Free Frank Warner

No new troops: Germany admits, it wasn’t Bush, we just don’t do hard stuff

For those who told themselves Afghanistan (or Iraq) would have received more help had it not been for “cowboy” President Bush, look at Germany’s decision on troops for Afghanistan.

Germany won’t send more troops to Afghanistan.

Why? Germany just doesn’t feel like it. Germany knows an Afghanistan in the hands of the Taliban and al Qaida would be a growing threat to the Free World, but Germany also believes the Americans will do all the hard and heroic work for Europe.

So why bother? Why spend? Why risk?

Bush wasn’t the problem. The Taliban was and is a threat. Saddam was a threat. But Germany would rather continue freedom’s free ride and hold onto the delicious luxury of criticizing those who pay for it.

Frank Warner

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Note 1: When the Germans were accused of making a mistake that led to the Sept. 4, 2009, NATO airstrike that reportedly killed a large number of civilians, I said: "The question now is, do the Germans finally understand that war is not an exact science, that even the best-intentioned warriors screw up, or will they use this episode as an excuse to bug out?" Well, they're on the bug-out track now. Interesting how some nations punish themselves by letting others do their work.

Note 2: Even the headline in The [London] Telegraph revealed the European bias on the Afghan war: "Germany says no to sending more soldiers to help US." "Help US"? This battle is to help Afghanistan, and help Europe, America and other free democracies in the process. It's perverse how Europe has convinced itself that protecting the Free World is America's job, and that anything any other democracy does for freedom is a favor to America.

Tony Blair says Iraq war wasn’t over WMDs alone; it was about freeing Iraq

Appeasers continue trying to pretend that weapons of mass destruction were the only reason George Bush and Tony Blair decided to end Iraq’s fascist dictatorship.

Now Britain Prime Minister Brown has unleashed the Chilcot inquiry (led by career diplomat John Chilcot) to look into whether Blair conspired with Bush to invent the story of vast stockpiles of WMD to justify removing Saddam Hussein.

The inquiry will do the best it can to overlook how Saddam failed to abide by United Nations' 1991 cease-fire requirements that he end his repression, return Kuwaiti POWs, stop helping terrorists, and allow arms inspectors unfettered access to anything they wanted to see.

Ignoring fascism. No doubt, the inquiry will conveniently ignore the mass graves.

But Blair won’t. Blair has told the BBC, in an interview to be aired tomorrow, that he will testify next year that he would have made the decision to invade even if every intelligence agency on Earth said Saddam had no WMDs.

The WMDs didn’t kill most of Saddam’s victims. The WMDs weren’t the root of Saddam’s aggression and repression. Fascism was.

Blair said:

“I would still have thought it right to remove him.

Without the information that Saddam had WMDs, “obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat.

“I can’t really think we’d be better with him and his two sons in charge....

“The thing that was uppermost in my mind [was] the threat to the region. Also the fact of how that region was going to change and how in the end it was going to evolve as a region and whilst he was there, I thought and actually still think, it would have been very difficult to have changed it in the right way.”

The Iraq lie. If there is a lie to look into in the run-up to the liberation of Iraq, it was the “No Blood for Oil” lie that tried to make the case for permanent fascism in Iraq.

Yesterday and today, Iraq awarded oil contracts to foreigners who submitted competitive bids. None of the bids went to U.S. or British companies, and all of the profits will go to the Iraqi people, not to support a bloody totalitarian regime.

The appeasers will mourn the victory of freedom. So will the fascists.

Frank Warner

Obama’s last apology

With the words, “whatever mistakes we have made,” President Barack Obama this week ended a career of cynicism.

As he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize two days ago in Oslo, he also accepted the fact that he is the leader of a powerful democracy that often does things right.

Look at what he said:

“Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. ...

“Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: 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. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans.

“We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest - because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if other peoples’ children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity.”

