The problems of the euro have (at least for a day or two) faded from the headlines, but this piece (paid subscription) on Italy from Tuesday’s Financial Times is a reminder—albeit with no direct reference to the way that effect is linked to (unmentioned) cause—of how just how damaging Italy’s inability to devalue its currency against that of its Eurozone competitors has been.

 

Here are the key extracts:

 

 

It is one of the glories of Europe that Italy’s economic model survives its catastrophic politics. Government after ineffectual government comes and goes, yet Italian companies successfully navigate an enormous public debt, lack of structural reforms, the erosion of their competitive advantages, and intense export competition to keep the country in the Group of Seven. The model’s success, however, is largely an illusion: Italian real gross domestic product grew 10 percentage points less than the eurozone average in the past decade, according to Capital Economics...Investors should be worried, although not by the 120 per cent ratio of government debt to GDP. That is well managed, and mitigated by modest levels of private sector and household debt. Italy’s problems are in the real economy. UniCredit calculates that, relative to Germany, its competitiveness in unit labour costs has deteriorated 26 per cent since 1999. In that period, eurozone productivity rose 7 per cent – and fell 6 per cent in Italy…

 

 

One size does not fit all.

In a forthcoming book of public letters exchanged by Bernard-Henri Lévy and Michel Houellebecq, I ran across this quote from The Brothers Karamazov: “People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if one has only one good memory left in one’s heart, even that may sometime be the means of saving us.”

We often discuss the mystery of evil; this comment from Dostoevsky challenges us to investigate the even more profound mystery of good. I don’t think the author was indulging in our own age’s cloying romanticization of childhood; I think he was pointing to the striking fact that somewhere, deep in our memories, almost at the vanishing point, there is an image of things being as they should be. Examine the human condition -- fear, hatred, envy, struggle, war, heartbreak, disease, death -- and you will soon realize how unusual and counterintuitive this sense of the existence of good really is.  And yet, even in the condition the Calvinists unflinchingly describe as Total Depravity -- the capital T in the Reformed TULIP -- this sense persists.

It is the source of religion and love, and of the idea that transcending our state of war is not impossible.

JPod has a good rejoinder to my post on how neo-conservative Obama's speech was. Just a couple more things. It's definitely true that Obama has, over time as commander-in-chief, evolved beyond the utterly juvenile views he expressed as senator and on the campaign trail in 2008. By all means let's welcome, but also let's not make too much of, affirmations of American goodness and values that must appear in pretty much any major address by any American president. JPod thinks last night showed yet more growth on Obama's part. Perhaps, but I'm not sure how much. Consider: "The United States has been one of the greatest sources of progress that the world has ever known"; "no matter where it takes hold, government of the people and by the people sets a single standard for all who would hold power" (Cairo). "The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms" (Nobel). "We believe that [our childrens'] lives will be better if other peoples' children and grandchildren can live in freedom and access opportunity...We are heirs to a noble struggle for freedom" (West Point). What would have been remarkable last night is if Obama had left this sort of thing out. What was most necessary was that the speech give us a sense of all that we have accomplished in Iraq, of its strategic importance, and of our absolute determination not to let it slide away, and on that front, I found it lacking. Finally, a point on nomenclature (one that JPod also makes at the end of his post): an American president saying that we'll lead around the world and side with freedom is not really neo-conservative, it's typically American. I'm glad Obama said these things, but I temper my enthusiasm with skepticism about his follow-through abroad and horror at the ruinous, exceptionalism-wrecking domestic agenda he wants to make the centerpiece of his American leadership.

President Obama’s Oval Office speech was long on statements of resolve. “America intends to sustain and strengthen our leadership,” he said. He declared that “there should be no doubt: the Iraqi people will have a strong partner in the United States,” adding, “Our combat mission is ending, but our commitment to Iraq’s future is not.” But the speech was short on why -- that is, what America’s interests are in making such a commitment.

The speech did not connect developments in Iraq to U.S. national interests. The president spoke extensively of Iraq’s interests. He commented that the Iraqis are no longer subject to “a regime that terrorized its people” and that they have interests in preventing civil war, building democracy for themselves, resettling their refugees, etc. But Obama spoke as if the key American interests were withdrawal of U.S. forces and relinquishment of responsibilities. He gave no reason why the United States should continue to exert itself in Iraq as a “strong partner.”

When President Obama spoke earlier in the day on August 31 to soldiers at Ft. Bliss, he made a notable acknowledgement that the war in Iraq had contributed to the well-being not only of Iraqis, but Americans too. He said that “because of the extraordinary service that all of you have done, and so many people here at Fort Bliss have done, Iraq has an opportunity to create a better future for itself, and America is more secure.”

America is more secure -- now that’s a reason to remain committed in Iraq. That explains why Americans should not want to lose what was gained.

Strangely, in his primetime Oval Office speech carried on all the television news shows, the president chose to drop the comment that the war has made America more secure. In the corresponding paragraph of that later speech, all the president said was: “Because of our troops and civilians -- and because of the resilience of the Iraqi people -- Iraq has the opportunity to embrace a new destiny, even though many challenges remain.”

