James Earl Carter, Jr. (1924-2024)

Former President Jimmy Carter, 100, has died:

The 39th president’s sole term in office was marred by a listless economy and stubborn inflation, squabbles within his party, gridlock in Congress and the seizure of American hostages in Iran. Considered a long-shot Democratic candidate when he announced his bid, Carter would broker a historic peace treaty between Israel and Egypt and set in motion other changes that would dominate global politics in subsequent years.

Many of the achievements for which he was recognized came after he left office in January 1981. He was the most active former president in modern U.S. history, gaining renown for work over four decades monitoring elections around the world, fighting neglected diseases, working to raise living standards for the poor and advocating for human rights. He did much of this work through the Carter Center, the humanitarian nonprofit he founded with his wife, Rosalynn Carter, in 1982.

“Jimmy Carter will probably not go down in American history as the most effective president. But he is certainly the best ex-president the country ever had,” said Gunnar Berge of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in his 2002 speech presenting Carter with the peace prize.

Because of the Iran hostage crisis and moribund economy during his term, Jimmy Carter's Presidency is poorly regarded. But there were some positives:

But he had some notable successes in foreign affairs, including the Camp David Accords. Signed with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, they reshaped the Middle East by bringing a lasting peace to two hostile nations. And domestically, the president was able to push deregulation of airlines, railroads and other industries. He signed a law establishing the Energy Department to regulate existing sources of energy and fund research into new sources and other technologies.

If there's one thing that I remember about President Carter, it's his outspoken Christianity. He was mocked by the Eastern cognoscenti for the Playboy "lust in my heart" interview:

"I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times."

In his defense he wasn't saying anything that most red-blooded American males didn't identify with, but back in the '70's one just didn't talk about such things in public. To his secular supporters he had committed an unforced error by bringing up one of the central struggles of being an evangelical Christian---that God judges men not by their actions but by what is in their hearts:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.---Matthew 5:27

Jimmy Carter spent his post-Presidency showing everyone what it was like to walk the walk over more than four decades. He and Rosalynn lived humbly in Plains, GA and gave generously of their time and money to philanthropic endeavors.

IMHO, Jimmy Carter's failures provide the answer to a question that journalists liked to ask during the recent Presidential campaign: "How can Christians vote for a rapist, serial liar, and convicted felon?" The answer is obvious: we elected a saint once before, and look where that got us. R.I.P.

Iran is Working Against Trump

President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the 2015
nuclear deal (JCPOA) in 2018.

Sometimes a politician's enemy is so despicable that it's enough to cause one to vote for that politician despite his flaws: [bold added]

Iran is seeking to harm Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in covert online influence operations, fearing a return to power by the Republican nominee would inflame relations with Washington, U.S. intelligence officials said Monday.

U.S. spy agencies have “observed Tehran working to influence the presidential election, probably because Iranian leaders want to avoid” increased tensions with the U.S., an official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said during a press briefing.

If Iran wants to "avoid increased tensions" it should quit supporting Hamas and Hezbollah, both of which have rained rockets on Israel whenever peace threatens to break out in the Middle East.

Conflagration

The headlines across the country this morning were all about the same subject: the attack by Hamas on the civilians of Israel.

Whatever sympathy the Palestinians may have garnered over the past decade was blown away in a matter of hours by the deliberate large-scale slaughter of unarmed innocents.

More than 700 Israelis have been confirmed dead, and 2,408 wounded, according to Israel’s Army Radio. At least 413 Palestinians have been killed and around 2,300 injured in Israeli counterstrikes on Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

700 dead in an Israeli population of 9.2 million is equivalent to 25,000 killed in the U.S.A., eight times the deaths on 9/11. The Israelis have promised to take the war to Iran if evidence is found that Iran is behind the attacks.

And just like that the Middle East is on the brink of conflagration.

Horns Over Hormuz

"Red devil horns" appeared over the Persian Gulf on December 26th.

The scientific explanation is that it's an unusual conjunction of a sunrise--the bottom quarter of the sun is truncated by the water--with a partial solar eclipse.

Only the superstitious believe that it's a harbinger of events that will unfold in that benighted part of the world. Everything will be fine.

Again, Happy New Year!

Not Spectacular, But Better Than His Predecessors

(White House photo via WSJ)

President Trump's foreign policy is of a piece with the man; it's unpredictable. While generally a bad thing--both friend and foe can make catastrophic misjudgments--unpredictability can be effective. WSJ's Gerard Baker:

American strategy these days may best be characterized as something of a random walk.

