Free Frank Warner

We left Iraq way too early

When President Obama declared Oct. 21 that he was removing all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of this year, my first thought was, That’s the end of Israel.

My second thought was, That’s the end of a democratic Iraq. It’s the return of the Iraq war.

I still feel that way. I hope I’m wrong.

The early signals aren’t good. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who could afford to be tolerant of minorities when U.S. forces held the balance of power in Iraq, on Dec. 18 ordered the arrest of his Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi, on a charge of planning political assassinations.

That could be just the beginning of the splintering of Iraq, as many of the majority Shiites no longer feel tied to their constitutional obligations to share power.

So why did we leave Iraq after only eight years -- or really, only three years after the fascists lost the war? There’s no good reason, except that our State Department did not make it a high enough priority to reach an agreement that could have kept a U.S. stabilizing force there at least five more years.

We didn’t leave Germany three years after World War II. We didn’t leave Japan. We didn’t leave South Korea immediately after the Korean War. The result: All of those nations are free, prosperous and at peace.

For reasons of politics and incompetence, we’re out of Iraq, and despite headlines that the “Iraq war is over,” Iraq is seeing a new wave of violence.

Iraq easily could devolve into dictatorship or descend into civil war. The risks are unforgivably high, when there would be no risk had 30,000 or 40,000 U.S. troops stayed behind.

Democracy does not take root with one round of elections. The institutions of freedom and tolerance appear only after at least three changes of power at the highest levels. The first power change is a test; the second, the learning of a habit. By the third, a democracy understands its checks and balances.

Democratic Iraq hasn’t had one change of power. (Maliki is the second prime minister, but his Al Dawa party is the same as the first prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who wasn’t around long.) Iraq is going to struggle hard when the first change comes. The United States won't be there, as it was in Germany, Japan and South Korea, to help it along toward change that strengthens Iraqi freedom.

Then there’s Israel, that one long-established Middle East democracy. Even with U.S. influence and Iraq's democratic framework, Iraq would be difficult to hold back if a demagogue were elected prime minister with a promise to help Iran wipe out the Jewish state.

Without U.S. influence, count on Iraq to start planning the invasion itself. Iran and Iraq don’t have much in common with Sunni Egypt, but all three Muslim nations might very well cooperate on the Israel elimination plan. Must we now start the countdown to the massacres and mushroom clouds?

If this sounds alarmist, it’s because there is cause for alarm. If it sounds bitter, it’s because it didn’t have to happen. Iraq was free and fairly calm. It was on its way to becoming the proof that Arab Muslims, long abused by despots, could thrive in democracy.

But America’s leaders looked at Germany and Japan and South Korea, and saw no lessons to apply.

Frank Warner

 

Christopher Hitchens, a true liberal, has died

Of course, the first thing that came to my mind when I heard Christopher Hitchens died yesterday of esophageal cancer was his articulate and resolute support for the liberation of Iraq.

He was one of the few real liberals in America’s debate over freeing 25 million Iraqis from fascism. Others who claimed to be liberals -- defenders of the defenseless -- only pretended to understand the horrors of oppression. They cynically opposed the hard and heroic work of freeing Iraq’s oppressed.

Hitchens, who felt a personal stake because of his friendships with Iraq’s Kurds, knew what his old allies on “the left” did not know -- that Iraq was condemned to generations of ignorance, tyranny and war unless it was freed by outside powers committed to democracy.

The Iraqis probably would remove Saddam (or his sons) on their own, he said, but the bloodbath of that kind of civil war would make the recent Iraq War look like a skirmish. And without America’s guiding hand, he said, the winner of that war almost certainly would have been another tyrant.

The bitter argument over the Iraq War tested Hitchens’ relationship with “the left,” leaving him disgusted with Democrats who wanted to tolerate Saddam’s despotism simply because a Republican president wouldn't tolerate it. But President Bush’s resolve also reminded him of America’s indispensable role in a world still half-unfree.

America’s unselfish project in Iraq eventually inspired Hitchens to become a U.S. citizen. For a full decade, he was the world's most passionate voice for freedom. He was a true liberal. He was the best kind of American.

Frank Warner

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See also: R.I.P. Christopher Hitchens.

See also: An atheist Christmas remembrance.

See also: Master of the contrarian essay.

See also: On the death of Christopher Hitchens.

Newt Gingrich, paid off, in 2007 said Freddie and Fannie helped ‘stable finance’

We already know that Newt Gingrich took $1.6 million in consulting fees over a decade from Freddie Mac, the mortgage giant that, with its twin Fannie Mae, bought or backed $1 trillion in bad home loans and brought down the economy.

Many have wondered what Gingrich did for all that dough. Most of us figured the money was to keep a top Republican’s mouth shut as Freddie and Fannie promoted all those risky loans and cooked the books to enrich Freddie and Fannie’s executives.

Well, according to Verum Serum, the former Speaker of the House actually did some talking for the two toxic lenders (also called government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs). On Freddie Mac’s webpage, in April 2007, Gingrich is quoted at length making the case for Freddie and Fannie:

Q: A key element of the entrepreneurial model is using the private sector where possible to save taxpayer dollars and improve efficiency. And you believe the GSE model provides one way to use the private sector.

Gingrich: Certainly there is a lot of debate today about the housing GSEs [Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae], but I think it is telling that there is strong bipartisan support for maintaining the GSE model in housing. There is not much support for the idea of removing the GSE charters from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. And I think it’s clear why.

The housing GSEs have made an important contribution to homeownership and the housing finance system. We have a much more liquid and stable housing finance system than we would have without the GSEs. And making homeownership more accessible and affordable is a policy goal I believe conservatives should embrace. Millions of people have entered the middle class through building wealth in their homes, and there is a lot of evidence that homeownership contributes to stable families and communities. These are results I think conservatives should embrace and want to extend as widely as possible. So while we need to improve the regulation of the GSEs, I would be very cautious about fundamentally changing their role or the model itself.

Q: This is not a point of view one normally associates with conservatives.

Gingrich: Well, it’s not a point of view libertarians would embrace. But I am more in the Alexander Hamilton-Teddy Roosevelt tradition of conservatism. I recognize that there are times when you need government to help spur private enterprise and economic development. Look at our own history. The government provided railroad land grants to encourage widespread adoption of what was then the most modern form of transportation to help develop our country. The Homestead Act essentially gave land away to those willing to live on it and develop it. We used what were in effect public-private partnerships to bring telephone service and electricity to every community in our nation.

All of these are examples of government bringing about desired public purposes without creating massive, taxpayer-funded bureaucracies. To me that is a pragmatic and effective conservative approach.

Bipartisan treason. “It’s telling that there is strong bipartisan support for maintaining the GSE model,” Gingrich said. Yes, it’s telling. It tells us that, as Barney Frank and other Democrats took over Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in the 1990s and early 2000s, they paid off every Republican in a position to stop them from tossing aside sound lending practices and saddling millions of Americans with loans they could never pay back.

Gingrich shouldn’t be running for president. He should be joining Barney Frank in a retirement of silence and shame.

Frank Warner