Tech apocalypse: Five doomsday scenarios for IT ( – IT Management ).

Though most commonly associated with nuclear explosions, you don’t need a nuke to create an electromagnetic pulse strong enough to do serious damage. EMP devices emit extremely high-frequency signals that fry electronics to a crisp, rendering them useless. An EMP will also wipe out or corrupt any data not stored on magnetic or optical devices. Worse, EMPs are largely untraceable, because the weapon itself destroys any evidence of its use.

A van with an EMP device in the back could effectively shut down big chunks of the U.S. economy simply by driving down Wall Street with the signal turned up, says Gale Nordling, CEO of Emprimus, a company that helps enterprises protect against threats from non-nuclear EMP.

If you wanted to take out the entire continent, though, you’d need a nuke and a missile delivery system. “One bomb exploded 300 miles over Kansas could take out most of the electronics in the United States,” says Nordling.

What could happen: Workstations? Dead. Data centers? Gone. Cell phones might still work, but the cell towers probably won’t, rendering them useless. Your car won’t start. A large enough attack will also shut down automated controls at power substations, leaving everyone in the dark. Think pre-industrial revolution days. In our scenario the New York Stock Exchange shuts down, causing shock waves to reverberate throughout worldwide markets.

How long to recover: How long it takes organizations to bounce back depends on how serious they were about disaster recovery before hell broke loose. Backup power generators, fuel supplies, alternative work facilities, redundant data centers in multiple locations, and a well-rehearsed plan for making it all work together are the key elements to disaster recovery, says Richard Rees, security solution director for disaster recovery and business continuity specialists

The American Spectator : Thinking About Bombing Iran.

By George H. Wittman on 3.19.10 @ 6:07AM

According to an article in the Financial Times, “Do Not Even Think About Bombing Iran” by Michael O’Hanlon and Bruce Riedel, both of the Brookings Institution, “the strike option” on Iranian nuclear facilities “lacks credibility.” The authors believe that this is so because of “Iran’s ability to retaliate against the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan…” This logic, like much else in this anti-war polemic posing as analysis, just doesn’t withstand scrutiny.

It would have been far better if O’Hanlon/Riedel admitted from the beginning that they, like the Obama Administration, have no stomach for an attack on a murderous, ambition-crazed, self-perpetuating and self-justifying theocracy in the Middle East that seeks to dominate the region. Instead the authors prefer to present unsupported arguments such as, “… even a massive strike would not slow Iran’s progress toward a bomb for long.”

What militarily and technically inaccurate pap! For some reason O’Hanlon/Riedel seem to believe that operational nuclear weapon and development sites are actually capable of being hidden from counteraction. They present as evidence the fact that the media discovered a new nuclear development site in Qom last year. Digging in the middle of a major city can’t be seen on the ground or by satellite, eh?

Obviously these authors — and other liberal Washington pundits — are thinking only in conventional weapon terms in relation to any attack on Iranian nuclear weapon facilities. There is no reason for such a limitation. There are a panoply of classified exotic systems currently available to disrupt and destroy any and all Iranian attack modes, nuclear or not. The claim that O’Hanlon/Riedel make that “Iran can rebuild fairly fast…” is again based on a perception that only conventional weapons would be available for use in the current international political context.

The FT column argues that President Obama would not militarily attack Iran because he is bound by “his effort to recast the U.S. as a country playing by international legal norms.” Here is where O’Hanlon/Riedel may be completely correct. Obama has shown very little stomach for directly countering military threats. He certainly will stretch out as long as possible the program of sanctions along with diplomatic threats.

A key point in the O’Hanlon/Riedel argument is that Iran has already supported terrorist attacks and proxy wars on Israel and the United States. They contend that the danger of Iranian nuclear weapon buildup is lessened by the fact that Tehran has done quite well in its efforts at conventional and irregular warfare. Suggesting that Iran shouldn’t waste time pursuing nuclear weapons when it’s already doing so well with terrorists and surrogate forces doesn’t seem to hold much potential.

