Free Frank Warner

To dump its tyrannical habits, Egypt has a long way to go

The Egyptian crisis probably will not end well for at least 10 years.

Eighty-two-year-old dictator Hosni Mubarak has a good chance of hanging onto power until his death, but even if he doesn’t last the year, there are too many despotic forces lined up against democracy and freedom in Egypt.

It sounded like a joke when Mubarak said he favored democracy and then he appointed a new cabinet for himself. Appointed officials, the Egyptians have plenty of. How about one or two elected officials, chosen by the people in free, fair and competitive elections?

Vice president. Mubarak last week even picked a vice president, a successor, which is something a dictator almost never does, for fear of showing a way to end his tyranny. That vice president, Omar Suleiman, is almost guaranteed the position of Egypt’s next dictator. And considering Suleiman is Egypt’s former chief of intelligence, there’s a good chance that once the riots calm, he’ll be arresting hundreds, if not thousands, of the riot leaders.

The alternatives to the Mubarak mob clinging to power are (A) a gathering of democratic forces to rewrite the Egyptian constitution and build the institutions of freedom and (B) a gathering of the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical Islamist forces to transform Egypt into another Iran, but with a Sunni flavor.

Things might work out if Egypt goes for an (A)-(B) hybrid, and the Muslim Brotherhood agrees to the elections, that is, free and regular elections every four or five years. In one scenario, the Muslim Brotherhood would win the first election, but unable to improve Egypt’s standard of living, it would be voted out in the second election, in favor of a more secular political party.

Israel politics. The real wild card is what a Muslim Brotherhood government would do to Israel. If the Muslim Brotherhood were in charge and it faltered on the Egyptian economy, could it pull an election-eve stunt by attacking Israel? Unfortunately, even among a large number of Egypt’s democrats, Israel is fair game. Such an attack could buy Egyptian radicals a second term, and might even become a ruse to establish a permanent theocratic dictatorship.

As the American experience with Iraq (and the Philippines, Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Pakistan, Germany and Russia) shows, it takes years to wring out antidemocratic habits from an old dictatorship. Some factions of society oppose dictatorship only as long as they’re not the dictators. Many activists don’t understand that democracy requires a tolerance of political foes.

Still in chains, Egypt hasn’t even begun to know what freedom demands. Liberation is not at hand.

Frank Warner

As Cairo riots: The what-if’s of modern Egypt

The pundits are going through all the “what-if’s” on Egypt, where young people right now are rioting against the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak, but no one is sure what would follow Mubarak if he is overthrown -- democracy, another (possibly theocratic) dictator or anarchy.

Next door, Israel is asking if Egypt is about to change for the worse. Israel, one of only two and half Middle East democracies (Iraq is one, Lebanon the half), already has heard Iran’s threats to erase Israel from the map. Syria would be more than happy to help Iran. And possibly Saudi Arabia and Yemen. And there is no guarantee that, even as a new democracy, Egypt would not join a coordinated attack on Israel.

The Egyptians have been unhappy with Israel since its rebirth after World War II. But they’ve been especially bitter since the 1979 Camp David Accords, in which Anwar Sadat got the Sinai Peninsula back from Israel, and over $1 billion in annual aid from the U.S., in exchange for Egypt’s promise never to attack Israel. Sadat was assassinated for signing the deal, and Egyptians remain angry the deal survives. They associate U.S. aid with that unpopular peace treaty and with the Egyptian dictatorship, which keeps most of the cash for itself.

What are the what-if’s?

What if President Obama had called forcefully for democracy in Egypt in his Cairo University speech in June 2009? Wouldn’t that message have steered the students’ energy more toward their own liberty and less toward death to infidels? Wouldn’t that have placed the United States on the side of Egypt’s young and restless?

What if President Bush had pushed harder for democracy in Egypt? Bush did try. But after Saddam Hussein fell and Iraq adopted its own democratic constitution, should Bush have capitalized more on the rising hopes for Arab freedom and demanded a detailed plan for liberalization from our Egyptian “ally”? Was the Bush-hating, anti-liberation faction of the U.S. Democratic Party too likely to sabotage a broader democracy agenda?

(And by the way, what if Bush hadn’t announced he favored giving the Palestinians their own country, in effect rewarding the Palestinians before they demonstated even minimal interest in peace with Israel’s democracy?)

Skipping back a few presidents, what if President Carter had not arranged Israel’s separate peace with Egypt in 1979, and demanded that all Arab nations be part of the treaty? By transfering Sinai back to Egypt, didn’t Camp David remove one of the two big bargaining chips -- Sinai’s return and possible Palestinian statehood -- from the Arab negotiating table? In radicalized eyes, hasn’t the Camp David treaty tarred Egyptians as Arab traitors? Egyptians don't like that image of themselves.