Did you hear the echoes? Obama is only a half step from the farewell address of President George W. Bush. From Bush, last Jan. 15:

“The battles waged by our troops are part of a broader struggle between two dramatically different systems. Under one, a small band of fanatics demands total obedience to an oppressive ideology, condemns women to subservience, and marks unbelievers for murder. The other system is based on the conviction that freedom is the universal gift of Almighty God, and that liberty and justice light the path to peace.

“This is the belief that gave birth to our nation. And in the long run, advancing this belief is the only practical way to protect our citizens. …

“In the 21st century, security and prosperity at home depend on the expansion of liberty abroad. If America does not lead the cause of freedom, that cause will not be led.”

Figured it out. The similarities to Bush’s philosophy are no accident. This week, Obama got real. This week, he finally figured out it does no good to apologize for America’s imperfections when we’ve been doing more good than all other nations put together.

I could be wrong, but this speech was a leap. At least on the subject of freedom versus tyranny, I think, Obama has hit the sweet part of the learning curve.

Frank Warner

Obama: ‘A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies’

This is another reason I voted for Barack Obama: to encourage Democrats to get real about the world, and then get smart and do something liberal about it.

In accepting the Nobel Peace Prize today, President Obama said:

We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations -- acting individually or in concert -- will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.

I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King Jr. said in this same ceremony years ago: “Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones.” As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King’s life work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there's nothing weak -- nothing passive -- nothing naive -- in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.

But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism -- it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason. ...

Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: 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. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans. We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest - because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if other peoples' children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity.

Liberal action. In fact, it is cynical not to use force, if it can help, to stop tyrants from using force against life and liberty. And the best chance for a lasting peace will come from the rapid transformation of dictatorships into democracies.

Liberalism is about helping the little guy. And when a little guy is getting beat up, you don’t help him by making a wish and looking the other way. You do something about it. That’s a real step toward peace.

Frank Warner

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See also: War is not futile.

Michael Moore’s rude awakening

Washington Post writer Dana Milbank reminds Michael Moore that Barack Obama last year promised an Afghanistan “surge”:

“As president, I will make the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban the top priority that it should be,” he said [July 15, 2008], vowing to send at least two more combat brigades to Afghanistan. “This is a war that we have to win.”

Moore last week said President Obama should pull out of Afghanistan or risk destroying hopes of millions of Americans and disillusioning the young people who backed his election.

Was Moore not listening at all last year? Or did he take the Obama campaign as an illusion?

Frank Warner

Gorbachev: Reagan, first Bush and I ended the Cold War

Mikhail Gorbachev reveals a little more of his thinking in an interview with The Nation magazine’s Katrina vanden Heuvel and Stephen F. Cohen, who must have cringed at Gorbachev’s praise of Ronald Reagan. (Giving credit to Reagan for anything good is not something The Nation is in the habit of.)

Gorbachev says he told Soviet bloc dictators on his first day in office in 1985 that, from then on, they should neither fear the Soviet Union pushing them around or count on the Soviet Union to bail them out of trouble.

KVH/SFC: When did the Cold War actually end? In the United States, there are several answers: in 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down; in 1990-91, after the reunification of Germany; and the most popular, even orthodox, answer, is that the cold war ended only when the Soviet Union ended, in December 1991.

Gorbachev: No. If President Ronald Reagan and I had not succeeded in signing disarmament agreements and normalizing our relations in 1985-88, the later developments would have been unimaginable. But what happened between Reagan and me would also have been unimaginable if earlier we had not begun perestroika in the Soviet Union. Without perestroika, the Cold War simply would not have ended. But the world could not continue developing as it had, with the stark menace of nuclear war ever present. ...

The big changes that occurred with me and Reagan had tremendous importance. But also that George H.W. Bush, who succeeded Reagan, decided to continue the process. And in December 1989, at our meeting in Malta, Bush and I declared that we were no longer enemies or adversaries.

KVH/SFC: So the cold war ended in December 1989?