The O’Hanlon/Riedel commentary neglects to consider Israel’s unilateral capability to defend itself whenever it perceives imminent danger from Iran. The article offers the suggestion: “We should also pledge to provide a nuclear umbrella over Israel and other threatened states.” The authors ignore this protection has been implicit in the Middle East, and elsewhere, for decades.

It is also possible, however, to consider the use of the currently highly classified weapons mentioned earlier. Certain of these weapons are already available and could be utilized at a point when Iran is seen to have created its first nuclear-armed missile or just before. These capabilities should be emphasized more. The perspective would be improved.

Among the best known would be the electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) weapon that might be detonated at an altitude up to 400km in salvos above a central Iranian target set. This action effectively would disable all electricity-dependent instruments from automobiles to home appliances and on to missile batteries and even deep underground facilities (as discovered by the Russians years ago in their own test firings).

Ultimately all power grids throughout the targeted areas in Iran would be shorted out for hundreds of miles. There would be no need for selective targeting other than to avoid “spill-over” into non-Iranian border regions. The details of such range and target control mechanisms remain some of the most highly sensitive and thus of the strictest classification.

To compliment and supplement the EMP barrage there would be a massive computer hacking effort before and during the attack. This cyber offensive pulverizing Tehran’s tactical command and control systems reportedly has been gamed successfully on several occasions — again highly classified. The combination of the two attacks is believed to be able effectively to bring Iran to a standstill.

Defense consultant Chet Nagle, U.S. Naval Academy graduate and author of the acclaimed work, Iran Covenant, characterized the overall effect: “In fact, if the strike [EMP] was at noon on a sunny day, the people below would not know it happened except their lights would go out, cars would stop, fridges die, power line transformers short out, oil refineries shut down, and those uranium enrichment centrifuges in caverns would stop spinning.”

Such an action would immobilize Iran and allow conventional U.S. sea and air forces time to attack the already degraded Iranian coastal defense, thus preventing the closing of the Straits of Hormuz. Such a scenario supports the fact that the issue is not whether Iran can be shut down, but whether the Obama Administration would have the will to do so.

The Iranians and O’Hanlon/Riedel are betting against American will. The Israelis may agree with them, but such a view only further insures an Israeli preemptive strike. So perhaps it might be better if we did talk about — “bombing” Iran!

What America Needs to Know About EMPs – By Peter Pry | Foreign Policy.

[Joseph Wouk comments:  It is my belief that Israel’s attack on the Iranian nuclear program is likely to consist of a preliminary EMP attack which will cause no casualties, followed by a prolonged conventional air and cruise missile attack to completely eliminate all known nuclear facilities.]

The threat of an electromagnetic attack is real, but preparing for one shouldn’t be too difficult.

BY PETER VINCENT PRY | MARCH 17, 2010

In her article “The Boogeyman Bomb,” Sharon Weinberger makes several allegations about the threat of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons, and a congressional commission set up to investigate it, that require correction.

By way of background, a nuclear weapon detonated at high altitude will produce an electromagnetic pulse that can damage and destroy electronic systems over vast regions of the Earth’s surface. A single nuclear weapon detonated at an altitude of 400 kilometers over the United States would project an EMP field over the entire country, as well as parts of Canada and Mexico. Mother Nature can also pose an EMP threat by means of a solar flare that causes a geomagnetic storm.

EMP is not just a threat to computers and electronic gadgets, but to all the critical infrastructures that depend on electronics and electricity — communications, transportation, banking and finance, food and water — and that sustain modern civilization and the lives of the American people.

In 2008, the congressionally mandated Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack delivered its final report to Congress, the Defense Department, and the Department of Homeland Security. The commission concluded that terrorist groups, rogue states, China, and Russia are theoretically capable of launching a catastrophic EMP attack against the United States and either had contingency plans to do so or were actively pursuing the ability. Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia have scientific and military research programs dedicated to or supportive of EMP capability, and their military doctrinal writings explicitly describe EMP attacks against the United States.