Evidently the president is not comfortable admitting that the war has made America more secure. Presumably this is because he repeatedly declared before he became president that the war had made the United States less secure. The president does not quite know what to do with the rather inconvenient truth that the 2007–08 surge strategy worked. In January 2007 he had proposed legislation (“The Iraq War De-escalation Act of 2007”) that would have ended the U.S. war effort in March 2008, before the strategy could produce its success. But now military, political, and economic progress in Iraq has reached a point where President Obama does not believe he can ignore it, is not willing to throw it away, and therefore feels compelled to remain engaged in Iraq as a “strong partner” for the foreseeable future. At the same time, it sticks in his craw to praise -- or even just admit -- what the war has done to serve U.S. national security interests.

It would have been useful for the president to have used his Ft. Bliss formulation when he gave his oval office speech. If statesmanship trumped politics, he would have observed last evening that the war not only freed the Iraqis from a sadistic tyranny, but it made America more secure in various ways. It removed a regime that threatened aggression throughout its region. It punished a regime that was hostile to the United States and contemptuous of the U.N. Security Council’s formal decisions on disarmament and peace. It demonstrated that a large price is sometimes imposed on regimes that support terrorism and pursue weapons of mass destruction. And it gave the Iraqis an opportunity to create democratic political institutions in their country, an enterprise that might help someday bring about a benign political transformation of the Arab world and the broader Muslim world. Regarding this last point, the French ambassador to Iraq, Boris Boillon, in an interview in Le Figaro the day before President Obama’s Iraq speech, made a stunning statement:

Iraq is true laboratory of democracy in the Arab world today. It is there that the future of democracy in the region will play itself out. Iraq could potentially become a political model for its neighbors. And, whether one likes it or not, all this has come about thanks to the American intervention of 2003.

If, of all people, an ambassador of France can make such an admission, the U.S. president should be able to likewise.

I say it would have been useful for the president to have made these points because the commitment he is rightly making in Iraq is not insubstantial, and it will require public support in the United States. Having made the commitment, he has the job of explaining the whys and wherefores to the American people. But the closest he came in his Oval Office speech to an explanation was the following:

Ending this war is not only in Iraq’s interest -- it is in our own. The United States has paid a huge price to put the future of Iraq in the hands of its people. We have sent our young men and women to make enormous sacrifices in Iraq, and spent vast resources abroad at a time of tight budgets at home. We have persevered because of a belief we share with the Iraqi people –a belief that out of the ashes of war, a new beginning could be born in this cradle of civilization.

First here, as noted earlier, President Obama says that “ending the war” is in America’s interest, but he doesn’t say why our future commitment to Iraq serves our interests. Then he notes that America has sacrificed enormously in Iraq -- true enough. And finally he states why we have persevered: because of a belief that “out of the ashes of war, a new beginning could be born.” What kind of explanation is that? Even if we ignore the redundancy of the phrase “new beginning,” we are struck by the vacuity of this pronouncement: We persevere because after a war comes a new beginning. That is the only attempt the president made to explain why the United States has persisted in its efforts in Iraq or should persist in the future.

Barack Obama spoke about Iraq with gross irresponsibility before he was president. He has acted on Iraq as president, however, with far greater responsibility. He needs popular support for his Iraq policy, but he’s is not going to be able to sustain it for long if he can’t bring himself to speak about U.S. interests there truthfully, specifically, and lucidly.

— Douglas J. Feith served as undersecretary of defense for policy from 2001 to 2005.

Where do I start? How about with something nice: She is a very pleasant woman with a nice smile.

Now then: I cannot believe I had to sit there and listen to the same numbers and assertions about how well the stimulus has worked, including the obligatory paragraphs about how her report has predicted that the stimulus package "would raise real GDP by about 3.5 percent and employment by about 3.5 million jobs, relative to what would otherwise have occurred." And not only did her own reports to Congress confirm these predictions, but the CBO agreed as well, and apparently, so did "respected private-sector analysts" (meaning Mark Zandy).

I know, you've heard me say it before, but I'll say it again: A prediction only becomes true when it actually materializes. For instance, if you predict that 3.5 million jobs will be created, it only becomes true once the 3.5 million jobs are created. You can't claim victory if you haven't gone back and checked that these jobs exist. Nor can you claim victory if the only evidence that these jobs exist comes from models that say that these jobs exist -- especially when they are models that have the assumption that the Recovery Act creates jobs built into them.

An interesting moment in the speech came when Romer explained her first recession experience, in the 1980s. Her dad had lost his job and her mom's teaching job was uncertain, but she got married nonetheless, and the wedding was more special because her mom and her two aunts did much of it themselves. I think the next sentence in her speech says a lot about how Romer thinks about the government's ability to create jobs:

I remember the tremendous sense of relief when I returned from my honeymoon to hear that my mother's school district had  found the money to continue her position.

I would have liked to ask her: Where do you think the money was found? Under a rock? Or in the pockets of taxpayers or investors buying U.S. Treasuries?

Overall, the talk was very much about how to increase aggregate demand; the answer was to continue spending more. She did add that taxes should be cut, but not for taxpayers making more than $250,000. That's because the government can't afford this $34 billion in spending, she explained -- as if letting people keep their money is the same thing as bailing out the states or car companies. She added that she knew better ways to use that cash to put people back to work than to give it to these taxpayers, because she knows how to spend that money better than we do.

