The End of the Beginning, Not That Some Will Ever Admit It

thepilot.com

If you listen to the doomsayers of our so-called liberal media and to the dire pronouncements of the Frightened Right, you might be tempted to just give in to despair and fear. But let’s look at how some of their previous predictions have turned out:

Remember how Ebola was this terrifying epidemic that was, in the words of CNN commentator (and thriller author) Robin Cook “the scariest thing we can deal with”?

Remember when the panic was so severe that New Jersey Governor and B-list presidential candidate Chris Christie was, on the most dubious legal authority, locking a nurse up in a “quarantine tent,” even though she was showing no symptoms of the disease, purely because she’d treated Ebola patients in Sierra Leone?

Remember how it was going to jump the oceans via international travel and ravage the U.S. any day now?

Well, I’m pleased to pass on this piece of good news: The World Health Organization has declared Guinea, the country where the outbreak began, to be Ebola-free. Sierra Leone was declared clear of the virus in November, and Liberia got a clean bill of health in September.

A couple of cases have since been reported in Liberia, but it does seem as if the major outbreak is over and the disease is in retreat. And, in case you didn’t notice, the mass outbreak that had Americans running in circles with their hair on fire never materialized.

Remember how, when the Iranian nuclear deal was announced, the American right wing, the congressional Israel lobby, and Our Friend Bibi were all shrieking that the dastardly Iranians would never follow through, claiming that they’d be cheating right from Day One, and acting as if President Obama had ensured that we’d be seeing mushroom clouds over Tel Aviv and D.C. within this decade?

Well, I’m pleased to pass on this good news: According to a story in the New York Times, “A Russian ship left Iran on Monday carrying almost all of Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium, fulfilling a major step in the nuclear deal struck last summer and, for the first time in nearly a decade, apparently leaving Iran with too little fuel to manufacture a nuclear weapon.”

There’s still a long way to go, but the world is measurably safer from the threat of an Iranian nuke than it was a year ago.

Remember how Daesh (aka ISIS, ISIL, etc) was supposed to be this unstoppable force of invincible desert warriors, unable to be beaten except by a massive influx of American ground troops? (Not that anyone on the Right would actually admit to advocating that, but they’d deride everything else, including airstrikes, as weakness and appeasement.)

Well, I’m pleased to pass on the good news that those invincible desert warriors just got vinced. Daesh just lost the key city of Ramadi to Iraqi troops. Fact is, they’ve lost 40 percent of the ground they took since last year.

It’s gotten to the point where their leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had to send out a message to his troops trying to rally their spirits: “If we are killed and the wounds are numerous and the problems amassed against us and the hardships are great, then it is no surprise either.” No, it isn’t, Bubba, and don’t let it be a surprise that it’s going to get a lot worse. This is not the speech of someone who’s winning.

This is very likely why they’re desperately lashing out with attacks like the one in Paris. But even on that front, the news is encouraging. The Belgian police reportedly just broke up an attack planned by ISIS in that country on New Year’s Eve.

Ten major Daesh leaders, including “several external attack planners," have been killed in anti-Daesh coalition airstrikes in the past month, according to coalition spokesman Col. Steve Warren. And the mastermind of the Paris attacks, as we know, was killed by the French police.

So does all this mean that everything’s coming up roses, that all the bad times are over and that, in the words of that annoyingly catchy tune from the Lego Movie, “everything is awesome”?

No. But it means that, despite a sensation-driven media and a grasping political party, all of whom follow a business model based on convincing us all that everything is awful and that the only response to terror is to surrender to it and be terrified, things are getting better.

As Winston Churchill famously put it in 1942, after the Allied victory in the deserts of North Africa: “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

There are those who’d deny all hope, for their own selfish gain. But when they do, try looking at their record for prediction.

Rand Paul Is His Own Worst Enemy

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

So, it looks like another clown has exited the Republican circus car.

This week’s entry is the junior senator from Kentucky, Dr. Rand Paul, son of Ron, who threw his hat into the ring in a rally in Louisville. There he promised, as every presidential candidate who ever took the podium has promised, to “take the country back.”

The campaign then showed its modern-day tech savvy by going live on the day of the announcement with a spiffy new campaign website, where you can peruse the candidate’s views on subjects like “Eductation” (that’s how they spelled it).

You can also buy that all-important Rand Paul merchandise, such as a Rand Paul cornhole game, a campaign poster in the form of an eye chart (Dr. Paul’s an ophthalmologist) for only $20.16 (get it?); a blanket with a picture of the Constitution on it (only $75!); and if you’re still craving some of that Constitution-y goodness after a night’s slumber underneath a representation of our nation’s founding document, you can get the senator’s signature on a copy of the Constitution for only a thousand bucks.

So much for the sizzle. How about the steak? Well, if Sen. Paul hews as a presidential candidate to the same positions he’s espoused in the past, he may end up in a spot of trouble with primary voters.

