Mixed-Up On Iran

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, July 08, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Mideast: As Iran continues to work on a nuclear weapon that will forever shift the world's balance of power, the U.S. position gets muddier by the day. What, exactly, is our policy?

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Related Topics: Iran

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Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says the "clock has continued to tick" on Iran, which so far has ignored the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.S., NATO and the European Union to proceed with its prohibited nuclear program. But what's it ticking down to?

The U.S. has officially decided to give Iran until the end of this year to halt its nuclear program and show its good faith as a member of the global community.

All well and good. Let diplomacy work. But what about when time expires, and Iran's still building a nuke? What then? The signals the White House is sending are mixed, to put it mildly.

Last Sunday, Vice President Joe Biden seemed to suggest the U.S. has given Israel a green light to attack Iran. As he said on ABC's "This Week": "We cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do when they make a determination, if they make a determination, that they're existentially threatened."

Within hours, the State Department corrected Biden, saying there's "no green light" for an Israeli attack. This, it emphasized, is a matter for Mideast governments to work on, and the U.S. would seek "even stricter" sanctions on Iran if talks fail.

And on Tuesday, President Obama reversed Biden's remarks, saying the U.S. had "absolutely not" approved an attack by Israel. "We have said directly to the Israelis that it is important to try and resolve this in an international setting in a way that does not create major conflict in the Middle East," Obama said.

Problem is, Saudi Arabia — the Mideast's major Arabic power broker — has already made it clear it would not stop Israel from flying over its territory to attack archenemy Iran.

Is all this an exercise in constructive ambiguity, keeping the opponent off guard by not letting him know your true intent? Are we winking at Israel and Saudi Arabia? Or is it simply confusion?

According to several news reports, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided not to ask the U.S. for permission to attack Iran. He fears the new administration would say no.

Given Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's repeated calls for Israel to be wiped off the map, Israel lives with a very real threat — one that will become deadly if Iran gets a nuke.

A nuke in the hands of Iran would be a game changer — one that would endanger not just Israel, but also Iraq, India, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey and Southern Europe. The world's balance of power would shift, and many of our allies would be in danger.

With so much at stake, is ambiguity the best policy? Not as far as we're concerned. In both word and deed, the U.S. needs to make it clear to Tehran that a nuclear weapon will not be tolerated.

Intelligence estimates say the Iranians may be as little as one year away from having a workable nuclear weapon. If they think we won't do anything about it, they'll keep working on it.

"I'm hopeful," Mullen says, "that . . . dialogue is productive. I worry about it a great deal if it's not." So do we.

Did NKorea Attack U.S. Government Web Sites? Associated Press Jul. 08, 2009. 10:03 AM EST

Putin's Patsy?

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By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, July 07, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Diplomacy: Russia's nondemocratic rulers over the years have shown an uncanny knack for detecting weakness in their foes. Russia's Vladimir Putin is continuing the tradition.

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Related Topics: Europe & Central Asia

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President Obama no doubt believes he was dealing with honest brokers when he agreed with Russia's leaders to cut U.S. and Russian nuclear warheads to about 1,600 each. For the U.S., that's a cut of about a third.

But please read the fine print. This is a "preliminary" agreement. In order for it to go into effect, Russian leaders say they want the U.S. to give up its plans for a missile defense system.

To do so would, in effect, be a unilateral disarmament by the U.S. against the most feared weapons on earth — nuclear missiles. It's an abandonment of our allies, including Poland and the Czech Republic. It's not an acceptable bargaining chip.

It's reminiscent of the time in 1961 when President Kennedy — like Obama, youthful, attractive, intelligent, well-spoken — met with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. During that meeting, Khrushchev quickly sized up Kennedy as a foreign-policy lightweight.

Within months, he tested Kennedy's mettle — erecting the Berlin Wall, and, the following year, sending missiles to Cuba to challenge the U.S. just 90 miles off its own coast.

In public, Kennedy stood up to Khrushchev; behind the scenes, he caved, trading our missiles in Turkey for the ones in Cuba. Kennedy, in interviews, later regretted his own callowness.

Compare that with President Reagan's 1986 showdown with Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland. That came on the heels of a U.S. deployment of missiles in Europe, Reagan's refusal to sign a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and his 1983 "Star Wars" speech. He was negotiating from strength — the only thing Russians get.

In 1985, Reagan had told Gorbachev bluntly during Geneva arms talks: "We won't stand by and let you maintain weapon superiority over us. We can agree to reduce arms, or we can continue the arms race, which I think you know you can't win."

In Reykjavik, with the world's media egging him on to make a deal, any deal, on nuclear arms with the USSR, Reagan said, "Nyet." Why? He wouldn't give up U.S. missile defense. With that stand, the Soviet Union's demise was assured.

By contrast, Obama on Tuesday called Russia, a country that's falling apart, a "great power" and reassured the nondemocratic Putin he'll keep Russia's interests in mind while crafting U.S. policy.

"As I said in Cairo," the president said, "given our interdependence, any world order that tries to elevate one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail. That is why I have called for a 'reset' in relations between the United States and Russia."

