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Thursday, August 24, 2006
Neighbors, surveillance, Katrina cash
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s free-for-all Friday. Pick a topic:
• Peace is at hand. Jesse’s there. Ship in Madeleine Albright, who charmed Kim Jong-il out of his nuclear ambitions, and it’s a lock. Guys, gals, you’re coming home.
• You know the United States is weak when Fidel Castro’s brother, Raul, threatens us. This is the world we will live in if the appeasers prevail. Maybe it’s something in the water: Lebanon’s defense minister warned Hezbollah not to break the cease-fire with Israel, lest they be subject to “harsh measures,” presumably from his government.
• Bob Bruegmann, architecture historian and urban planner at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has metro Atlanta pegged perfectly: “What you’re seeing in Atlanta is the building of a new generation of downtowns. The best way to think about it is not city vs. suburbs, but a process of constant decentralization.” The ancient notion that has hampered most all thought about Cobb, for example, and Atlanta is that one is the downtown and the other is the suburb. We’re neighbors. That’s it. Not dependents. Neighbors. Not spoke-and-hub. Neighbors. Not satellites. Neighbors. Quit calling me a suburb, neighbor.
• A headline for all armies, all time: “Grumbling from Israeli soldiers.” About food and equipment.
• When I hear that a federal judge has ruled, as U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor did, that warrantless surveillance of calls from overseas by suspected terrorists is unconstitutional, my first question is: Who appointed her? Answer: Jimmy Carter. Appeal. The second question is: What’s her politics? Ah, as Judicial Watch pointed out, she’s a trustee of a foundation that gave grants to a branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, a party to the suit. Disciplinary action is warranted, before or after her decision is thrown out.
• Three reasons not to levy taxes: 1) Atlanta; 2) the federal government; 3) no care, no oversight. When given $5 million in free money to spend rehabbing houses for the handicapped, elderly or poor, Atlanta blew it. It’s not real money. It’s from the feds. Rip it off. A massive shutdown of federal spending programs is needed.
• Georgia state Sen. Don Balfour (R-Snellville) is the lone Republican among the top 10 legislators with campaign finance late-filing penalties. There’s a lesson here, young people. When you get into trouble, see who’s there with you. If they’re not what you want to be, change your behavior.
• Good for DeKalb and for CEO Vernon Jones, who proposed a $100 fine if talking on a cellphone is a contributing factor in a wreck. Commissioners upped it to $500 and passed it into law. A majority of the drivers out-of-synch with traffic are on the phone.
• Headline: “Media new front in war on terrorism.” Absolutely. Wars are won on the battlefield and lost in the translation. The administration and the military should do everything legal, moral and ethical to influence the media — here and around the world.
• About 40 percent of the $111 billion allocated for Katrina recovery has been spent. A problem? Nope. Not in the least. Some bureaucrat should stand to lose his job, and some recipient should be fined or go to jail, for misspent money. The “shovel it out the door” period is over.
• Two environmental groups want Georgia Power Co. to raise my bill to generate up to $9 million per year to fund grants and loans to groups working on renewable energy projects, such as wind and solar. The state has wisely declined. This is an example of how interest groups would use the private sector as tax collector to fund off-budget the social programs they want. Conservatives should always oppose this tax gimmick.
• Bring me some more of those little itsy-bitsy gas-nipping minicars. On second thought, not just yet. Fatalities on U.S. roadways in 2005 reached the highest level in 15 years, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports. The biggest jump, though, was among motorcyclists, where fatalities were up 13 percent. Roll back helmet laws, as Florida, Texas and Pennsylvania have done recently, and deaths go up.
Who’s surprised? States should repeal helmet laws — only after riders sign living wills, show unsubsidized biker-pool insurance coverage adequate to cover their medical bills and vegetative-state nursing home care and produce affidavits from their spouse, parents and children renouncing any claim to taxpayer-funded survivor benefits.
• Jim Wooten is associate editorial page editor. His column runs Fridays, Sundays and Tuesdays.
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‘I can’t keep quiet on this’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It may drive his critics nuts, but to supporters who believe that no alternative exists but to win the Iraqi phase of the war on terrorism, the President’s promise this week that the U.S. won’t abandon Iraq on his watch is just the reassurance the country needs — this country and Iraq. “We’re not leaving so long as I’m the president,” he declared.
U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) brought his colleague, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) by the newspaper Wednesday to talk about Iraq and a host of issues. Frist was quizzed about the call-up of Marine reservists and the allocation of more U.S. troops in the effort to quell a high level of secretarian violence in Baghdad, which according to U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad saw 558 violence incidents in July “a 10 percent increase over the already high monthly average.” Said Frist: “I err on the more optimistic side” but “I don’t think we’ll know for another 2-3 months what the impact will be.”
Isakson, who had sat silent throughout the conversation with Frist, spoke up. ” I’m sorry, I can’t keep quiet on this,” he said. “The terrorists and those that are trying their best to attack us – and a lot of that is coming out of Iran – are concentrated on Baghdad. It’s a reflection of the success we’ve had in the majority of the country. If you confront that concentration now with the appropriate force and in conjunction with the Iraqi army and you can break its back, it has the chance to be a very optimistic result. If you turn the other way and say you’re failing, then you’ve handed them a victory. You have to remember the terrorists don’t have to beat us to win. All they have to have us do is quit and go home and they declare victory. You saw what Hezbollah did in South Lebanon.”
It is important for the country to recognize that Iraq is a phase, a front in the war. From the start, critics have attempted to draw a distinction between it and the larger war. A New York Times/CBS News poll this week indicates they’re having some success. In it, 51 percent of those surveyed say they see no link, up 10 percentage points since June; 53 percent say it was a mistake, up from 48 percent in June.
Sometimes the only course is to plod ahead — the course Bush has chosen Certainly the stakes are high in Baghdad, where a fifth of the Iraqi population lives. As Isakson observes, the threshold for victory for the terrorists is low, just as it was in Lebanon. Suppose we do begin, as Democrats insist, an early “redeployment” from Iraq. What are the consequences to our national security, to the policy of preemption, to our role in the Mideast, to our standing in the world? I think it would be a disaster worse than Vietnam. But others on this blog have different views. Enlighten us. What do America, the world and domestic leadership look like after an early withdrawal from Iraq?
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