It's Never Just the Economy, Stupid

The following is adapted from a speech delivered by Brian T. Kennedy on January 7, 2011, in the “First Principles on First Fridays” lecture series sponsored by Hillsdale College’s Kirby Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship in Washington, D.C. Mr. Kennedy is president of the Claremont Institute and publisher of the Claremont Review of Books. He has written on national security affairs and California public policy issues in National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, and other national newspapers. He sits on the Independent Working Group on Missile Defense and is a co-author of the recent book Shariah: The Threat to America.

We are often told that we possess the most powerful military in the world and that we will face no serious threat for some time to come. We are comforted with three reassurances aimed at deflecting any serious discussion of national security: (1) that Islam is a religion of peace; (2) that we will never go to war with China because our economic interests are intertwined; and (3) that America won the Cold War and Russia is no longer our enemy. But these reassurances are myths, propagated on the right and left alike. We believe them at our peril, because serious threats are already upon us.

Let me begin with Islam. We were assured that it was a religion of peace immediately following September 11. President Bush, a good man, believed or was persuaded that true Islam was not that different from Judaism or Christianity. He said in a speech in October 2001, just a month after the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon: “Islam is a vibrant faith. . . . We honor its traditions. Our enemy does not. Our enemy doesn’t follow the great traditions of Islam. They’ve hijacked a great religion.” But unfortunately, Mr. Bush was trying to understand Islam as we would like it to be rather than how countless devout Muslims understand it.

Organizationally, Islam is built around a belief in God or Allah, but it is equally a political ideology organized around the Koran and the teachings of its founder Muhammad. Whereas Christianity teaches that we should render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s—allowing for a non-theocratic political tradition to develop in the West, culminating in the principles of civil and religious liberty in the American founding—Islam teaches that to disagree with or even reinterpret the Koran’s 6000 odd verses, organized into 114 chapters or Suras and dealing as fully with law and politics as with matters of faith, is punishable by death.

Islamic authorities of all the major branches of Islam hold that the Koran must be read so that the parts written last override the others. This so-called theory of abrogation means that the ruling parts of the Koran are those written after Muhammad went to Medina in 622 A.D. Specifically, they are Suras 9 and 5, which are not the Suras containing the verses often cited as proof of Islam’s peacefulness.

Sura 9, verse 5, reads: “Fight and slay the unbelievers wherever ye find them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem of war. But if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practice regular charity, then open the way for them . . . .”

Sura 9, verse 29, reads: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Apostle, nor acknowledge the religion of truth, even if they are of the 40 people of the Book, until they pay the jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.”

Sura 5, verse 51, reads: “Oh ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors; they are but friends and protectors to each other. And he amongst you that turns to them for friendship is of them. Verily Allah guideth not the unjust.”

And Sura 3, verse 28, introduces the doctrine of taqiyya, which holds that Muslims should not be friends with the infidel except as deception, always with the end goal of converting, subduing, or destroying him.

It is often said that to point out these verses is to cherry pick unfairly the most violent parts of the Koran. In response, I assert that we must try to understand Muslims as they understand themselves. And I hasten to add that the average American Muslim does not understand the Koran with any level of detail. So I am not painting a picture here of the average Muslim. I am trying to understand those Muslims, both here in the U.S. and abroad, who actively seek the destruction of America.

Here at home, the threat is posed by the Muslim Brotherhood and its organizational arms, such as the Council on American Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America, and the various Muslim student associations. These groups seek to persuade Americans that Islam is a religion of peace. But let me quote to you from a document obtained during the 2007 Holy Land Trial investigating terrorist funding. It is a Muslim Brotherhood Strategic Memorandum on North American Affairs that was approved by the Shura Council and the Organizational Conference in 1987. It speaks of “Enablement of Islam in North America, meaning: establishing an effective and a stable Islamic Movement led by the Muslim Brotherhood which adopts Muslims’ causes domestically and globally, and which works to expand the observant Muslim base, aims at unifying and directing Muslims’ efforts, presents Islam as a civilization alternative, and supports the global Islamic State wherever it is.”

Elsewhere this document says:

The process of settlement is a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” with all the means. The Ikhwan [the Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim’s destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes . . . .

Now during the Bush Administration, the number of Muslims in the U.S. was typically estimated to be around three million. The Pew Research Center in 2007 estimated it to be 2.35 million. In 2000, the Council on American Islamic Relations put the number at five million. And President Obama in his Cairo speech two years ago put it at seven million.