Based on eight years of research and analysis, 50 years of data from nuclear tests and EMP simulators, and never-before-attempted EMP tests, the commission found that any nuclear weapon, even a low-yield one, could potentially pose a catastrophic EMP threat to the United States, mainly because of the great fragility of the electric grid. One scenario of particular concern is a nuclear-armed Iran transferring a short- or medium-range nuclear missile to terrorist groups that could perform a ship-launched “anonymous” EMP attack against the United States. Iranian military strategists have written about EMP attacks against the United States, and Iran has successfully practiced launching a ballistic missile off a ship and flight-tested its Shahab-3 medium-range missile to detonate at high altitude, as if practicing an EMP attack.

The commission also noted credible Russian claims that they had developed what the Russians call “super-EMP” weapons — low-yield nuclear weapons specially designed to generate extraordinarily powerful EMP fields — and that the Russian Duma had raised the prospect of a disabling EMP attack against the United States during NATO’s bombing of Serbia in May 1999.

The EMP Commission also, in the first such preview by any official body, warned that a “great” geomagnetic storm could be as catastrophic as a nuclear EMP attack — and that this naturally occurring EMP event is inevitable. Normally, geomagnetic storms occur at high northern latitudes, not over the United States, and usually are not sufficiently powerful to cause catastrophic damage. But every hundred years or so, a “great” geomagnetic storm occurs that could cause catastrophic damage to electronics — and the infrastructures that rely upon them — over much of the Northern Hemisphere. The world has not experienced a great geomagnetic storm since the advent of the electronic age, not since the Carrington event of 1859 — but many scientists think we are overdue. A great geomagnetic storm could generate an EMP covering the United States equivalent to the high-altitude detonation of a very powerful megaton-class nuclear weapon.

Weinberger accuses the EMP Commission of deliberately “exaggerating the capabilities of a potential EMP attack.” This is a serious allegation, as deliberately misrepresenting the facts about the EMP threat would constitute an ethical and legal violation. As evidence, Weinberger offers the opinion of Philip Coyle of the Center for Defense Information. Whatever Coyle’s opinion may be, he is no authority on the commission’s work and has participated in none of it. In any case, even he only accuses the EMP Commission of using “inflammatory language” but not of misrepresenting facts.

As a member of the EMP Commission’s staff, I can assure the public that the EMP commissioners adhered to the highest standards of professionalism and scientific objectivity. If the findings of the EMP Commission sound alarming, it is because they are. The EMP commissioners did their duty and followed the data. The EMP Commission’s threat assessment and recommendations represent the best work so far produced by the United States on EMP and is the best-informed basis for national security policy.

The EMP Commission’s conclusions were also backed up by the findings of another congressional commission, this one chaired by former Defense Secretary William Perry. Their 2009 report independently concluded that terrorists, rogue states, China, and Russia could pose an EMP threat to the United States and advocated immediate implementation of the EMP Commission’s recommendations. The National Academy of Sciences has also urged implementation of the EMP Commission’s recommendations.

Are all of these commissions and blue-ribbon scientific studies a conspiracy to “hype” the EMP threat?

Weinberger correctly observes that there “has long been debate about just how devastating an EMP weapon would be on the United States.” This is exactly why Congress established the EMP Commission, after five years of congressional hearings on EMP that produced no consensus about the threat. There will always be individuals who disagree with any commission’s findings — no matter that the methodology, research, and analysis are excellent — just as there are those who disagree with the 9/11 Commission, the weapons-of-mass-destruction commission, the Warren Commission, or any other commission.

Weinberger alleges that the EMP Commission and concern about the EMP threat is strictly partisan. But the EMP Commission’s bipartisan credentials are impeccable. It was established by a Republican-dominated Congress in 2001 and re-established by a Democrat-dominated Congress in 2006. Commissioners were appointed on a bipartisan basis. The EMP threat, and the necessity to do something about it, is one of the few issues on which Democrats and Republicans in Congress are working together.