Oh, sure, he hits some of the talking points beloved of the far right, such as a constitutional amendment to balance the budget and a flat tax. He never, of course, fully explains how both of those things can exist at the same time. But then, the libertarian right is known for its embrace of “magical thinking”: If we just believe hard enough, we can make two plus two equal five.

Paul also likes cutting spending, particularly spending on Those People. You know, the poor (working and otherwise), the sick, and of course, children whose parents can’t afford to send them to private schools. He’s proposed budgets that, among other things, eliminate most of the Earned Income Tax Credit; eliminate Section 8 housing vouchers and K-12 education funding; and slash the budgets of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.

But certain other positions of Dr. Paul are going to be, shall we say, problematic with the GOP base. For one thing, those budget proposals we just talked about would eliminate or drastically reduce all foreign aid — including aid to Israel. “I just don’t think you can give other people’s money away when we can’t rebuild bridges in our country,” he said in 2011.

While the right is all for cutting money for starving black or brown people in furrin lands, they’d cut out one of their own kidneys before they’d deprive Bibi Netanyahu of a single F16 or Iron Dome missile.

Which leads us to Sen. Paul’s defense and foreign policies. His proposed budgets included cuts in defense spending of as much as 30 percent, saying he wants “to reduce the size and scope of the military complex … to one that is more in line with a policy of containment.”

This is going to be anathema to neoconservative hawks who never saw a world problem they weren’t chomping at the bit to “bomb back to the Stone Age” before throwing someone else’s children at it, and for whom the word “containment” is the same as “appeasement.”

(Other words they equate with “appeasement” are “treaty,” “agreement,” “dialogue” and “negotiation” — pretty much any word other than “air strike,” “invasion” or “war.”) His perceived dovishness has led some on the right to begin mobilizing against Dr. Paul. “A group calling for a more hawkish U.S. policy on Iran is prepared to launch a $1 million ad campaign casting him as weak on the issue,” says an article in Politico.

On the campaign trail and in the debates, the Honorable Gentleman from Kentucky is going to find that the GOP may flirt with the type of small-government, low-spending libertarianism he claims to embrace.

But when the last dance is called, they’re going to be in the arms of the defense and Israel lobbyists. And, if by some miracle, Paul survives the primaries and gets the nomination, his budget radicalism will doom him in the general election.

Rand Paul is going to be another candidate who flares brightly and makes it to front-runner status for a week or two, then sputters out when people start using that status to actually take a look at him.

Poor sad clown.

The First Clown Out of the Car

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

It has begun. And I couldn’t be happier.

By “it,” I mean the Republican primary season, which got a surprise start this past Monday when Toddler-Terrifyin’ Ted Cruz followed up his epic speech in which he yelled at a 3-year-old that “your whole world is on fire!” in the only way possible: by forgoing the usual “exploratory committee” fundraising dance and announcing that he’s running for the presidency.

Why does this make me so happy? Because when you write the type of columns that I write, you greet the first announcement of a Republican candidacy with the same glee a circus-loving child feels when the first clown dances and struts his way into the center ring, only to be sprayed with water and knocked on his keister by a big-shoed, red-nosed rival. You just know there’s going to be a hilarious multi-clown free-for-all and big belly laughs ahead.

The first hand holding the metaphorical seltzer bottle directed at Sen. Cruz belonged to the only man in the field of prospective candidates who’s nuttier than Cruz himself, by which I mean the Bellowing Baron of Birtherism his own bad self, Mr. Donald Trump.

Trump, in a phone interview with MyFox New York, used the classic dodge of “I’m not making accusations, I’m just wondering” to try to cast doubt on Cruz’s eligibility to run: “He was born in Canada. If you know, and when we all studied our history lessons, you are supposed to be born in this country, so I just don’t know how the courts will rule on this.”

He also accused Cruz of stealing his lines.

“The line of ‘Make America great again,’ the phrase — that was mine. I came up with it about a year ago,” Trump said, “and I kept using it, and everybody’s now using it. … Maybe I should copyright it. Maybe I have copyrighted it.”

I have certainly enjoyed a major chuckle watching the zombified corpse of birtherism raised from the Earth by a Republican and sicced on one of his own kind. And I look forward to the day when everyone who uses the phrase “make America great again” gets a “cease and desist” letter from The Donald’s lawyers.

That’s what made this country great in the first place, after all: the monetization of patriotic sentiment. Which reminds me: I need to beef up my investments in companies that make flag pins. Never mind that they’re all in China now. But I digress.

Meanwhile, in another ring of the circus, the JEB! Bush campaign slipped on its first banana peel as former Secretary of State James Baker, who’s been an adviser to JEB! on foreign policy matters, had the temerity to criticize the right’s latest poster boy, Our Friend Bibi.