In that light, consider a 2007 survey of American Muslim opinion conducted by the Pew Research Center. Eight percent of American Muslims who took part in this survey said they believed that suicide bombing can sometimes be justified in defense of Islam. Even accepting a low estimate of three million Muslims in the U.S., this would mean that 240,000 among us hold that suicide bombing in the name of Islam can be justified. Among American Muslims 18-29 years old, 15 percent agreed with that and 60 percent said they thought of themselves as Muslim first and Americans second. Among all participants in the survey, five percent—and five percent of the low estimate of three million Muslims in America is 150,000—said they had a favorable view of al Qaeda.

Given these numbers, it is not unreasonable to suggest that the political aims and ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood represent a domestic threat to national security. It is one thing to have hundreds of terrorist sympathizers within our borders, but quite another if that number is in the hundreds of thousands. Consider the massacre at Fort Hood: Major Nidal Malik Hasan believed that he was acting as a devout Muslim—indeed, he believed he was obeying a religious mandate to wage war against his fellow soldiers. Yet even to raise the question of whether Islam presents a domestic threat today is to invite charges of bigotry or worse.

And as dangerous as it potentially is, this domestic threat pales in comparison to the foreign threat from the Islamic Republic of Iran and its allies—a threat that is existential in nature. The government in Tehran, of course, is enriching uranium to convert to plutonium and place in a nuclear warhead. Iran has advanced ballistic missiles such as the Shahab-3, which can be launched from land or sea and is capable of destroying an American city. Even worse, if the Iranians were able to deliver the warhead as an electromagnetic pulse weapon from a ship off shore—a method they have been practicing, by the way—they could destroy the electronic infrastructure of the U.S. and cause the deaths of tens of millions or more. And let me be perfectly clear: We do not today have a missile defense system in place that is capable of defending against either a ship-launched missile attack by Iran or a ballistic missile attack from China or Russia. We do not yet today have such a system in place, even though we are capable of building one.

Since I have mentioned China and Russia, let me turn to them briefly in that order. The U.S. trades with China and the Chinese buy our debt. Currently they have $2 trillion in U.S. reserves, about half of which is in U.S. treasuries. Their economy and ours are intimately intertwined. For this reason it is thought that the Chinese will not go to war with us. Why, after all, would they want to destroy their main export market?

On the other hand, China is building an advanced army, navy, air force, and space-based capability that is clearly designed to limit the U.S. and its ability to project power in Asia. It has over two million men under arms and possesses an untold number of ICBMs—most of them aimed at the U.S.—and hundreds of short- and medium-range nuclear missiles. China’s military thinking is openly centered on opposing American supremacy, and its military journals openly discuss unrestricted warfare, combining traditional military means with cyber warfare, economic warfare, atomic warfare, and terrorism. China is also working to develop a space-based military capability and investing in various launch vehicles, including manned spaceflight, a space station, and extensive anti-satellite weaponry aimed at negating U.S. global satellite coverage.

Absent a missile defense capable of intercepting China’s ballistic missiles, the U.S. would be hard pressed to maintain even its current security commitments in Asia. The U.S. Seventh Fleet, however capable, cannot withstand the kinds of nuclear missiles and nuclear-tipped cruise missiles that China could employ against it. The Chinese have studied American capabilities, and have built weapons meant to negate our advantages. The destructive capability of the recently unveiled Chinese DF-21D missile against our aircraft carriers significantly raises the stakes of a conflict in the South China Sea. And the SS-N-22 cruise missile—designed by the Russians and deployed by the Chinese and Iranians—presents a daunting challenge due to its enormous size and Mach 3 speed.

China has for some time carried out a policy that has been termed “peaceful rise.” But in recent years we have seen the coming to power of what scholars like Tang Ben call the “Red Guard generation”—generals who grew up during the Cultural Revolution, who are no longer interested in China remaining a secondary power, and who appear eager to take back Taiwan, avenge past wrongs by Japan and replace the U.S. as the preeminent military power in the region and ultimately in the world.

However far-fetched this idea may seem to American policymakers, it is widely held in China that America is on the decline, with economic problems that will limit its ability to modernize its military and maintain its alliances. And indeed, as things stand, the U.S. would have to resort to full-scale nuclear war to defend its Asian allies from an attack by China. This is the prospect that caused Mao Tse Tung to call the U.S. a “Paper Tiger.” Retired Chinese General Xiong Guong Kai expressed much the same idea in 1995, when he said that the U.S. would not trade Los Angeles for Taipei—that is, that we would have to stand by if China attacks Taiwan, since China has the ability to annihilate Los Angeles with a nuclear missile. In any case, current Chinese aggression against Japan in the Senkaku Islands and their open assistance of the Iranian nuclear program, not to mention their sale of arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan, would suggest that China is openly playing the role that the Soviet Union once played as chief sponsor of global conflict with the West.