Weinberger asks why nuclear terrorists or rogue states would prefer to use a nuclear weapon for an EMP attack, instead of blasting a city. The short answer is that an EMP attack could inflict more and longer-lasting damage and kill many more Americans in the long run. Blasting a city cannot paralyze the United States and will leave forensic and other evidence that will virtually guarantee the destruction of the perpetrator. An EMP attack is the only option for a single nuclear weapon that offers terrorists or rogue states any realistic chance of defeating the United States, perhaps eliminating the United States as an actor from the world stage, permanently.

As to Weinberger’s complaints that Newt Gingrich and others concerned about the EMP threat sometimes recommend to popular audiences the novel One Second After, which describes a hypothetical EMP attack on the United States: Since Uncle Tom‘s Cabin there has been a venerable tradition in U.S. democracy of educating and building popular support for causes through novels. Her disgust would be more credible if she criticized with equal vigor the many novels and movies designed to raise popular concern about climate change.

Weinberger cites New Republic senior editor Michael Crowley as an example of a critic of the EMP Commission. Crowley is indeed a typical critic of the EMP Commission — he knows nothing about EMP and obviously never bothered to read the EMP Commission’s reports. Crowley alleges in his article “The Newt Bomb” that the EMP Commission is really a conspiracy to promote national missile defense and preventive war against Iran. Both claims are untrue, as is evident from the EMP Commission’s recommendations, which focus on passive defense of critical infrastructures.

Far from “hyping” the EMP threat, in its reports and public testimony, the commission went to great lengths to emphasize that there is no excuse for the United States to be vulnerable to nuclear or natural EMP and that the country can protect itself with a little effort and very modest investment. Most of our recommendations are common-sense solutions — good planning, training, selective hardening — that have universal applicability against other threats, including cyberwarfare, sabotage, and natural disasters. According to one estimate, the worst consequences of an EMP event could be avoided for as little as $100 million, by selectively protecting key transformers in the electric grid. Unlike other weapon-of-mass-destruction threats, which apparently will always be with us, the EMP Commission offered a way to put the EMP threat out of business.

World Report.

RUSSIA, CHINA SEEK IRAN’S CO-OPERATION

UNITED NATIONS – Russia and China have quietly made clear to the Iranian government they want Tehran to change its approach to the nuclear issue and accept a UN atomic fuel offer, Western diplomats said Tuesday.

Russia’s and China’s co-ordinated diplomatic approaches took place in Tehran around the beginning of March, according to several Western UN Security Council diplomats.

Russian frustration with Iran has been growing since Tehran snubbed a UN nuclear watchdog plan under which the Iranians would ship most of their low-enriched uranium to Russia and France for further enrichment and processing into fuel assemblies for a Tehran reactor for medical isotopes.

Chinese Ministry of National Defense Spokesperson Visits Israel.

Senior Colonel Xueping will be visiting Sderot and areas surrounding the Gaza Strip, as well as various units of the IDF. Additionally, he will be presented with the public-relations lessons learnt during the Second Lebanon War and during Operation Cast Lead.

The Spokesperson of the Chinese Ministry of National Defense and the Chinese Military, Senior Colonel Huang Xueping, arrived in Israel on Sunday (Feb. 21) for a four-day visit, as the personal guest of the IDF Spokesperson, Brig. Gen. Avi Benayahu. The Deputy Chief of the PLA’s Television Network, a Colonel from the News Affairs Bureau of the Chinese Ministry of Defense, will also be accompanying Senior Colonel Huang Xueping.

During their visit, Senior Colonel Huang Xueping and his accompanying staff will hear briefings by professional sources from within the IDF Spokesperson Unit about public-relations work during both routine and emergency times. The Chinese delegation will be presented with the public-relations lessons learnt during the Second Lebanon War and during Operation Cast Lead. Additionally, they will learn about the IDF School for Media’s training system and the integration of spokesmanship and operational planning. Senior Colonel Huang Xueping will present the professional aspects of the Chinese Military’s spokesmanship to his Israeli hosts.