Baker, who was secretary of state for JEB!’s daddy, called OFB’s recent moves “diplomatic missteps and political gamesmanship” at an event for the liberal Jewish organization J Street. Predictably, this did not sit well with the people who love America so much that they’d rather see a foreigner like Netanyahu or even Vladimir Putin in charge of it.

“Bush can’t let Baker’s appearance at the J Street event go unremarked upon,” wrote Jonathan S. Tobin in Commentary magazine. “He must either explicitly distance himself from Baker’s appearance and from J Street’s support for Obama’s threats against Israel, or ask Baker to formally disassociate himself from his presidential effort.”

Other critics of Baker’s words included Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard — who, as we all know from reading our history, is always, always wrong.

“OK, OK,” the JEB! campaign said, and tried to do what the Israel hawks asked. They sent a mass email stating that JEB! “disagrees with the sentiments he [Baker] expressed last night and opposes J Street’s advocacy. Governor Bush’s support for Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu is unwavering.”

Not good enough, the Israel hawks cried.

“Bush’s statements remain generic, and his demeanor does not convey passion,” groused Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post’s “Right Turn” column. Apparently, nothing will satisfy the Pro-Israel Purity Police until JEB! hauls the elderly Baker up to the podium, gives him a vicious forehand-backhand slap and screams at him to “shut his filthy mouth” about OFB.

I tell you, folks, watching these people whack away at one another for the next few months is going to provide hours of the finest slapstick entertainment, not to mention fodder for a couple of dozen columns at least. The only way I could be happier is if Sarah Palin threw her hat back in the ring. … But no. That would be too much to hope for.

Stay tuned, and pass the popcorn. The debates are going to be epic.

Our Friend Bibi

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

You know, I’ve seen a lot of things in my life that I never thought I’d see. I’ve seen a squirrel on water skis. I’ve seen an old man talking to an empty chair on live TV while thousands cheered (and the rest of the world went, “What the [expletive deleted]?”) I’ve seen NC State win a national basketball championship.

But I never thought I’d see the day when one U.S. political party would attempt to score political points by inviting a foreign leader to come to a joint session of Congress and attempt to dictate our military and foreign policy to us.

This past Tuesday, the House Republicans took the unprecedented step of inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu to come to the floor of the United States House of Representatives to tell us what to do. This move was taken without consultation with the State Department or the president — a calculated slap in the face to one chief executive by another.

While Mr. Netanyahu took great pains to declare Israel a friend to America and vice versa, I don’t think it would be regarded as a friendly gesture were any U.S. president to bypass diplomatic protocol, go to the Israeli Knesset, and widen already existing rifts between that body and the prime minister by telling Israel everything it’s doing wrong.

Our Friend Bibi’s main topic was, as might be expected, Iran, and let’s just say he’s not a fan of the current talks being held between that country and six world powers, including the U.S., to restrict Iran’s nuclear program. 

He was sharply critical of the “deal” between the two countries, which is curious because, as yet, there is no deal. There are only proposals to which no one has yet agreed.

One of the things that worries Our Friend Bibi (let’s call him OFB for short) about the deal-that-isn’t is that (a) it leaves in place a civilian nuclear program, which he’s concerned could quickly “break out” into a military one, and (b) it expires in 10 years, after which that “breakout time” for a nuclear device would be “very short.”

He demands, in his words, “a better deal.” He did not, however, come up with any proposal for getting Iran to agree to dismantle the civilian program. And it’s a pipedream to believe that they’d do that without the use of force. But don’t worry. If it comes to having to use military force, be it air strikes or boots on the ground, I know OFB would fight to the last drop of American blood. He’s done it before.

Let’s not forget the last time OFB told us who and when we should be fighting. In 2002, he testified to Congress that “there is no question whatsoever that Saddam [Hussein] is seeking, is working, is advancing toward to the development of nuclear weapons,” and that “if you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region. And I think that people sitting right next door in Iran, young people, and many others, will say the time of such regimes, of such despots, is gone.”

How’d taking that advice work out for us?

As for OFB’s prophecy that, under the deal-that-isn’t, “Iran’s breakout time would be very short,” let us not forget his prior prediction that Iran was only “three to five years” from producing a nuke and that the threat had to be “uprooted by an international front headed by the U.S.” Only problem is, he said that in 1992 when he was a member of the Israeli parliament, and he’s been singing the same “any minute now” song ever since.

No one wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon. But in the quest to keep that from happening, we should not be browbeaten into abandoning the quest for a peaceful settlement. If we do go to war with Iran (and sadly, that may yet happen), it needs to be on our timetable, not Netanyahu’s.

No matter how much the “patriots” in the GOP want to poke the president in the eye, it shouldn’t be at the price of outsourcing our military and foreign policy, even to Our Friend Bibi, a blustering bully whose advice has been so disastrously wrong for us before.