Traveling in Asia and Europe last month, I spoke to U.S. allies and strategic competitors alike about Trumpian foreign policy. They differed on many topics, but the one thing they all agreed on was that we really don’t know what the president is going to do next.

Constructive ambiguity or strategic confusion? Who knows?

Whenever I enter the rabbit hole of a "conversation" (more like a harangue) about the President, I make an old-school argument: watch what he does, not what he says.

Last week, Mr. Trump took further historic steps, literally, toward an utterly improbable detente with North Korea. Last month, he demurred when presented with a limited and justifiable retaliatory strike against Iran for shooting down a U.S. reconnaissance drone over the Gulf because, he said, he was concerned about disproportionate loss of life. While he continues to pursue a trade war with China, he seems, if anything, to be happier when—as at last week’s G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan—he is de-escalating tensions with Xi Jinping.

Blustering/threatening, then retreating at the 11th hour, is the Trumpian style. It seems to be working, not spectacularly but better than his predecessors.

The Non-Power of Words

(Jeff Koterba)

Has it really been 16 years after the worst terrorist attack in American history?

A few months after 9/11 President Bush introduced the Axis of Evil formulation in his 2002 State of the Union address:

"States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.”

By 2006 the nation had already become weary of the lack of progress. WaPo:

“Nearly five years after President Bush introduced the concept of an ‘axis of evil’ comprising Iraq, Iran and North Korea, the administration has reached a crisis point with each nation: North Korea has claimed it conducted its first nuclear test, Iran refuses to halt its uranium-enrichment program, and Iraq appears to be tipping into a civil war 3 1/2 years after the U.S.-led invasion.”

Today prospects for peace are in a worse position than ever vis-à-vis Iran and North Korea, and moderately better in war-torn Iraq.

Expert at One, Expert at All

Departing from its financial commentary, Barron's ventures into the geopolitical realm with an encouraging, surprising prediction: "the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, [will] see its power and territory greatly diminished by the end of 2017."

The claim that "ISIS will fall soon" is based on Barron's assessment of the capabilities and motivations of all the major players, including Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Israel, and the United States.

Color your humble blogger extremely skeptical. The Middle East is more complex than the most complex system, and even simple systems produce results that are unpredictable. It wouldn't take much to derail the path towards peace.

Also, sentences like the following don't inspire confidence:

Ultimately, the Islamic State will be laid low by blowback from the brutality of the caliphate. Reigns of terror generally only succeed in countries with deep and perduring totalitarian roots. The caliphate is hardly Stalinist Russia or Maoist China in its longevity.

ISIS will be "laid low" because it's too brutal? That's what has been said about North Korea, Iran, and Syria, and those regimes are still standing. (It took an invasion led by the world's mightiest military to overthrow Saddam Hussein in Iraq.)

I subscribed to Barron's to read about financial markets, not editorials why "Trump is wrong" (or right) or about how we've reached peak ISIS without a lot of doing on our part. Of course, Barron's has a right to its opinion, just as I have a right to stop paying for it.

Sad Benefit

Burnt-out cars in Tianjin (PopularMechanics.com)

Early reports of today's warehouse explosion in Tianjin (about 75 miles southeast of Beijing) said that there were at least 44 people dead, hundreds injured, and thousands displaced. [Update - 8/14/15: the Chinese authorities still have not released information about the cause of the explosion, the latest count of the dead and injured, the ownership of the warehouse, and, perhaps most importantly, specifics about the chemicals released into the atmosphere.]

The scale of destruction is terrible to behold, but one sad benefit is that it allows us to put into perspective the horror of nuclear war, which most of us know only through grainy black-and-white photos and newsreels. The nuclear bomb that detonated over Nagasaki 70 years ago (August 9, 1945) was 22 kilotons, nearly 1,000 times as powerful as the Tianjin explosion. The most powerful hydrogen bombs were an unimaginable two million times more destructive than Tianjin.

Oh, that's why there's all this fuss about Iran.

Fear is Ascendant

Fear controls our lives.

Many of us fear bad or crazy people with guns, so we buy a gun ourselves. That protective behavior raises the fear quotient, because those who don't have guns fear everyone who has one, not just the aforementioned bad or crazy people. (It doesn't help in the gun debate, by the way, that opponents are calling each other stupid and evil. Anger and demonization of the other adds to the general meanness of civic discourse and leads to hardening of positions.)

