Simply put, he's angry Bush hasn't overturned the Iranian regime with strong enough sanctions, nor hit Iran with air strikes. Because we've failed so disastrously on these counts, Krauthammer says, the only thing to do is adopt a "Holocaust Declaration" promising massive retaliation against Iran in response to any nuclear attack on Israel.

I admire his determination to secure the United States and Israel, but I can't help but think his position utterly absurd. Why? Because Krauthammer has backed the Bush administration's position from the start--the very same 'utterly failed' approach that has resulted in Iran continuing to enrich uranium, unimpeded.

This was true even in the immediate aftermath of the Iraq war, when the United States was at the apex of its power, semi-reformer Mohammad Khatami was president, and Iran was actively cooperating with America against al Qaeda--and it was actively proposing a negotiated solution to the United States. If there was any time to practice coercive diplomacy, that was the time. Yet conservatives like Krauthammer--and the Bush administration--balked.

The absurdity here is palpable. If Krauthammer, Bush, et al. were truly serious about American security, and the security of Israel--if they truly believed we should do anything to prevent Tehran from getting a nuclear bomb--they would not bridle at the concept of negotiating with Iran. "All options are on the table" should mean that all options are on the table, including diplomacy--not just massive nuclear retaliation and air strikes.

Instead, they have adopted and advocated a counterproliferation policy, rather than a nonproliferation policy: it assumes that proliferation is inevitable, and, in doing so, encourages it. (More on this here.) From a U.S. security standpoint, this has indeed been an utter failure.

There's no guarantee negotiating with Iran would have worked. But, by deriding diplomacy as appeasement--rather than treating it as a proactive effort to eliminate a nuclear threat before it becomes extremely dire (necessitating deterrence and missile defense, the second of which assumes we'll wait until literally the last possible second before stopping Iran's nukes)--and declaring that "the era of nonproliferation is over" we've disclosed any hope that Iran's program could be nipped in the bud.

That is a serious oversight, which commits us to one of two possible eventualities: preventive military strikes, or a world where Iran gets a nuclear bomb. Ruling out all other options, Krauthammer has, logically, been resigned to these quite some time. Now, since it's politically non-viable to undertake air strikes without first attempting substantive diplomacy (which he doesn't want to do), he's asking us to plan for the second of those worlds--the world where Iran has the Bomb.

We may well find ourselves adopting a deterrent posture towards Iran one day. But, if we do make some sort of "Holocaust Declaration," it will be worth remembering how we got to that point--and who was responsible.

--Barron YoungSmith

For the past year I've been working for another Brown Journal of World Affairs editor, Peter Scoblic (also of The New Republic) on a book: (U.S. vs. Them: How A Half-Century of Conservatism Has Undermined American Security) I really encourage you to buy it, not just for my sake, but because it's a worthwhile read.

I really am convinced it's not just a good book--but indeed a great book, and I've read it about 100,000 times so I should hate it by now. If you want to know how conservative ideology translated into the Bush foreign policy, this is the best source on the subject.

Publisher's Weekly:

"This is an important book, well researched and well reasoned in its assessment of conservatism and mandatory reading for anyone concerned with America's security and future. (May)"

“J. Peter Scoblic’s rollicking indictment of how conservatives have undermined America’s security since the dawn of the nuclear era is intellectual history at its best. Scoblic shows us that a ship of fools is afloat, still navigating us all toward catastrophe. It is a shocking and even sordid tale told with calm logic and clear prose. Every informed citizen should pick up this book—but the next president should not occupy the Oval Office without first reading U.S. Vs. Them.”

—Kai Bird, coauthor with Martin J. Sherwin of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

“In this highly original study, part history, part current analysis, J. Peter Scoblic reveals the deep fear disguised as uncompromising idealism that has propelled the American conservative movement to promote its disastrous foreign policies. Us Vs. Them is a clear, succinct guidebook to the troubled first decade of the twenty-first century.”

—Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb and author of Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Atomic Arms Race

“J. Peter Scoblic is one of the freshest voices on U.S. foreign policy, and he’s addressing a subject of existential importance. His distinctive take on the origins of George Bush’s arms control policies—and why they’ve produced catastrophic results—belongs on the reading list of anyone trying to understand why a zero-sum approach to the world won’t work in the twenty-first century.”

—Robert Wright, author of Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny

and so on...

According to Workaholics Anonymous (WA), working more than 40 hours per week can be an indication of workaholism.

"We always talk about continuous improvement, but no one is really required to spend time thinking about that," he says.

...sooo consciously trying to do a better job is a sign of addiction?