The delegation will visit the city of Sderot and the southern communities surrounding the Gaza Strip in order to understand the public-relations challenges regarding the security situation in the area. The guests will be briefed on the IDF activity in the area by the Commander of the Gaza Division, Brig. Gen. Eyal Eisenberg and on the daily routine of the area by the Mayor of Sderot. The delegation is also due to visit other military units and will be briefed on the IDF’s activity in Judea and Samaria, with an emphasis on the quality of life of the Palestinian population and the media-related issues that are dealt with on a daily basis.

In addition, the members of the Chinese delegation will visit the Army Radio station in Jaffa, the IDF newspaper (Bamahane) and the Home Front Command training base where they will hear about the accomplishments of the Israeli Search and Rescue Aid Delegation in Haiti. Moreover, the delegation will meet with many other Israeli professionals from the public-relations and spokesmanship field.

Senior Colonel Huang Xueping and his staff will visit Jerusalem and tour the Western Wall and the “Yad Vashem” Museum. During his visit in “Yad Vashem” he will place a wreath of flowers in memory of the victims of the Holocaust in an official ceremony.

Chief of Staff: “Hamas unconcerned that the area is heating up”.

Fiancé of slain Iranian protester Neda Soltan meets Peres.

IAF bombs Gaza weapons warehouse.

FrontPage Magazine » Obama’s Dangerous Diplomacy » Print.

Posted by Jacob Laksin on Mar 24th, 2010 and filed under FrontPage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

Obama’s Dangerous Diplomacy

Posted By Jacob Laksin On March 24, 2010 @ 12:05 am In FrontPage | No Comments

[Editor’s note: As a presidential aspirant, Hillary Clinton condemned ^[1] “cowboy diplomacy” that alienated America’s allies; as secretary of state in the Obama administration, she has practiced it, leading the recent onslaught against Israel for its decision to construct housing in a city that it considers its rightful capital. For some perspective on the administration’s disproportionate response, Front Page is joined by Joel Pollak ^[2], a human rights lawyer and author from Skokie, Illinois. Pollak is currently the Republican nominee ^[3] challenging Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky in Illinois’ 9th congressional district. Pollak discussed the radical shift in the administration’s policy toward Israel, why human rights law does not support the administration’s terrorist detention policies, and standing up to Rep. Barney Frank.]

FPM: The Obama administration’s recent row over Israel’s announcement of new settlements in Jerusalem seems much ado about nothing. When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier announced a 10-month moratorium on settlement construction as a good-faith gesture, he specifically excluded Jerusalem, a position that has been held by all Israeli prime ministers in recent decades and which, initially at least, was not protested by the Obama administration. Moreover, as you’ve pointed out ^[4] in these pages, Ramat Shlomo, the neighborhood where the 1,600 homes are to be built, is not some remote outpost; it is in a part of East Jerusalem that is almost certain to remain part of Israel in any future Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. How then do you account for the severity of the Obama administration’s response – everyone from Vice President Biden to Secretary Clinton to presidential advisor David Axelrod has publically condemned Israel in the past few weeks – and the hard line it has taken against Israel?

Pollak: There are two reasons for the severity of the response. One is a radical shift in policy. This administration is abandoning the commitments of its predecessors to allow Israel defensible borders that would include some territory across the 1949 armistice line (the 1967 line, or Green Line). Instead, it is adopting the Arab (Saudi) peace initiative, which seeks complete withdrawal to the armistice line. The difference might not amount to much, in terms of total land area, but it is a radical and dangerous shift in the way we approach the conflict, and it has severe implications for the future of Jerusalem.

The second reason for the severity of the response is that this administration–even more than its predecessor–cannot admit its mistakes. It refuses, for example, to acknowledge that its first year of Mideast diplomacy, based entirely on Israeli and American concessions, has been a failure. So it has doubled down on Israeli concessions, much the way it has doubled down on unpopular domestic policies in the belief that people will eventually submit to exhortation by the president.