Lost time. What if President Truman and President Eisenhower had done better with the Middle East after World War II? Both made it clear they wanted the colonial powers to end colonialism, but what if they acted more quickly to demand that the newly independent Arab nations (and others, too) adopt democratic institutions?

What if Truman and Eisenhower had put the world’s new nations on a democratic path before the Soviet Union obtained a nuclear umbrella for Cold War tyranny? What if Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and Klaus Fuchs hadn’t given the Soviet Union our atomic secrets?

History has a lot of what-if’s. We’re stuck with what-now’s.

Frank Warner

Freedom Count in Obama’s speech: 3, low

The Freedom Count assumes that if a speaker cares about something, he is likely to talk about it. In President Obama’s State of the Union address two nights ago, he mentioned the key words of freedom just three times.

In most major presidential addresses, the key words are spoken close to 10 times. Any more than that, and the president is demonstrating he is unusually interested in liberty. Below 5 is unusually low.

Here is the Freedom Count for Obama’s 2011 State of the Union:

Democracy: 2.
Freedom: 1.
Liberty: 0.

Total: 3.

The president’s one reference to “freedom” was in this paragraph:

And so we must defeat determined enemies wherever they are, and build coalitions that cut across lines of region and race and religion. America’s moral example must always shine for all who yearn for freedom, justice, and dignity.

It was a speech weak on liberty. For Obama, unfortunately, this is not unusual.

Frank Warner

Why call for 1 million electric cars?

President Obama last night called on Americans to innovate and to build 1 million electric cars in the next four years.

But here’s the problem. A government cannot tell its people to innovate and tell them exactly what the innovation has to look like (e.g., 1 million electric cars), and expect real innovation.

A government can help by setting broad goals, like clean, economical transportation, and rewarding people and companies that reach those goals first.

Coal cars? Exactly why is 1 million electric cars a worthy objective? Most of our electric power comes from coal. So unless we immediately expand our nuclear power, these 1 million electric cars will be shifting our car fuels from the CO2 and dirt of oil to the CO2, dirt and greater risk (to miners) of coal.

Of course, the advantage of coal is that we have plenty of it. But that’s not how these 1 million electric cars are being promoted. Somehow, they’re supposed to be “green.”

If the president is willing to run our cars on increased domestic coal production, he should be even more willing to run our cars on increased oil production, since we already have that technology in 250 million cars already running.

Oil resources. Obama is right to oppose oil industry subsidies -- just what are these subsidies anyway? -- but there's no point in opposing oil just because it's oil. When innovation works, it finds the best way to use all our resources.

Frank Warner

First sign of the real recession: Potholes are here

I've recalled that, in the last deep recession of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the two most obvious signs that things were wrong were the ubiquitous potholes in our roads and the ubiquitous homeless people on our roadsides.

Well, the potholes are here. Can the homeless masses be far behind?

The first sign of trouble is up. The sad thing is, unlike the early 1980s, this time it doesn't appear we've done anything to cure the sagging economy. We've done everything to pretend that what killed the economy will revive it.

Frank Warner

Cost of converting U.S. to 100% nuclear energy? $2,550 per person per year, cheap!

Chris Uhlik, a Stanford graduate with a doctorate in electrical engineering, has just estimated how much it would cost to convert the United States’ energy mix to 100 percent nuclear-powered electricity.

His calculation: $2,550 per person per year, or about 5 percent of Gross Domestic Product. Uhlik says that with reasonable regulations, the price could be reduced to less than 2 percent of GDP.

That ain’t bad. Not only would this American electricity be free of carbon dioxide emissions, it would be free of profits shipped off to foreign slave states and other tyrannical troublemakers.

As Uhlik says (in comments below his post):

Solar is on a fast learning curve (about 18%) so it could (IMO probably will) win in the end, after all, look at all those self-installing, self-repairing, capex-free solar cells based on chlorophyl covering our planet today. I fully expect technology to advance to the point where nanotech/biotech PV and photo-chemical cells again sustainably generate a significant share of the world’s human energy demand (like they did several thousand years ago).

In the mean time, I worry that atmospheric CO2 levels will rise to dangerous levels while we wait for solar energy and storage technologies to mature. So while the solar learning curve is fast, I worry that maybe it isn’t fast enough. I can’t do the calculation because I don’t think anyone understands climate dynamics well enough yet to definitively say what CO2 level is “too high”.

From what we know today, I think CO2 levels are already too high and we are in for substantial sea level rise over the next century no matter what. I’d prefer we get off fossil fuels sooner by using mature nuclear technologies to displace fossil carbon now in order to minimize the (substantial) damage. And I did this little calculation to show that the cost of doing so isn’t unreasonably large and is in fact small compared to doing the same thing with conventional renewables.