Do you work nights? Do you work when nobody else is watching?

I suppose I can't claim to be disinterested, since I'm typing in my second cubicle at 8:10pm.

Fact is, sometimes a treaty is the only way to prevent the Russians from taking something over.

BONUS: It looks like the Moon Treaty is woefully under-signed and under-ratified.

Under the system advocated by Merkel, EU countries would have votes according to the overall size of their populations, a system that favors larger countries like Germany. Under the Polish proposal, voting power would be based on the square root of each country's population. That means that Poland, with 38 million people, would have six votes in the EU council of ministers, the body where EU governments make decisions, compared with nine votes for Germany, which has twice as many citizens as Poland. The formula has prompted some Poles to embrace the rallying cry "Square Root or Death."

It's not exactly Patrick Henry, but it is endearing...

UPDATE: Check here for why the square root proposal makes sense.

Albanians' support for the war in Iraq is nearly unanimous and any perceived failings of U.S. foreign policy are studiously ignored. A two-day effort to find anyone of prominence who might offer some criticism of the United States turned up just one name and that person was out of the country. Every schoolchild in Albania can tell you that President Woodrow Wilson saved Albania from being split up among its neighbors after World War I, and nearly every adult repeats the story when asked why Albanians are so infatuated with the United States - to the point of "fetishism," in the words of one local journalist.

So eager is the country to accommodate Bush that Parliament unanimously approved a bill last month that allows "American forces to engage in any kind of operation, including the use of force, in order to provide security for the president." One newspaper, reporting on the effusive mood, ran a headline that read, "Please Occupy Us!"

A closer look at the accused's neckware reveals that he is sporting the dreaded Full Winsor knot. The knot was first immortalized in the novel From Russia With Love, when James Bond identified it on a SPECTRE assassin posing as a British agent:

"He was wearing ... the dark blue and maroon zig-zagged tie of the Royal Artillery. It was tied with a Windsor knot. Bond mistrusted anyone who tied his tie with a Windsor knot. It showed too much vanity. It was often the mark of a cad. Bond decided to forget his prejudice."

Bond would later kick himself for failing to heed this telltale warning. In the film, our assassin makes another suspicious gaffe while ordering dinner.

Bond: “Red wine with fish. Well, that should have told me something.”

Good thing today's British investigators didn't make the same mistake.

UPDATE: A cad indeed.

I'm going to venture, based solely on the experiences of propping up the Shah in Iran and knocking off successive lame (and often bizzarre) leaders of South Vietnam, that this is a bad idea. I'll bet you that anyone palatable enough for the administration will be seen as isolated and illegitimate by both Shiites and Sunnis. Knocking off al-Maliki will allow a couple Republican congressmen to put a happy face on the occupation for about two minutes, but I think they know that a leadership change is unlikely to produce any real improvements by 2008. In fact, engineering a coup would completely undermine the perceived independence of the Iraqi government and likely make things a great deal worse.

Still, for giggles' sake, I'd like to see them try putting Ahmed Chalabi in charge. Then we could really start checking off all the "if only we had tried..."-s.

Bush Administration Restricting Scientific Discussion on Polar Bears and Global Warming
Gag Order Issued to Government Officials

WASHINGTON (March 8, 2007) – The Bush Administration has issued an order that would halt free and open discussion by scientists and other government officials on the role global warming is playing in threatening the polar bear.

In a memo obtained by groups working on the listing of the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act, the Bush administration is requiring that all government travel requests “potentially involving climate change, sea ice, and/or polar bears” be accompanied by a memorandum “including a statement of assurance that these individuals understand the Administration's position on these issues.” The two examples of such memos provided with the order both include assurances that the employees would “not be speaking or responding to these issues.”

The order comes just months after the Bush Administration formally proposed protecting polar bears under the U.S. Endangered Species Act because of the effects of global warming of the bear’s sea-ice habitat. Yesterday, the Department of Interior held the last of three public hearings on its proposal in Barrow, AK.

“We need leadership, not censorship on global warming,” said Andrew Wetzler, director of NRDC’s Endangered Species Project. “We rely on our government scientists and officials to be honest brokers with the public and on important issues. This directive restricts their ability to do their jobs.”

The proposal to protect polar bears under the Endangered Species Act was issued in response to a petition and law suit filed by NRDC, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Greenpeace.

Polar bears live only in the Arctic and are totally dependent on the sea ice for all of their essential needs, including hunting their prey of ice seals. The rapid warming of the Arctic and melting of the sea ice poses an overwhelming threat to polar bears, which could become the first mammal to lose 100 percent of their habitat to global warming.

http://www.nrdc.org/media/2007/070308.asp

"[Sarkozy] parted company with Royal, who has said that Iran must be denied access to a civilian nuclear program even though it enjoys that right as a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty."