Which brings us to Russia and to the degradation of American strategic thinking during and after the Cold War. This thinking used to be guided by the idea that we must above all prevent a direct attack upon the U.S. homeland. But over the past 50 years we have been taught something different: that we must accept a balance of power between nations, especially those possessing nuclear ballistic missiles; and that we cannot seek military superiority—including defensive superiority, as with missile defense—lest we create strategic instability. This is now the common liberal view taught at universities, think tanks and schools of foreign service. Meanwhile, for their part, conservatives have been basking in the glow of “winning the Cold War.” But in what sense was it won, it might be asked, given that we neither disarmed Russia of its nuclear arsenal nor put a stop to its active measures to undermine us. The transformation of some of the former captive nations into liberal democracies is certainly worth celebrating, but given the Russian government’s brutally repressive domestic policies and strengthened alliances with America’s enemies abroad over the past 20 years, conservatives have overdone it.

Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that our policy toward Russia has been exceedingly foolish. For the past two decades we have paid the Russians to dismantle nuclear warheads they would have dismantled anyway, while they have used those resources to modernize their ballistic missiles. On our part, we have not even tested a nuclear warhead since 1992—which is to say that we aren’t certain they work anymore. Nor have we maintained any tactical nuclear weapons. Nor, to repeat, have we built the missile defense system first proposed by President Reagan.

Just last month, with bipartisan backing from members of the foreign policy establishment, the Senate ratified the New Start Treaty, which will further reduce our nuclear arsenal and will almost certainly cause further delays in building missile defenses—and this with a nation that engages in massive deception against us, supports our enemies, and builds ever more advanced nuclear weapons.

At the heart of America’s strategic defense policy today is the idea of launching a retaliatory nuclear strike against whatever nuclear power attacks us. But absent reliable confidence in the lethality of forces, such a deterrent is meaningless. In this light, deliberating about the need for a robust modernization program, rather than arms reductions through New Start, would have been a better way for Congress to spend the days leading up to Christmas—which is to say, it would have been supportive of our strategic defense policy, rather than undercutting it.

But what about that strategic policy? Some of New Start’s supporters argued that reducing rather than modernizing our nuclear arsenal places us on the moral high ground in our dealings with other nations. But can any government claim to occupy the moral high ground when it willingly, knowingly, and purposely keeps its people nakedly vulnerable to nuclear missiles? The Russians understand well the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the American defense establishment, and have carefully orchestrated things for two decades so that we remain preoccupied with threats of North Korean and now Iranian ballistic missiles. We spend our resources developing modest defense systems to deal, albeit inadequately, with these so-called rogue states, and meanwhile forego addressing the more serious threat from Russia and China, both of which are modernizing their forces. Who is to say that there will never come a time when the destruction or nuclear blackmail of the U.S. will be in the interest of the Russians or the Chinese? Do we imagine that respect for human life or human rights will stop these brutal tyrannies from acting on such a determination?

If I sound pessimistic, I don’t mean to. Whatever kind of self-deception has gripped the architects of our current defense policies, the American people have proved capable of forcing a change in direction when they learn the facts. Americans do not wish to be subjected to Sharia law, owe large sums of money to the Chinese, or be kept vulnerable to nuclear missiles. Having responded resoundingly to the economic and constitutional crisis represented by Obamacare, it is now time for us to remind our representatives of the constitutional requirement to provide for a common defense—in the true sense of the word.


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The preceeding is adapted from a speech delivered by Brian T. Kennedy on January 7, 2011, in the “First Principles on First Fridays” lecture series sponsored by Hillsdale’s Kirby Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship in Washington, D.C. Mr. Kennedy is president of the Claremont Institute and publisher of the Claremont Review of Books. He has written on national security affairs and California public policy issues in National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, and other national newspapers. He sits on the Independent Working Group on Missile Defense and is a co-author of the recent book Shariah: The Threat to America.

Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College

Egypt Changes Bring America Closer To Disaster

According to the White House, the news media, and other detractors of freedom and United States interests, the terrible Honsi Mubarak, President of Egypt, has finally been disposed and good riddance. Mubarak was not the poster boy for democracy nor was he the most benevolent of Arab leaders. But he was a staunch supporter of Israel, strongly anti-terrorist, a friend of the United States. He brings back to mind Tito, the cold war leader of Yugoslavia. The story goes that Harry Truman and Josef Stalin were discussing the Balkans and Stalin commented that Tito was a real son-of-a-bitch. Truman agreed, but then commented that Tito was “our son-of-a-bitch.”