She did mention using it to pay down the deficit, but when asked specifically about the deficit, she basically said we should spend more today and take care of the deficit tomorrow. In other words, more of the "eat your dessert now and your spinach later" mentality that got us into this mess in the first place. It's never worked with my kids, and I am pretty sure it's not the way to restore fiscal responsibility in Washington.

Overall, it was more of what we have heard in the last two years. The best excuse she has for us for why her plan hasn't worked is "it's not my father's recession" (which was the title of her talk), as if we haven't heard that "this time it's different" excuse before.

By the way, for me, this is the song that comes to mind when I think of Romer's return to academia.

The three hostages are safe and sound, and the suspect is in custody, according to the Washington Post.

UPDATE: NBC reports that the hostage taker tentatively identified as James Jay Lee is dead.

From Tuesday night’s Fox News All-Stars.

On the end of combat operations in Iraq:

There are a lot of ironies here. The Democrats complained for years that the Bush administration had had us at the cusp of success at the beginning of the Afghan war, turned away its attention to Iraq, and as a result we're in the mess we are now.

I think that is absolutely the wrong analysis. I don't know what the Democrats would have suggested as an alternative -- half a million troops in Afghanistan? I can't imagine any Democrat would ever have offered that as an alternative.

The irony is, however, that here we are with Iraq on the cusp of success when the war was handed over from the Bush administration to Obama on Inauguration Day -- we had a military success accomplished; Petraeus had done that with the surge -- ... and it's now turned its attention away to Afghanistan ... I'm with Michael O'Hanlon, the prescient and even-handed analyst from the Brookings Institution, who says this is a mistake. You don't declare an arbitrary milestone on a fixed timetable when you have no Iraqi government and al-Qaeda is resurgent. You do it when you have a stable government and then ... the president and the new leader of Iraq have a ceremony in which the transition is declared and mutually acknowledged. This is premature and political and it could be very costly.

File this under “too good to be true”: Due to its failure to meet the demands of its employees regarding their pensions, health-care benefits, job security, and workloads, the Ohio Education Association (OEA) got hit with a strike by 109 of its 220 employees today. This strike can only mean that the greed so often associated with corporations has made its way into the boardrooms of America's unions. Our reporters were there to cover the OEA strike. Look for the priceless quote from Amber Kirkwood, the vice president of communication, at 0:44 in the video.

Thankfully, because the OEA doesn’t actually do anything, the strike is having no impact on the millions of Ohio children who went back to school over the last two weeks.

— Matt A. Mayer is president of the Buckeye Institute.

I don’t usually do movie reviews for NRO, but this week I got a chance to preview a movie that will be released on October 15, just two weeks before the general elections. I Want Your Money is a terrific documentary limning the starkly different visions of Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama. It goes beyond the economic issues suggested by the title and explores the limited-government–vs.–nanny-state differences as well.

The movie mixes interviews, archival footage of speeches, and some very funny animation. The latter includes a segment in which Ronald Reagan teaches an economics lesson to a classroom filled with students such as Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, and Arnold Schwarzenegger (all of whom would probably get an “F” for the course). This is not your usual (boring) political documentary. It’s engaging and funny, even as it conveys a serious message about economics and politics.

What made seeing it particularly interesting for me was that I was accompanied by my boss, former attorney general Ed Meese. It was quite something to watch Ronald Reagan giving his 1980 inauguration speech and his RNC convention address in 1984 while sitting next to a man who was actually at the capitol or near the podium when the Great Communicator delivered those eminent expositions on liberty, economic freedom, and who we are as a nation.

This documentary dramatically shows the dangers to our nation’s economy and well-being of deficit spending and an unsustainable national debt. It also vividly illustrates how differently two presidents handled economic recessions: one pushing tax cuts, reducing regulations, controlling spending, and limiting the size of government; the other pushing tax hikes, additional regulation, huge deficits, and an exponential increase in the size of government.

As the movie’s flier says, the film is about “mounting government debt and deficits, and why it matters.” Why it matters can be seen in the contrast between the largest peacetime economic expansion in history and continued record unemployment sans recovery.

Hollywood will hate this movie, as will supporters of President Obama, Senator Reid, and Speaker Pelosi. Director Ray Griggs is probably risking his career in Tinseltown. But it’s a movie that needed to be made, and is well worth seeing. I hope lots of Americans do—before November 2.

James Jay Lee, who took hostages at the Silver Springs, Md. site of Discovery Communications, appears to be a very disturbed and confused individual: a staunch environmentalist with a militant anti-immigration slant, from the looks of this purported list of demands.

What does Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf believe? Is he a moderate, peace-loving cleric? Is he an insidious, smooth-talking, sharia-law-bringing fraud? Clearly believing the former is the New York Times, which recently published a piece that highlighted Rauf’s moderate statements and added context to some of his more notorious remarks (“Osama bin Laden is made in the U.S.A,” that the US was “an accessory to the crime” of 9/11). The Wall Street Journal remains more skeptical: their editorial board looked at two letters Rauf sent to (surprise, surprise) The New York Times in the late 70’s and found cause for concern. From the editorial:

In a letter published on November 27, 1977, Mr. Rauf commented on Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's historic trip to Israel and encouraged his fellow Muslims to "give peace a chance." That John Lennon lyric sounds good. But he added: "For my fellow Arabs I have the following special message: Learn from the example of the Prophet Mohammed, your greatest historical personality. After a state of war with the Meccan unbelievers that lasted for many years, he acceded, in the Treaty of Hudaybiyah, to demands that his closest companions considered utterly humiliating. Yet peace turned out to be a most effective weapon against the unbelievers."