"In a two-hour speech to about 10,000 supporters north of Paris, she pledged to raise pensions, increase the minimum wage to €1,500, or about $2,000, a month and guaranteed a job or further training to every youth within six months of graduating. She also said randomly selected citizens' juries would watch over government policy and that juvenile delinquents could be placed in educational camps run by the military." (link)

Can anybody argue that this is good policy? Her proposed minimum wage is twice my salary and it will make jobs for "delinquent" youths even less available, meaning a deepening color divide to the point where employment will basically become a matter of caste. (Calculated out at $15.50 an hour, incl. govt mandated 10 weeks vacation and 35 hour workweek).

Even members of Royal's Socialist Party are compaining that "randomly selected citizens' juries" "watching over" government policy hark back to the French Revolution. At best, they'll serve to veto painful reforms of the kind that France most needs.

A socialist proposing to put delinquent children in military camps doesn't exactly sound open-minded. Royal isn't worried that young Guillaume Apollinaire has been distracted from his work, chasing women and spending his argent de poche. She's worried about threats to law and order, meaning riots in France's mostly North African slums. Royal is talking about putting black people in military reeducation camps. Wow. Say it ain't so.

They were stashing cartons of cigarettes: in the ceiling, between the cracks in the doors, in the luggage areas, behind the moulding, the curtain rods, the heater grilles.

Every train from Kiev to Warsaw—a city now located solidly within the EU—stops for two hours at the border checkpoint to clear customs and change wheels, because Stalin preferred a different gauge so that invading armies would be unable to cross the border. Commerce, though, seems to have gotten the best of Old Joe. Half the people on each trip are smugglers.

My train ground to a halt at 2 in the morning. Sickly flourescent lights flicked on, and I awoke to the sound of Slavs arguing in the hall. My cabinmate, a Polish geezer sleeping in his plaid farm shirt on the bunk across from me gave me a silent, knowing wink. He gestured for me to stick my head out our door.

The team of smugglers was hard at work—a dour professional pit crew gone Bonnie and Clyde. Among them was a couple that had been dining on McDonalds and wine when I first got on board, the woman dressed in a tacky Mimi Bobeck-appropriate mu mu. Even in tracksuit-and-trashy-sunglass Kiev, they’d probably be scorned as nouveau riche.

Our rumpled potato of a train car conductor kept circumspect watch from his cabin, beaming with tacit approval. I leaned back against the window rail and let the smugglers push past me.

“During Soviet times, we couldn’t stand in the hallway like this,” my Pole volunteered, shaking his head. He began to butter some bread with his pocketknife.

The smugglers finished stashing their cigarettes and replaced the panels, screws, and bolts. We sat back in our cabins, waiting through the inevitable rounds of border police and “Papers? Passport?”

The Polish police marched on with dogs, weighed down with electronic devices. They then proceeded to unscrew every panel in sight and search all of the luggage compartments, confiscating multiple garbage bags filled with bales of cigarette cartons. The smugglers looked on, blasé.

A border guard asked if I was transporting any alcohol. I pointed to my lone (open) beer. “Just that?” He looked amused. I glanced above me at a crack in the ceiling. It was full of cigarette cartons that the police hadn’t noticed. The guard headed off.

An hour later, the police left and the train started rolling. The smugglers swarmed out like an army of worker ants with screwdrivers. The panels came off again, making the car interior look like a skeleton.

The smugglers recovered three more trash bags of cigarettes, unnoticed by the police. Our train car conductor counted the cartons. Cigarettes in Ukraine are three to ten cents a pack, and they can be resold in the EU at Boston prices, so there’s a good chance they came out ahead.

I watched, bemused. They certainly didn’t mind my looking on. One last time, the panels went up. A plain smuggler in cargo pants replaced the final screw and glanced at me with pride.

I was walking through the square--a large, communistic affair that's been refurbished with jubilant monuments to democracy and capitalism, including a giant digital clock, a mall, a huge painted column with a winged angel or something on it, and an investment bank--when a Polish man tapped me on the shoulder and asked "is this yours?"

I glanced downwards. He had a ziploc containing a folded wad about an inch thick made of $100 bills, along with some 500 Euro notes. My mind did a quick estimate. Holy s***. There's absolutely no way that that bag was not involved in some sort of criminal activity. I'm not much a lover of theft, even from criminals, and my impulse was to think that I didn't much want it or the probable curb stomps from the tracksuit crowd. Nevertheless, I became sort of an accomplice by default.