I also think there was a degree of blunder in the whole crisis–not just on the Israeli side. Vice-President Biden responded in a (sadly) characteristic way to a perceived slight. He insulted the U.S. more than Israel ever did by making a show of being humiliated. Great nations do not fly into hysterics over housing decisions by friendly foreign governments. Biden’s antics–and the administration’s follow-up–also made the U.S look weak by showing that we were not prepared to support our strongest ally. Even if we had truly been damaged by Israel’s housing announcement, the administration wasted whatever leverage it might have had by backing Israeli PM Netanyahu into a corner. For an administration that purports to believe in diplomacy, this was a poor example of it.

FPM: The Obama administration’s position seems to be that Israel’s settlement activity in East Jerusalem is sabotaging the “peace process” with the Palestinians and preventing negotiations from taking place. David Axelrod has put it ^[5] in nearly those exact terms. What do you make of this argument?

Pollak: Settlements are not the problem. The Gaza disengagement in 2005, which uprooted all settlements and soldiers from the territory, was met with an escalation of terror. The fact that the Obama administration does not seem to remember that is very troubling.

FPM: It has been suggested that the U.S.-Israel relationship is the most strained that it has been in nearly four decades. How would you describe the current state of that relationship and what can both sides do to mend it?

Pollak: The relationship between the American people and the Israeli people is stronger than ever. The relationship between the two administrations is functional. But the relationship between the Israeli people and the American administration will not be repaired easily. What Israel can do to repair the relationship is to remain committed to its own defense. Self-reliance and strength breed respect. That is the basis on which the close relationship was built after Israel’s victory in the Six Day War. What the U.S. can do to repair the relationship is to get serious about Iran. Announce that we will support a pre-emptive Israeli strike against Iran if the need arises. Indicate that we will target Iranian political institutions as well as military institutions if the nuclear program is not stopped. Offer real and active support to the Iranian democracy movement. I believe that would go a long way to restoring the trust of the Israeli public in the Obama administration. Also, recognizing Jewish claims in at least the Jewish parts of East Jerusalem would have some effect in moving both administrations past the most recent debacle.

FPM: Some have argued ^[6] that the administration’s disproportionate condemnation of Israel will only embolden anti-Israel extremism in the Middle East – whether from Palestinians or from Iran. Do you agree and how big of a concern is that?

Pollak: I agree. It has already emboldened anti-Israel extremism elsewhere, including in the U.S. It is a huge concern because it makes diplomacy–the very diplomacy to which this administration is committed–far more difficult. It resets Palestinian and Iranian expectations at impossible levels, and encourages a culture of incitement against Israel. For example, Hamas used the Obama administration’s criticism of settlements to attack the re-construction of a centuries-old synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, which Jordan had destroyed after it occupied the area in 1948. They turned a housing issue into an international religious conflagration. It was a foreseeable outcome.

FPM: When Obama advisor David Axelrod ^[7] recently went on cable news shows to condemn Israel, it highlighted the fact that some Americans Jews, particularly on the Left, have a vision of what it means to be supportive of Israel that is radically different from how most Jews would understand the concept. Another example might be J-Street ^[8], the self-styled “pro-Israel, pro-peace” activist group that, despite its claim of supporting Israel, nevertheless opposed Israel’s military campaign against Hamas. How do you explain the disconnect between the putatively pro-Israel aims of such people and groups and the actual implications of the positions they take?

Pollak: I think many well-meaning people on that side of the issue fail to understand the disconnect between sentiment on one hand and logic on the other. I met someone involved in J Street the other day, who told me he was opposed to a military option on Iran, partly because the Iraq war had gone badly. Fine–that is a defensible position, even if I don’t agree with it. He then went on to say he opposed sanctions against Iran as well. Now, if you oppose military action, and you oppose sanctions, what are you left with? Defeat and destruction. I think after a certain point, when idealism stands in bold defiance of reality, it ceases to be excusable. As Orwell argued during WWII, at some point the subjective impulse of pacifism crosses over into effective support for fascism. I think many of those folks don’t realize what they’re arguing, though some should by now.