He's referring to a treaty in the year 628 that established a 10-year truce between the Prophet Muhammad and Meccan leaders and was viewed by Muslims at the time as a defeat. But Muhammad used that period to consolidate his ranks and re-arm, eventually leading to his conquest of Mecca. Imam Rauf seems to be saying that Muslims should understand Sadat's olive branch in the same way, as a short-term respite leading to ultimate conquest.

To drive that point home, he added in the same letter that "In a true peace it is impossible that a purely Jewish state of Palestine can endure. . . . In a true peace, Israel will, in our lifetimes, become one more Arab country, with a Jewish minority."

When the Journal contacted Rauf, he gave them this response:

"It is amusing that journalists are combing through letters-to-the-editor that I wrote more than 30 years ago, when I was a young man, for clues to my evolution. As I re-read those letters now, I see that they express the same concerns—a desire for peaceful solutions in Israel, and for a humane understanding of Iran—that I have maintained, and worked hard on, in the years since those letters were published."

Well, Israel as an Arab country with a Jewish minority might allow for a “peaceful” Middle East solution, but it’s hardly the kind of peace hoped for by the Israelis. And that “humane understanding” of Iran seems to include more sympathy toward figures such as Holocaust-denying, election-stealing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than to people like Neda Agha-Soltan, a young Iranian woman shot and killed while participating in a protest against the fraudulent election. Check out Rauf’s op-ed in the Huffington Post (written not in his youth, but a mere year ago):

As protests mounted in Iran after the election, Obama rightly backed away from inserting the United States into the dispute. He said he was "deeply troubled" by the violence and said the right to peaceably dissent was a universal value.

As the protests continued, violence abated.

Many Iranians who were so hopeful and so engaged in the election now fear their votes did not count, Obama said. "And particularly to the youth of Iran, I want them to know that we in the United States do not want to make any decisions for the Iranians, but we do believe that the Iranian people and their voices should be heard and respected."

Khamenei indicated that the voices have been heard and respected.

All that set the right tone.

Friday, Khameini reaffirmed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the winner. And he made clear that this election was not a referendum on the foundations of the Islamic Republic. All of the candidates support it.

But he also said that opponents who did not believe the election results should challenge them through legal means.

This provides a chance for Obama to show Iranians that he understands their Islamic Republic and how it developed -- and to lay the groundwork for negotiations once the election dispute is resolved.

The whole op-ed has an Alice-in-Wonderland surreal quality to it. Where is the condemnation of the thug election tactics used by Iranian leaders? Where is the outrage that Iran banned journalists from covering the riots? Where is the indignation that the country blocked its own citizens from accessing Facebook or Twitter or even text messages during the riots? To seemingly approve telling citizens to use “legal means” to contest an election that has already been manipulated by those in power is absurd. This was not Florida in 2000; it was the desperate uprising of a tyrannized people, some of whom were willing to die in the effort to overthrow the dictatorial government.

Those who point to Rauf’s statements condemning terrorism -- which are laudable -- as proof that he is moderate assume that the only critical difference between the US and extreme Islamic regimes is whether terrorism is condemned or not. That’s not true. There are many important differences, ranging from our view of individual rights to religious freedom to the role of women in society. Rauf’s youthful letters and recent op-ed, along with his other statements throughout the years, suggest that he holds a different view of political rights and priorities than do most Americans.

The Editors critique Obama’s Iraq speech and argue that it’s vital to provide long-term assistance to the country.

Jonah Goldberg lauds the ecumenical and racially inclusive tone of the “Restoring Honor” rally.

Duncan Currie explores the disparity between black Americans’ optimism about the economy and their current unemployment rate.

Michael Tanner debunks the myth that “extreme” tea-party candidates are losing in the polls.

Michael Auslin reports that Pacific-based US commanders are growing increasingly concerned about China.

Michelle Malkin criticizes the Obama administration for putting Arizona’s law in the UN Human Rights Report.

Joel Alicea argues that there’s no legal foundation for considering Obamacare’s individual mandate an excise tax.

Charles Johnson reviews Cold War spy flick Farewell.

With just a few exceptions, the reviews of President Obama's speech last night were much too charitable.

At best the speech was petty; at worst it was myopic. The only acknowledgement of George W. Bush came when Obama said that the former president loved the troops and his country. That was it. How magnanimous -- from someone who was spectacularly wrong about the surge, who proclaimed it would be a disaster, who sat silently when a senator whom he later selected as his secretary of state called General Petraeus (the architect of the surge) a liar, and who selected a vice president whose own proposal for Iraq was a monument to vapidity.

After the carnage of 2006, the incessant attacks from the media and other liberals, and the report of the Iraq Study Group, the political class had uniformly expected a drawdown of troops, yet Bush confounded all expectations and implemented the surge. And despite Harry Reid's famous declaration that "the war is lost," it worked.