Gorbachev: I think so. …

I simply want to give Reagan the credit he deserves. I found dealing with him very difficult. The first time we met, in 1985, after we had talked, my people asked me what I thought of him. “A real dinosaur,” I replied. And about me Reagan said, “Gorbachev is a diehard Bolshevik!”

KVH/SFC: A dinosaur and a Bolshevik?

Gorbachev: And yet these two people came to historic agreements, because some things must be above ideological convictions. ...

KVH/SFC: In short, Gorbachev, Reagan and the first President Bush ended the Cold War?

Gorbachev: Yes, in 1989-90. It was not a single action but a process. Bush and I made the declaration at Malta, but Reagan would have had no less grounds for saying that he played a crucial role, because he, together with us, had a fundamental change of attitude. Therefore we were all victors: we all won the Cold War because we put a stop to spending $10 trillion on the Cold War, on each side.

A loser in this. Yeah, “we all won the Cold War.” Fine, as long as it’s obvious the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and its inhuman Communist ideology lost.

Read the rest of The Nation interview. In it, Gorbachev repeatedly refers to his belief that the transition from dictatorship to democracy can and should be gradual. As anyone who reads this blog knows, I’m skeptical of that premise, and it’s clear the dictators of the world are equally skeptical, because they almost never try it.

Gorbachev seems to forget that, due to circumstances over which he lost control, he himself could not unravel the Soviet Union slowly. In a matter of days in December 1991, the Soviet Union, the Evil Empire, simply disappeared. I’m sure Gorbachev was as surprised as anyone else.

Slow preferable? The Russians and their neighbors had suffered Soviet oppression and aggression for 73 years. For many tens of millions, that was a whole lifetime without a breath of freedom. Ending the nightmare couldn’t happen fast enough.

Frank Warner

Sully splashdown simulation

A new video re-creation of the miraculous splashdown of the U.S. Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River last Jan. 15 is stunning in its attention to detail.

You can listen to what Capt. Chesley Sullenberger and his co-pilot Jeffrey Skiles are saying to air traffic controllers (and read what they are saying to each other) exactly as the airplane hits the geese and as they quickly weigh their options with both jet engines out.

Take a look. This video by K3 Resources engineer Kas Osterbuhr is as short as the real flight: 6 minutes.

Click here, click there, and hold on to your seat.

Frank Warner

The Four Freedoms

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jan. 6, 1941:

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want -- which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear -- which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor-- anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

Stubborn tyrants. FDR raised hopes for disarmament in a fully Free World in early 1941. Eleven months later, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Peace is no simple task, and it will never have a real chance until the world rids itself of dictators.

Frank Warner

Drezner: Jury's still out on China's democratic potential

Daniel Drezner:

China's been opening to the world for two decades now and Beijing's Freedom House score on accountability and public voice hasn't really budged.... So anyone who thinks that economic liberalization will lead to political liberalization in the short-term is fooling themselves.

That said, this isn't a short-term game that's being played. Freedom House also acknowledges that, "Even though political institutions in China have not undergone major change, the degree to which Chinese can manage their own lives has increased substantially in the reform era." Furthermore, as someone watching their foreign economic policy, I think it's safe to say that the current Chinese leadership is far more sensitive to domestic political pressures than was the case a decade ago....

China might be one of the toughest tests imaginable on the relationship between economic and political liberalization. The country has a strong civilizational identity, but the leadership is acutely aware of the rebellious tendencies of some of its ethnic minorities. The population is so huge that even after decades of double-digit economic growth, a lot of Chinese citizens are dirt poor. It will likely take another decade for China's GDP per capita figure to rise to the level when most political science models would predict some push towards democratization.

Time awasting. Most nations living under dictators are poor. Trouble is, if we have to wait for them to get rich before they turn democratic, the tyrants have too much time to do too much damage.

Where in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights does it say only the affluent may have their right to be free?

Frank Warner

Veterans Day

The tradition continues in 2009.

And in the peace that liberty brings, Americans will always honor their veterans.

Frank Warner