FPM: You are a human rights lawyer and a graduate of Harvard Law School, so I am interested in how you see the Obama administration’s decision to close Guantanamo Bay and to hold civilian trials for terrorist detainees like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. For instance, the administration has indicated that it may seek to transfer ^[9] some of the detainees to Thompson prison in your home state of Illinois. Are such policies what human rights law prescribes, as the administration has repeatedly suggested?

Pollak: Human rights law, in my view, prescribes exactly the opposite–namely, that we maintain a separation between the military and civilian worlds. Granting war criminals access to the generous protections of the civilian court system may also encourage terrorists to attack civilian rather than military targets, especially since the administration still intends to try the bombers of the U.S.S. Cole in the military system. I believe there are better alternatives to holding all of our detainees at Guantanamo Bay–we could use several different military prisons overseas, for example–but until we find those alternatives, we should not rush to implement decisions made for political rather than security reasons. In my state, the majority of people do not want terror detainees captured on foreign battlefields to be brought to U.S. soil–neither to Illinois nor to any other state.

FPM: You first gained fame (or infamy, in some quarters) in 2008 when you asked ^[10] Rep. Barney Frank during his appearance at Harvard how much responsibility he bore for the financial crisis. At the time, you didn’t get much of an answer ^[11]. So, let me ask you: How much responsibility do politicians from both parties have for the financial crisis and how would you rate the government’s handling of that economic crisis to date?

Pollak: I believe they bear a great deal of responsibility. They weakened the principles of risk and reward that provide the foundation of our economy and our financial system. I think the government has not handled the crisis well at all. Both the outgoing Bush administration and the incoming Obama administration seem to have made the problems worse, if they can be said to have addressed them at all. The massive spending and bailouts have placed this country’s future growth–its future solvency–in danger. To the extent that our economy has begun to show some positive signs, I believe credit is due to the persistence and faith of the American people, not to the self-interested interventions of politicians.

FPM: This past weekend, the Democrats finally passed the health care bill that they have been pushing for the past year, though they did so using procedural tactics that were controversial, to say the least. What do you make of the substance of the bill and did the Democrats’ ends in this instance justify the means?

Pollak: The bill prepares the way for the nationalization of health care in America. It does nothing to address the problem of cost, while placing the quality of care at risk. The goal–as Democrats stated openly on many occasions–was to show that radical change could be accomplished, in order to prepare the way for further radical changes and a massive redistribution of wealth. In the process, they undermined public faith in democracy by casting aside the ordinary rules of political deliberation. We need to start over–not just on health care, but on restoring the faith of the American people in our constitution and in our institutions of representative government. It took only one year to destroy what took many years to build: trust. It may take many more years to restore that trust. As difficult as that will be, and as long as it will take us, we have to begin today.

FPM: Joel Pollak, thanks very much for joining us.

Dispute with Israel underscores limits of U.S. power, a shifting alliance – washingtonpost.com.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) greets Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, right, on Capitol Hill. (Melina Mara/the Washington Post)
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Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 24, 2010

President Obama and his aides have cast the settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not just the relationship with Israel, as a core U.S. national security interest. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the head of the military’s Central Command, put it starkly in recent testimony on Capitol Hill: “The conflict foments anti-American sentiment due to a perception of U.S. favoritism toward Israel.” His comments raised eyebrows in official Washington — and overseas — because they suggested that U.S. military officials were embracing the idea that failure to resolve the conflict had begun to imperil American lives.

Visiting Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu received warm applause at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference on Monday night when he bluntly dismissed U.S. demands to end housing construction in the disputed part of Jerusalem. He was greeted as a hero when he visited Capitol Hill on Tuesday.