Yet because Obama was so heavily invested in opposition to the war, so wedded to a narrative of failure and defeat, he couldn't muster the grace, class, and wisdom to recognize the new reality forged by our troops and, yes, by George W. Bush. The best he could do was a cursory, almost throwaway line about how our troops "completed every mission they were given."

But the new reality is bracing: Saddam Hussein (whom Obama didn't even mention) is dead. He is no longer a rampaging threat to declare war on his neighbors; he can no longer exterminate whole classes of his citizens; he can no longer fund and provide safe haven for terrorists; he can no longer use oil as a weapon; and he can no longer pursue biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons.

Moreover, elections have been held in a Middle Eastern country not named Israel. A potential ally has been created in the most volatile region in the world.

But Obama couldn't be bothered with these trivialities. He simply declared that it was time to "turn the page." The page, evidently, of a tired and boring story that distracts from his more transcendent interests and his primary objective to "fundamentally transform America."

No one expected a victory lap. The work in Iraq is far from done, and the victory is fragile.

But this is a time when Americans expect their president to be not just commander-in-chief but also patriot-in-chief; to engender pride in the good and remarkable accomplishments of our warriors; and not to render a dispiriting assessment of the war's economic consequences. Obama needed a prime-time Oval Office address for this?

The speech was an insult to the men and women who gave their lives and limbs to accomplish an amazing, if contingent, feat. It was an insult to their families and friends. It was an insult to our allies (whom Obama barely acknowledged), especially to the Brits who fought and died alongside our troops. It was an insult to every American who believes in American exceptionalism.

WaPo:

A man with what appears to be an explosive device has taken at least one hostage at the Discovery Communications building in downtown Silver Spring, Montgomery County Police said.

Gallup has new data breaking down which congressional party the public trusts more to handle nine election issues. Republicans hold (often sizable) advantages over Democrats in seven of nine: terrorism, immigration, spending, the economy, Afghanistan, jobs, and taking on corruption. They are essentially tied with Democrats on health-care, and lag behind on the environment:

Full results here.

For a decidedly antiwar candidate turned reluctant commander-in-chief, President Obama gave a speech predictable in its substance and in keeping with his worldview. There really wasn’t anything new in the speech, and no matter the circumstances — and the gravity of what we achieved in Iraq — we were not going to get anything more from this president on Iraq. He believes it was a “dumb war,” opposed it tooth and nail throughout, and campaigned to end it. He gave this speech so he could say, “I said I’d end it, and I did.”
 
None of this excuses the content of his speech, but it’s reality. I wanted him to talk about winning or victory, but of course he didn’t. I wanted him to graciously credit former president Bush for implementing the surge strategy and inducing the conditions for our peaceful — and honorable — exit, but he didn’t. And I wanted him to back off of his withdrawal timeline in Afghanistan, but he didn’t. A change on any of those points would have made the speech memorable and/or meaningful, but it didn’t happen.
 
He referenced all of the above topics — attempting his signature “nuance” — but it didn’t work. His only reference to “victory” came in the final paragraph of the speech, when he said, “In an age without surrender ceremonies, we must earn victory through the success of our partners and the strength of our own nation.” What does that even mean? Re-read it. I have no idea. It seems like he really wanted to say something about winning or success or victory, because he knew it was appropriate, and that quote was the closest he could get.
 
He mentioned President Bush three times, and the Iraq surge once; but not together, and certainly not substantially. He reminded us that President Bush “supports the troops and loves this country,” just in case that was in doubt. But he did not credit Bush for turning around the war and seeing it through when everyone else — President Obama especially — wanted to head for the exits and leave the country in chaos. His Iraq surge reference came in defense of the surge in Afghanistan, which is a tacit acknowledgment that the Iraq surge worked — but why then couldn’t he just say that?

On the plus side, I was encouraged to hear the president reiterate our enduring commitment to Iraq. I hope he follows through to make sure we solidify the dramatic gains we’ve made there. I also appreciate his support for conditions-based decision making in Afghanistan. He’s still stuck on a July 2011 deadline for starting a withdrawal, but seems willing to loosen that commitment depending on how things shake out on the ground in Afghanistan. This is a positive development.
 
That said, the timing of the speech shows just how fundamentally committed President Obama really is to timelines. Instead of announcing the end of combat operations exactly on August 31, 2010, the moment could have been much more powerful if he had waited for Iraq to form a new government, and given the speech alongside the next leader of our newest, democratically elected, Middle Eastern ally. Now that’s a moment, and it’s “conditions-based.” But the president was hell-bent on sticking to the technical timeline, regardless of developments in Baghdad.
 
Finally, he shouldn’t have attempted to weave in an economic message; the words seemed petty and out of place. They were the president’s backhanded way of saying we wasted the last decade on Iraq, rather than fixing our economy. (Minor detail: The president's stimulus, passed in his first month in office, will cost more than $100 more than the entire cost of the Iraq war.) His economic posturing took the focus off the troops and their accomplishments, and was unnecessary.

— Pete Hegseth is executive director of Vets for Freedom.