Problem solver. If we can develop some wise leadership, our Congress can jump on this idea, reform our energy policies and finally solve the 1973 crisis.

Frank Warner

Jack LaLanne dead at 96

I remember watching Jack LaLanne on early-morning TV about 50 years ago. There he was doing jumping jacks. (According to CBS News, jumping jacks were named after him!) On many mornings, he got me jumping before school.

LaLanne recently contracted pneumonia. He died today in his Morro Bay, California, home. He was 96. Until his recent sickness, he was still doing jumping jacks. He worked out 2 hours every day.

LaLanne said last year, "I can't die. It would ruin my image." Well, no. My image of him always will be as the cheerful man exercising at dawn, encouraging children and their parents to do the same in front of their TVs.

Frank Warner

Philadelphia baby massacre: Failure to draw the abortion-murder line

The arrest this week of a Philadelphia abortion doctor who allegedly murdered at least seven living babies is proof that four decades of abortion politics has undermined our obligation to defend the defenseless.

Abortion rights advocates have been right to defend a woman’s right to choose an abortion, particularly in the first trimester of pregnancy. But abortion opponents also have been right to demand that a clear line be drawn between a clump of cells and a human being.

For too many Americans, the line is not clear.

The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a true liberal hero, in May 1997 made his attempt to draw a line when he said partial-birth abortion is “just too close to infanticide” to be permitted. Partial-birth abortion involves killing the fetus or baby after it has left the uterus, that is, after it has been partially delivered. In 1997, most Americans agreed with Moynihan that the procedure amounts to baby killing.

Right to kill. In the relatively few years since Moynihan took his stand, abortion rights advocates have stepped up their campaign to promote partial-birth abortion as just another “choice” worth fighting for. A few college professors have gone even farther. Princeton ethicist Peter Singer and American University philosopher Jeffrey Reiman now argue that parents should have the right to kill their children for a month or so after birth.

Since 1979, seven babies, and perhaps hundreds of babies, have been killed intentionally in a Philadelphia abortion clinic, their spinal cords “snipped” after they took their first breaths, according to prosecutors. At least one mother died, allegedly from a doctor’s overdose of anesthetics.

But when Dr. Kermit Gosnell was charged, Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams almost apologized.

“I am aware that abortion is a hot-button topic,” he said. “But as district attorney, my job is to carry out the law. A doctor who knowingly and systematically mistreats female patients, to the point that one of them dies in his so-called care, commits murder under the law. A doctor who cuts into the necks severing the spinal cords of living, breathing babies, who would survive with proper medical attention, is committing murder under the law.”

Predictable timidity. Imagine having to worry that the public might be upset about arresting a doctor who, according to the evidence, killed babies. This is the predictable result of a failure to draw a bold line between abortion and murder.

Frank Warner

Tarok Kolache, the Afghanistan village we wiped off the map

The Taliban had used Tarok Kolache, an Afghanistan village, as a staging ground for attacks on American troops. On Oct. 6, 2010, U.S. forces leveled the village with nearly 25 tons of bombs and rockets.

Pictures here.

Frank Warner

50 years ago: Kennedy takes office pledging to defend freedom in its hour of maximum danger

A half century ago today, as even Google reminds us, President Kennedy was sworn in to office. On that day, he delivered a beauty of a speech.

But it was not his line, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for country,” elegant as it was, that made the address a work of art. It was its poetry in the cause of liberty.

On Jan. 20, 1961, Kennedy began the speech by calling the day “a celebration of freedom.” He compared the Cold War to the American Revolution.

“The world is very different now,” he said. “For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe -- the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.

“We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans -- born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage -- and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

Kennedy warned the newly formed nations of post-World War II, former colonies, not to enter into alliances with the Communists who would only enslave them more brutally than colonialism.

“To those new states whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom--and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.

He urged the Communist powers to renew the quest for peace, and he forshadowed President Reagan’s “trust but verify” policy toward the Soviet Union.

“So let us begin anew -- remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate. …

“Let both sides unite to heed in all corners of the earth the command of Isaiah--to ‘undo the heavy burdens . . . (and) let the oppressed go free.’”

Alluding not so subtly to the four horsemen of the Apocalypse -- conquest, war, famine and death -- Kennedy conjured four similar modern threats: tyranny, poverty, disease and war. He asked Americans to resist all four.

“Now the trumpet summons us again -- not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need -- not as a call to battle, though embattled we are -- but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, ‘rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation’-- a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself. …

“In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility -- I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it -- and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.

“And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country.

“My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”

That was a magnificent speech.

Frank Warner