But the administration has been strikingly muted in its reception. No reporters, or even photographers, were invited when Netanyahu met with Secretary of State Clinton Hillary Rodham Clinton and Vice President Biden on Monday or when he met with Obama on Tuesday night. There was no grand Rose Garden ceremony. Official spokesmen issued only the blandest of statements.

The cooling in the U.S.-Israel relationship coincides with an apparent deepening of Israel’s diplomatic isolation. Anger has grown in Europe in the wake of Israel’s suspected misuse of European passports to kill a Palestinian militant in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates. On Tuesday, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband announced the expulsion of a senior diplomat over the incident, an unusually drastic step for an ally. Relations with Turkey, a rare Muslim friend of Israel for decades, have hit a new low.

Obama and his aides have strongly pledged support for Israel’s security — including a reiteration by Clinton when she addressed AIPAC on Monday — but they have continued to criticize its settlement policies in tough terms. Clinton notably did not pull her punches on the issue when she addressed the pro-Israel group, warning that whether Israelis like it or not, “the status quo” is not sustainable. The drawing of such lines by the administration has been noticed in the Middle East.

“Israeli policies have transcended personal affront or embarrassment to American officials and are causing the United States real pain beyond the Arab-Israeli arena. This is something new, and therefore the U.S. is reacting with unusually strong, public and repeated criticisms of Israel’s settlement policies and its general peace-negotiating posture,” Rami Khouri, editor at large of Beirut’s Daily Star, wrote this week. “At the same time Washington repeats it ironclad commitment to Israel’s basic security in its 1967 borders, suggesting that the U.S. is finally clarifying that its support for Israel does not include unconditional support for Israel’s colonization policies.”

Problems from the start

The Obama administration has struggled from the start to find its footing with Israel and the Palestinians. Obama took office soon after Israel’s three-week offensive in the Gaza Strip, which had ruptured peace talks nurtured by the George W. Bush administration. Obama appointed a special envoy, former senator George J. Mitchell, on his second day in office. But then the administration tried to pressure Israel to freeze all settlement expansion — and failed. The United States further lost credibility when Clinton embraced Netanyahu’s compromise proposal, which fell short of Palestinian expectations, as “unprecedented.”

U.S. pressure at the time also backfired because it appeared to let the Palestinians off the hook. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas refused to enter into direct talks before a settlement freeze, even though he had done so before. The administration had to settle for indirect talks, with Mitchell shuttling back and forth. The recent disagreement has set back that effort.

Administration officials have been careful to turn down the heat in their latest exchanges with Netanyahu over Jerusalem, even as they continue to express their displeasure. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley spoke in clipped sentences Tuesday when asked to describe the hours of private conversations with Netanyahu this week: “We have outlined some concerns to the Israeli government. They have responded to our concerns. That conversation continues. This is a dynamic process. There’s a lot of give-and-take involved in these conversations.”

Crowley argued that “the only way to ultimately resolve competing claims, on the future of Jerusalem, is to get to direct negotiations.” He said the administration faces a series of “pass-fail” tests: Can it get the two parties to join direct talks? Can it persuade them to address the vexing issues surrounding the final status of Jerusalem? And ultimately, “do we get to an agreement that is in the Israeli interest, in the Palestinian interest, in the interest of the rest of the region and clearly in the interest of the United States?”

Arab leaders have long said that a peace deal would be possible if the United States pressured Israel. But many experts say such hope is often misplaced. In the case of East Jerusalem, Netanyahu believes that a halt to construction represents political suicide for his coalition, so no amount of U.S. pressure will lead him to impose a freeze — at least until he is in the final throes of peace talks.

“U.S. pressure can work, but it needs to be at the right time, on the right issue and in the right political context,” said Robert Malley, a peace negotiator in the Clinton White House. “The latest episode was an apt illustration. The administration is ready for a fight, but it realized the issue, timing and context were wrong. The crisis has been deferred, not resolved.”