Via the Daily Telegraph:

In his new book, A Journey, Mr Blair writes that the former US president was confused by the presence of Guy Verhofstadt at the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa. “He didn’t know or recognise Guy, whose advice he listened to with considerable astonishment,” Mr Blair writes. “He then turned to me and whispered, ‘Who is this guy?’ ‘He is the prime minister of Belgium,’ I said. Belgium? George said, clearly aghast at the possible full extent of his stupidity. ‘Belgium is not part of the G8’.” Mr Blair explained to Mr Bush that Mr Verhofstadt was there as “president of Europe”. Belgium held the presidency of the EU council at the time. Mr Bush responded: “You got the Belgians running Europe?” before shaking his head, “now aghast at our stupidity”, Mr Blair writes.

“Running Europe”? Well, not quite, but W's aghastness will do nicely. In fact, very nicely.

As for not knowing who Verhofstadt was, one can only admire the president's shrewdly selective assessment of what information is worth knowing -- and what is not.

In case you were wondering, the current Belgian prime minister (if only, I think, on a caretaker basis) is Yves Leterme.

Yes, yes, I looked it up.

The NYT reports:

Jeff Greene, a Florida real estate developer who lost one of the year’s most bitter and closely watched primary elections, is preparing to sue The St. Petersburg Times and The Miami Herald for libel, claiming that articles they published cost him his bid for the United States Senate.

Mr. Greene lost the Democratic primary last week to Kendrick B. Meek, who will face Gov. Charlie Crist, an independent, and Marco Rubio, a Republican, in November.

A libel suit is a rare step for a political figure. While many candidates complain about unfair news coverage, few go as far as making their complaints a legal case. But Mr. Greene, who has deep pockets and apparently the wherewithal to pursue the case all the way to trial, has proved he is no ordinary politician.

Dogged by rumors about wild parties aboard his 145-foot yacht and about fraudulent real estate deals, Mr. Greene will seek at least $500 million in damages in part, he said, to teach the news media a lesson. “I want to send a message to every newspaper in the country: Do your homework,” he said Tuesday in a telephone interview. “I deserve to have the record corrected, and they deserve to be punished.”

Notre Dame philosophy professor David Solomon posted a devastating analysis on his “Ethics and Culture in the News” blog on a troubling campus development: the sacking of long-time ND staffer Bill Kirk, the only man from the university administration who joined an on-campus pro-life “NDResponse” rally last year (also attended by South Bend Bishop John D’Arcy) protesting the selection of Barack Obama as the commencement speaker.

Kirk and his wife Elizabeth are prominent campus abortion foes (she was assistant director of one of the few institutes on campus that is avowedly pro-life and orthodox). Now their voices have been silenced, and by the same people who gnash their teeth and pluck their beards about living wages, unionization, fair treatment of employees, and the rest of the Catholic Left’s lobbying agenda. One can hear the college brass channeling Henry II: Will no one rid us of this troublesome pro-life Associate Vice-President for Residence Life?

Here is just a piece of Prof. Solomon’s take, which adds more tarnish to the Golden Dome:

As official faculty advisor to the Right to Life Club, Elizabeth served as primary advisor to the student coalition formed in the spring of 2009 as “NDResponse” and served as a conduit for many, including junior, untenured faculty members, who were unwilling to get involved directly for fear of reprisal. Without compromising his administrative duties, Bill stood with the students of NDResponse at their rally on the South Quad on Commencement day. He was the only senior administrator at Notre Dame willing to do so. With the firing of Bill Kirk, Notre Dame will almost certainly also be deprived of Elizabeth’s talents. 

At the time Bill took part in the NDResponse rally, many people commented on the courage it took for him to stand with his wife and other witnesses to this protest of Notre Dame’s decision to award President Obama an honorary degree. I personally discounted these worries, believing that the Notre Dame administration would admire him for his principled stand on a matter so close to the Catholic heart of Notre Dame, even if they disagreed with his particular action. The administration welcomed President Obama’s sharp dissent from and attack on central Catholic teaching on life. It seemed only reasonable that they would equally welcome dissent from university policy by such a loyal Catholic and member of the Notre Dame family as Bill Kirk—especially when his dissent was made in the name of the Catholic principles at Notre Dame’s heart and in the company of his bishop.

Perhaps, alas, there was reason for Bill Kirk to be worried about his participation in NDResponse after all. There is no doubt that the treatment of Bill Kirk this summer will have a chilling effect on the participation of other administrators, unprotected by the safety net of tenure, in the great debates about public policy and moral principle into which Notre Dame will be inevitably drawn. A number of other administrators have told me that in light of Bill Kirk’s treatment, they will in the future keep their heads down rather than dissent from the policies of the central administration. It will be tragic if these pressures toward uniformity become a permanent feature of Notre Dame life. Universities are no place for yes-men.

By the way, Kirk also had the temerity of requiring the school’s pampered athletes to live by the same rules of conduct expected of all students. So there will surely be some joy over his ouster this coming weekend at the alumni tailgate.

In the movie Bull Durham, the character Crash Davis, played by Kevin Costner, is a catcher who plays 12 seasons in baseball's minor leagues. Today, the Detroit Tigers have called up Max St. Pierre, a catcher who has spent 14 seasons in the minor leagues and tonight will wear a big-league uniform for the first time. So this is your feelgood story of the day.

