself. If someone were to start another Holocaust, would Israel nuke them? What if there were a purge of both Jews and gentiles, like Stalin carried out in the gulags? Would Israel use nukes?

It's not a current question in the US, but what if in the future a state passed a law that discriminated against Jews as much as the Arizona immigration law discriminates against Hispanics? That certainly doesn't merit a nuclear holocaust, but it's moving that direction. Are there circumstances in which Israel would use its nukes against the US?

Thus it is reasonable for the world to ask what nuclear weapons Israel has, what delivery systems it has, and what its nuclear policies are. Currently this dialogue stops before it begins, because Israel won't admit that it has nuclear weapons, and it won't renounce them and join the NPT.

NPT RevCon Starts

The Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference started without me. About 15 years ago, while I was in Poland, Amb. Strulak was lobbying me to get US support for him to serve as Rapporteur. It's hard to believe it was that long ago.

This year, Obama has laid a much stronger position for the US at the RevCon. The NPT calls on nuclear powers like the US and Russia to reduce their nuclear arsenals. Usually the US has done nothing and is the object of criticism from the smaller countries who say that the NPT is a one-sided deal, because they promise to give up their nuclear ambitions, while the US does nothing. This year we have done something by signing the Start successor agreement with Russia. In addition Obama had his huge summit conference on controlling nuclear materials. We are trying to balance the scales a little bit.

Clearly Iran will be a target of this meeting. But the US and its allies must be careful not to alienate signatory countries by appearing to apply the NPT in a discriminatory manner. We need to prove that Iran is in non-compliance. The rest of the world will probably not accept a claim that we have to sanction Iran because we don't like them.

Other countries will also perceive that we are Israel's proxy in this dispute, because Iran potentially constitutes a much greater threat to Israel than the US. Meanwhile, Israel is not an NPT signatory, while everybody believes that it has nuclear weapons, and thus is technically more of a pariah state than Iran, which is an NPT signatory and which no one believes has nuclear weapons yet.

Oklahoma City Bombing Victims Worth Less than New Yorkers

With all the news talk about the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, I have wondered how the compensation for Oklahoma victims compared to the New York victims of 9/11. This article in the Chicago Tribune makes it pretty clear. The Oklahoma City victims got virtually nothing compared to the New York City victims. The Oklahomans got about $10,000 each, while the New Yorkers got about $2 million each. There were several million dollars in charitable gifts to the Oklahoma victims, some of which is still being used to put the children of victims through college, but it's not from the government, and it's still paltry compared to what the New Yorkers got.

One reason the New Yorkers got so much was that the Democratic leader of the Senate, Tom Daschle, was married to a lobbyist for American Airlines. This article in the Washington Monthly details her long lobbying history, although it doesn't deal in detail with 9/11. Arianna Huffington also weighed in in 2003. The connection is important for 9/11 because the potential liability of American Airlines, Linda Daschle's client, was huge. So, the government gave huge amounts to the 9/11 victims to discourage them from suing the airlines. Sure, there was some public interest in preventing the airlines from being bankrupted by the liability, but did it really get debated with the Daschles on the case? It didn't hurt either that the 9/11 victims were a lot of loud, greedy New Yorkers, contrasted with the Oklahomans who were willing to die for their country. So, the government made the New Yorkers millionaires while it did almost nothing for the Oklahomans.

I suppose that if you pressed Congress, they would argue that the New Yorkers were killed by foreign terrorists, while the Oklahomans were killed by an American. They are all equally dead. So, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that loud, greedy New York bankers got their own bailout after they themselves almost bankrupted the US. New York is definitely the welfare capital of America, with Michael Bloomberg and Chuck Schumer as the beggars-in-chief for a bunch of con men. No wonder no one suspected Bernie Madoff; he was just another con man in the New York crowd.

US Skating around MTCR

As one of the creators of the MTCR (the Missile Technology Control Regime), I am a little disappointed to see the US try to skate around it by supplying unmanned drones to Pakistan, as this Reuters article reports. Of course, when we created the MTCR, it did not cover aircraft, only ballistic missiles. It was the rabid arms controllers who wanted to cover cruise missiles, too, but as cruise missiles have become more capable, there is more justification for doing so, although skating around the cruise missile coverage is not as bad as skating around the ballistic missile coverage. Nevertheless,I believe the US weakened the nuclear non-proliferation regime by making an exception for India under the Bush administration. Now it will weaken the missile non-proliferation regime by making an exception for Pakistan. Maybe we are trying to be evenhanded in the India-Pakistan dispute.