The fiscal cliff has been in the news. This colorful metaphor is most likely an exaggeration of what will happen to the economy under higher tax rates and reduced government spending. True, there are some sectors, like defense, that will fare much worse than others (and for whom the cliff imagery may be apt), but few economists are forecasting a widespread collapse or even a near-collapse like the one in 2008. These comforting rationalizations, however, mean little to the stock market, which has been dropping in recent days.

Then there's the Mayan prophecy of doomsday on December 21, 2012 (if you're reading this after Thursday, hooray, mankind dodged another one).

Your humble observer can't wait for these latest concerns to be resolved (or forgotten) so that he can go back to worrying about global warming, the war on terror, Iranian nuclear weapons, and the breakup of the Euro. Ah, the good, old, less-fearful days. © 2012 Stephen Yuen

Empty Imperative

Earlier today U.S. President Barack Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown expressed their displeasure at Iran for building a secret nuclear facility. In their speeches they specified all the actions Iran “must” take. This imperative verb is used nine times:

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Those nations with nuclear weapons must move towards disarmament; those nations without nuclear weapons must forsake them.

Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow — endangering the global non-proliferation regime, denying its own people access to the opportunity they deserve, and threatening the stability and security of the region and the world.

Through this dialogue, we are committed to demonstrating that international law is not an empty promise; that obligations must be kept; and that treaties will be enforced.

Iran must be prepared to cooperate fully and comprehensively with the IAEA to take concrete steps to create confidence and transparency in its nuclear program and to demonstrate that it is committed to establishing its peaceful intentions through meaningful dialogue and concrete actions.

To put it simply: Iran must comply with U.N. Security Council resolutions and make clear it is willing to meet its responsibilities as a member of the community of nations.

But the Iranian government must now demonstrate through deeds its peaceful intentions or be held accountable to international standards and international law.

PRESIDENT SARKOZY: Everything — everything must be put on the table now.

PRIME MINISTER BROWN: On October the 1st, Iran must now engage with the international community and join the international community as a partner.

When I tell my kids that they “must” clean up their room, or my doctor tells me that I “must” lose weight there is an “or else” implicitly or explicitly stated. The problem with this President and the other Western leaders is that other countries aren’t afraid of our or-else’s. That's what happens when others don't fear, or even respect us. © 2009 Stephen Yuen

Terribly Un-Christian Thoughts About Iran

As the Iranian regime responds with ever increasing brutality against its own people, I think about the many U.S. and Iraqi casualties that have been caused by Improvised Explosive Devices that originated from Iran. I think about how Iran has done its best to destroy the nascent Iraqi democracy by arming death squads to kill innocents and foment sectarian strife.

And then I think about how the regime holds on to its power because the Iranian people are outgunned (but not outmanned). Well, we got guns.

Imagine: 1) a homegrown, not imposed, democratic government in Iran; 2) the postponement if not cancellation of Iran's nuclear weapons program; 3) how, with the removal of its biggest threat to survival, Israel would be more inclined to make concessions; 4) all this accomplished with no American casualties. To be sure, our hands would be wet with blood that is not our own, and that is why these are terribly un-Christian thoughts to hold on this Father's Day Sunday, full of portent and promise.

Reaping the Benefits

Andrew Sullivan, a supporter turned fierce critic of the Iraq War (primarily condemning the means rather than the end), assesses the turmoil in Iran as partial vindication of neoconservatism.

The core hope that democracy could spread in the Middle East - and that this alone would ultimately destroy Jihadism - is in some ways vindicated by this year in Iran. It remains, of course, a fantastic irony that they chose Iraq to impose this result, rather than waiting for Iran to demonstrate it. And a further irony that their opponent Barack Obama helped inspire the hopes to vindicate neoconservative dreams.

The mistakes that the Bush Administration made in Iraq were nearly fatal to the whole enterprise, but surely Mr. Sullivan could not be asserting that we should have “done Iran first”. Much as Iran’s interference caused immense mischief in the Iraqi reconstruction, an undethroned Saddam would have capitalized on Iranian turmoil to augment his power. In fact there is a strong argument that fear of Saddam, who killed hundreds of thousands of Iranians during the eighties, would have prevented Iranians from rebelling against their regime. With the Wolf at their door, Iranians would have kept quiet.

There were tremendous costs incurred by America in the Iraq War, but now that investment is producing a tremendous opportunity. Let’s hope that our leaders are wise and bold enough to figure out how to seize it. © 2009 Stephen Yuen