President Obama’s characteristic ambivalence about American purpose and power was the unstated theme running through last night’s Oval Office address. As is often the case, what the president actually said was in some respect less significant that what he could not bring himself to say. And the messages that the president did send over the past week are likely to confuse the American people, the foreign policy and defense bureaucracies, and allies and adversaries alike.

1. Lessons Learned. The president’s continued distortion of the nature and success of the surge strategy remains an insuperable obstacle to applying the lessons learned to ongoing and future military operations. It’s not a matter of the president’s admitting that his own judgment was profoundly mistaken, but rather of his acknowledging that the surge was a radical shift of overall strategy that brought ends and means into proper balance for the first time. Protecting the Iraqi population -- correctly identified as the conflict’s center of gravity -- meant moving troops out of isolated Forward Operating Bases and seizing back the initiative from the insurgents at the certain cost of higher American casualties in the short term.

Yet President Obama persists in misstating the nature of the surge, minimizing its decisive effects, and misplacing its true authorship. “The Americans who served in Iraq” “shifted tactics,” he said last night. That was not the case, of course. The surge was a political decision made in the Oval Office and carried out on the ground by fresh military leadership, whose failed predecessors had treated a light footprint and force protection as ends rather than means.

2. Grand Strategy. Last night’s speech continues to treat al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies as discrete threats wholly unconnected to any broader ideological underpinnings. Both are manifestations of the armed wing of political Islam, a violent ideology whose existence this administration continues to deny. Yet how does the administration justify the sacrifices called for in Afghanistan -- where 19 Americans were killed since Saturday -- without linking these sacrifices to broader aims and wider threats? And when will the administration begin treating the American people as grown-ups by honestly acknowledging the source and nature of threats we’re reminded of every day of at every airport and government office?

3. Iraq’s Future. Last night’s speech marks a substantial improvement over the president’s weekly radio address, in which he gave the unmistakable impression that the Iraqis are entirely on the own: “Like any sovereign nation, Iraq is free to chart its own course. And by the end of next year, all of our troops will be home.” As he is wont to do, the president walked back this remark with an equally unqualified assertion: “This new approach reflects our long-term partnership with Iraq -- one based on mutual interest and mutual respect.” What the Iraqis are meant to take from this contradiction is anybody’s guess, but the same confusion also applies closer to home. To cite just one example, how far is the U.S. committed to defending Iraq against the relentless Iranian subversion that the president’s aides acknowledge?

4. Presidential Guidance. Anyone who’s worked in official Washington knows that presidential statements are the gold standard for the officials who are charged with developing and carrying out policy. The president’s words are quoted as the basis for practically every initiative being considered, even if the real stakes are merely inter-office or inter-agency disputes at State or Defense. When the president leaves matters unclear, as in this case, the result is often freelancing or muddle or policy paralysis. How -- and how much -- does Iraq still matter, as a matter of both moral responsibility and regional strategy? For instance, what are U.S. responsibilities for Iraq’s internally displaced (2.7 million people) and refugee (2 million) populations, categories that include most of Iraq’s pre-war Christian minority?

5. Historical Perspective. It’s not enough to acknowledge the Iraq War as “a remarkable chapter in the history of the United States” and immediately conclude: “Now, it’s time to turn the page.” No one expects this president to revise his opposition to the war or to deliver a definitive historical judgment on its costs and benefits, which in any case means weighing incommensurables. But some appreciation for the progress Iraq has made -- and some acknowledgment of the toxic legacy of the Republic of Fear -- would have been welcome, especially as measured against Iraq’s neighbors. For instance, the nonpartisan Brookings Iraq Index cites measurable progress in various areas -- including on its Index of Political Freedom, which ranks Iraq fourth in the region, behind Israel, Lebanon, and Morocco but well ahead of such U.S. allies as Jordan and Egypt, not to mention bottom-dwellers like Saudi Arabia and most of the Gulf states. And Iraq’s hard-fought constitution, notwithstanding some very real defects, is miles ahead of any regional counterpart in fostering democracy and some respect for human rights.

As a candidate for office, Barack Obama liked to say that “words matter.” As president, he would do well to remember that his words matter still more.

-- John F. Cullinan has written about Iraq for NRO since 2002.

There's a division on the right over Obama's speech that breaks down roughly as--it was great for an Obama speech (the pro-camp), or it was an Obama speech (the anti-camp). We're in the latter camp, as you can see in this morning's editorial. But other people I respect disagree. My friend JPod goes so far as to label it basically a neo-con speech. But I've never known a neo-con to brag about how rapidly he's drawn down U.S. troops in an ongoing conflict, unecessarily putting at risk hard-won gains on the ground. Make no mistake--this fundamentally was a turning the page speech, as the headline writers recognized (Wall Street Journal: "Obama Marks End of Iraq War to Focus on Economy".) John notes the neo-conesque line that we will lead "among those who are willing to work together to expand freedom and opportunity for all people." The very next line, though, was "That effort must begin within our own borders." Obama went on to use the troops and their sacrifice as a reason that we should unite around his effort to spend us into the ground here at home. Unless you're grading on a very sharp curve, this is shabby stuff. In Iraq, the most important questions going forward are what kind of government we get and whether we keep troops there beyond 2011. It's hard to believe that Obama will actually turn the Iraqis away if they ask for a continued U.S. troop presence, but we do know, if last night is any guide, he'll be conflicted and ambivalent about it.