This implies an equivalency between Russia and the U.S. that simply doesn't exist. Russia comes up short on any measure of civilizational success you might want to use. Indeed, we have elevated a country that has invaded a neighbor, uses energy as a weapon against our democratic allies and refuses to help in our effort to halt Iran's dangerous nuclear program.

Russia is not a "great" power. It's a Third World nation with First World nuclear weapons. It's in a downward spiral due to its collapsing population, shortening life-spans and shrinking economy. It might not even survive this century as a nation.

This has been the U.S.' biggest mistake: to give Russia respect it hasn't really earned. Maybe, as it turns out, Putin, a former top KGB operative, is more clever than Gorbachev. He knows our president needs a foreign affairs success.

Before President Obama signs off on anything, he'd do well to review the presidential history of dealings with the Soviets. He can learn from both Kennedy and Reagan.

Mighty Mouse

Duty Done

Duty Done

Liberty And Liberation On July 4

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, July 02, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Mission Accomplished: The withdrawal of U.S. troops from 15 Iraqi cities makes this a time to remember the sacrifices that made success possible — and the president who refused to lose.

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Read More: Iraq

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The concerns that former Vice President Dick Cheney recently expressed regarding our forces in Iraq are not to be taken lightly.

Reacting to the announcement last week that U.S. soldiers would leave Iraq's cities in a 24-hour span, Cheney reflected to the Washington Times that "one might speculate that insurgents are waiting as soon as they get an opportunity to launch more attacks."

Army soldiers from the 1st Squadron, 7th Calvary, Fort Hood, Texas, pause for a photograph at an American base on the outskirts of Baghdad. U.S. troops pulled out of Iraqi cities last Tuesday in the first step toward winding down the war effort by the end of 2011.

The former defense secretary for the first President Bush understood that the Iraqis eventually "have to stand on their own, but I would not want to see the U.S. waste all the tremendous sacrifice that has gotten us to this point."

With over 4,300 of our servicemen and women having fallen to rid the world of the threat of Saddam Hussein and bring freedom to Iraq, it certainly should be a priority not to waste so much valor.

Unfortunately, President Obama's main concern seems to be something else: Keeping to his self-imposed, artificial timetable to end U.S. combat operations in little more than a year and get all our troops out by the close of 2011.

The president calls the troop pullback a "precious opportunity." But it's as much an opportunity for sleeper insurgent terrorists within Iraq, not to mention for neighboring Islamofascist Iran, as it is for the Iraqi people. That is why the U.S. should not get itself wedded to the feel-good notion that the mission is irreversibly accomplished.

With everyone fully aware that more violence is certain no matter how well prepared Iraq's more than 600,000 security force personnel may now be, the president warned of "difficult days ahead." He said he knew "there are those who will test Iraq's security forces and the resolve of the Iraqi people through more sectarian bombings and the murder of innocent civilians."

But he also made it pretty clear that the Iraqis will soon no longer be able to depend on America. "Iraq's leaders must now make some hard choices necessary to resolve key political questions to advance opportunity and provide security for their towns and their cities," the president said.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, speaking last Monday when four soldiers were killed, called Iraq "still a dangerous situation." Yet the president considers our activities there to be so off Americans' political radar screens that he is handing Iraq policy over to the increasingly clownish Vice President Joe Biden.

Sweeping Iraq under the rug is no way to finish such a gruelingly difficult job. The president's obvious wish that Iraq go away as he turns to other foreign policy challenges is in stark contrast to the manner in which his immediate predecessor handled the long war there.

President George W. Bush does not escape blame in his handling of Iraq. He should have recognized much sooner that the U.S. military strategy, which was not focused enough on counterinsurgency, was not working well.

Perhaps a Ronald Reagan would have done better on that mark. But once Bush saw that he had an intolerable situation on his hands he did something extraordinary.

Almost the entire Washington establishment of both parties ganged up on the White House to force a kind of "dignified surrender" down the president's throat. His father's secretary of state, James Baker, was summoned to co-direct what became known as the Iraq Study Group. Even conservative hero Ed Meese, Reagan's attorney general, was prevailed upon to join up.

But what the Iraq Study Group failed to study in very much depth was George W. Bush's rock-solid commitment to winning the war the terrorists started on Sept. 11, 2001. As Bob Woodward quoted him telling congressional Republicans visiting the White House in 2005, "I will not withdraw even if Laura and Barney (the White House dog) are the only ones supporting me."

Bush's response to a unified, defeatist Washington was the Surge — substantial reinforcements led by a new commander, counterinsurgency warfare guru Gen. David Petraeus. Most experts and commentators said it had no chance of succeeding. Today, all concede that the Surge turned Iraq around.

It is questionable if even Reagan could have resisted the kind of united pressure from political friend and foe alike that George W. Bush was under during the months preceding the Surge. As we celebrate this 4th of July, we should be thankful for a 43rd president who refused to allow another Vietnam.

And we should hope his successor does not undo what history will remember as one of the great instances of presidential fortitude.