He was short, lean, moustached, desperate. "Excuse me excuse me, please $5,000 dollars U.S. cash do you have a bag? Please, please I left it here, please let me check your pockets, open your bag $5,000 U.S. cash." By now I'd gotten used to such things, and the joy that comes with having absolutely zero money on you during a search. "Please, open up here and here, please. You have no dollars? None at all? Please, show me your belt." The Pole had serruptitiously hidden the bag in his waistband under his belt buckle. He turned out his pockets and lifted his pantlegs. I didn't really feel like it was my place to interfere either way.

The search went on for a while, with him pointing to different parts of my bag and me shaking my head, amused at my own total lack of cash-on-hand. The Ukranian was absolutely determined, like a drowning animal paddling. Later I realized that, if he lost the ziploc, he'd probably be killed (or something) by his creditors, if not by his wife. That's not worth $2,500 to me in any case.

Soon, the search was approaching the Pole's waistband, and he decided to split. He quickly took out the bag with a faint note of embarassment, tossed it on the ground with a quick look of embarassment, and power walked away as fast as possible. There was little discussion. "Is your friend?" the Ukranian said to me, his indignance slighly deflated by the success of his search, "Is your friend?" I shook my head and headed off down the street. What the heck just happened? Another day in Ukraine, I guess.

Next up: an account of a harrowing cigarette smuggling operation over the Ukranian-EU border.

"You! Papers!" The cop had the lazy air of a country bully leaning on a fencepost, perhaps biting into an apple. Identification papers are required at all times.

I've heard about Russian police bribery. They find an excuse to shake you down, threaten to take you to jail, and say, "maybe we can figure this out some alternate way," then escort you to an ATM. It's pretty coercive and reasonably scary.

The Ukranian police, however, acted like they had once seen Russian bribery on TV and wanted to try it out for themselves. They knew generally what to do, but they just couldn't figure out the mechanics.

"What's in your pockets? What's in your wallets?" The officer offered, helpfully. (This was mostly in Russian.) I showed him my Colorado driver's license. Take that. Push me any further and we'll disinclude your country from the Coalition.

Jason, a Nigerian aerospace engineering student, tried to sweet talk him in Russian. He later told me that his line was something like, "You know, guys, we really love you. You're the reason we can walk around the streets so safely at night." Many flashbacks to childhood.

Midas didn't have his passport, but Jason convinced the police to let him go back to his apartment and get it, then run back to show them. He later described the situation as unreal. He had a chance to go to the bathroom and take a bite of one of the cheeseburgers he'd cooked in his apartment while the police were waiting.

At this point, it seemed like the police had hit a wall. They kept asking us the same questions about our papers and threatening halfheartedly to take us to jail. Meanwhile, Ukranians would walk by unmolested and give them the equivalent of thumbs-up and high fives. But they just couldn't seem to get to yes. "Aw, shucks, I was, uh, wondering if you wanted to, uh, go with me to the prom..." Why didn't they just ask us for money?

Meanwhile, I had the pleasure of complaining amusedly about unequal treatment to their faces while enjoying both a zero percent chance that they would understand me and a beer. Finally, Midas came back and showed them his passport. They grilled us about whether we were students and where we lived. They couldn't think of anything more to grill us about. There was some awkward shuffling. Then they let us go.

Midas later guessed that, with the 15th anniversary of Ukranian independence that weekend, Kiev had called in a bunch of cops from smaller, local police forces who weren't well trained. Possibly, but I'm more of the mind that this is common practice in Ukraine.

Four days later, I got off a bus in the central part of Kiev. Walking down the street with an Austrian in the gray early morning, I noted two bored cops sitting on a park bench. "Here it comes," I told my companion. Three. Two. One. "You! Papers! Passport!" These guys spoke better English. And so the whole charade went again.

"Here's my passport."

"Bomb. Bomb in your bag. You have bomb in your bag?"

"No, I don't have a bomb in my bag."

"Open you bag. Open there. Open there."

"See, see. No bomb."

"You have drug in your bag? Open."

"Nope. No drugs."

"You have drugs in your wallet? Open your wallet. Drugs? Money?" They must have attended police training school.

I grinned. "No drugs in my wallet. No money. No money." I literally didn't have a cent (kopeck) in cash to my name.

"No drugs? Open bag. No money?"

"Sorry."

More awkward shuffling, then they left us alone. So that's the demeanor of the authorities in Urkaine, for you transnational corruption junkies. I haven't yet seen any cops performing police functions in the country, but I guess it's true: you pay for what you get.