Numbers claims in Wisconsin are puffed up, says the MacIver Institute:

Although they are touted and promoted by policy makers and opinion leaders across the state, accurately defining and keeping track of ‘green jobs’ has proven nearly impossible in Wisconsin. ... In all, at the time of our search, the [Wisconsin Wind Works] database claimed 7,632 jobs among the eight manufacturers that were current primary suppliers to the wind industry.  Yet, the MacIver News Service was only able to identify 31 jobs at those companies which were specifically tied to wind energy related products.

Former U.S. representative to the U.N. John Bolton tells National Review Online that President Obama’s speech last night was “disappointing but not surprising.” “The most significant thing about Iraq is the idea that he wants to ‘turn the page,’” says Bolton. “That may satisfy the left wing of the Democratic party, but it’s impossible to turn the page on Iraq given the continuing strategic interest we have there. I think it’s indicative of the isolationism that forms a big part of his philosophy. It reminded me of George McGovern’s 1972 Convention speech when he kept saying ‘Come home America.’”

Bolton also warned that the president’s commitment to a scheduled withdrawal from Afghanistan was dangerous: “I think this is a decision driven by his domestic political consideration and I think we’re going to pay for it down the line. I still see him as having no strategic vision, no real understanding what the implications of these steps are, but continuing to play the playbook that he’s been following since his campaign.”

Finally, unlike other commentators, Bolton wouldn’t have given Obama brownie points for a hat tip to former president George W. Bush. “I don’t pay much attention to rhetorical flourishes like saying a nice thing about George Bush or praising the troops,” he says. “It just shows how far we’ve come that saying a nice thing about the troops cheers people up. Even George McGovern had the wit to do that.”

Perhaps we have already succeeded in making the Afghans more like us.

Byron York further analyzes that recent Gallup poll: 

look at the swings away from the Democratic party: a 38-point swing on health care, a 27-point swing on the economy, a 26-point swing on handling corruption in government, a 29-point swing on combating terrorism. All the progress Democrats had made on those issues during the Bush years has gone away. Is it any wonder Democratic strategists are approaching this November's elections in a state of panic?

And these are on issues Democrats said were their priorities. Harry Reid better hope his election isn't about congressional job performance. 

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a potential 2012 presidential candidate, is slamming the door shut on Obamacare. On Tuesday, the Republican issued an executive order directing state agencies to reject discretionary funds related to the health-care law passed by Congress earlier this year. It is a move, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports, that could block the state from being ladled more than $1 billion by the federal government.

Pawlenty, in a phone interview, says the decision was easy. “Obamacare is one of the most misguided pieces of legislation in the modern history of the country,” he says. “All of us need to do everything we can to stop it, delay it, and limit it in any way that we can.” States, he adds, have the right to direct their own health-care policy, free of directives from Washington.

“[Democrats] have bloated a broken system,” Pawlenty tells us. “They have not done anything to contain costs. They have ignored market forces and individual responsibility. Instead, they created a governmental monstrosity.”

Looking ahead toward 2012, Pawlenty predicts that health care “will remain a significant issue — really an icon of the misguided, government-centric, top-down approaches offered by the Obama administration.”

“Regardless of its momentum as a political issue, it is just fundamentally a bad idea that needs to be confronted, defeated, and repealed,” Pawlenty says. When asked whether his anti-Obamacare message is resonating on the trail — he’s recently traveled to Iowa and New Hampshire—the governor is a bit coy. “I’m not sure if it is or not,” he says, declining to speculate much on a possible run. “But I know it is the right thing to do, so let the chips fall where they may.”

Roll Call explains:

Sen. John McCain’s victory in the Aug. 24 Arizona Republican primary was fueled partly by transfers of $7.5 million from his 2008 presidential campaign compliance fund — an account GOP Congressional strategists are now eyeing as they look to finance a growing list of competitive midterm races.

McCain’s compliance fund reported $17.1 million in cash on hand as of June 30, with $4.65 million in transfers to the Senator’s re-election committee having been made during the second quarter of this year. Additional transfers were made before the August pre-primary fundraising reporting deadline. McCain also used the compliance account to make $63,900 in charitable donations to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Phoenix and about a dozen Phoenix-area churches.

Any presidential candidate who participates in the public financing program must submit to a post-election audit of his campaign operation by the Federal Election Commission. McCain’s compliance fund, officially known as the McCain-Palin Compliance Fund Inc., was assembled to cover the accounting and legal fees generated by that audit.

However, excess funds from compliance accounts are available to be transferred to other campaign committees or for charitable donations. 

I hadn't seen this chart, based on CBO data, published in July over at Investors.com; it shows the share of war spending in the deficit since 2003.

Now, I am interested to hear how the president, who claimed yesterday that it's "time to turn the page" and end "the American combat mission in Iraq," will account in the budget for the 50,000 troops who will still be in Iraq and for the number of security contractors, which is supposed to double over the next few months. Remember, he promised that there would be no more gimmicks.

Debra Saunders is not quite sure where the incumbent senator is getting a memory about questions to Condi Rice.