The analogy fit Mubarak well. We may have disagreed with much of what he did, but he supported our interests in the mid-East, was able to contain much of the terrorism against Israel and the United States, kept the Suez Canal open, and was not disruptive to American interests as are most of our so-called friends in that part of the world. In short, his interests coincided with many of ours, and that made life easier.

But to listen to the leftists, he was all bad. It was good, according the White House and other socialist Democrats, that he is gone, ousted by a popular uprising led by the freedom loving, democratic leaning sect, the Muslim Brotherhood. Or are they? With connections to al-Qa'ida, Hamas, their objectives are certainly questionable. Regardless of the rhetoric, the Muslim Brotherhood is a group which has as its main objective, as pointed out in Congressional hearings, "a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions."

The type of Islamic doctrine which will be brought to Egypt with the change of theological thinking in Egypt can be best expressed by a recent poll by the Pew Research Center. Interesting facts of the poll include the following:

• 49% of Egyptians say Islam plays only a "small role" in public affairs under President Hosni Mubarak, while 95% prefer the religion play a "large role in politics."
• 84% favor the death penalty for people who leave the Muslim faith.
• 82% support stoning adulterers.
• 77% think thieves should have their hands cut off.
• 54% support a law segregating women from men in the workplace.
• 54% believe suicide bombings that kill civilians can be justified.
• Nearly half support the terrorist group Hamas.
• 30% have a favorable opinion of Hezbollah.
• 20% maintain positive views of al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden.
• 82% of Egyptians dislike the U.S. — the highest unfavorable rating among the 18 Muslim nations Pew surveyed.

It is unfortunate that Obama and the news media have just simply got it wrong. It is interesting that CNN reporter Anderson Cooper reported that the rioters in Cairo were mostly secular yuppies longing for human rights especially after he was beaten by an anti-American mob.

The Egyptians, along with other Islamic Muslims, have no interest in democracy or equal rights. They look at our principles as valueless. They want Islamic culture, and are willing to kill and die to force it upon our country.

The responsibility of the Administration and Congress is to protect our citizens, our country, and our way of life. They are failing in this responsibility to an extent which is treasonous. The disaster which is Egypt should not be accepted nor condoned. The present policy being followed by Obama will bring the end of freedom to America by a victory by Muslim religious fanatics.

There has been no change in the ideology of Islam. We are involved in a war to the death with Muslim terrorists and murderers. And with the help of an inept president and congress, we are losing.

Wake up, America. Our freedom is being taken away from us. Our Constitution is being disregarded. We are on the edge of disaster. Stand up for your rights of freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom from fear, and freedom from want. If you don’t protect them, nobody will.

New Philadelphia T-R Editorial Misses The Point On City Budget

One thing about the Times-Reporter Editorials, they sure do make you feel good. Take the one for Wednesday, February 9, 2011, “City Made Great Strides During 2010.” That’s an editorial to call for rejoicing and bringing on a good nights sleep. What causes the worry, as it usually does, is what is not said, and in this case, there is a lot which is not said. But wait. This is an election year. There are a lot of things which are going to be overlooked, at least by some folks.

The good news: Gross revenue for the city income tax is up 219 thousand dollars.

The bad news: That increase applies only to the general fund, which is only used to pay for projects which fall under administrative tasks of the mayor’s office, City Council, the Safety Director, that sort of thing. Such things as building maintenance, heating gas, electricity, phones, get paid for, in part, through the general fund. Administrative salaries for elected officials and some appointed staff members come out of the general fund. All of the rest, vehicles and other equipment, tools, gasoline, sewer pipes, asphalt, salt in the winter, all the things done by the city departments, do not. Things like wages for the fire and police departments, maintenance crews, sewer plant and water department workers, lawn maintenance workers, the cost of nuts and bolts, of oil and grease, do not. These are charged under different accounts and paid for from specific accounts, but not the general fund. It has been a bad winter. Cold. Natural gas prices are up. How much of that 219 thousand dollars is left after paying the utility bills for the city? That didn’t come up. Huh.

What else didn’t come up was the decrease in City income which will occur when the County distributes the annual State grant money which the city receives every year. The county commissioners have already alerted the city that this State money will be reduced this year, probably substantially. What will such a reduction effect? Well, we had such a good year last year that everybody in the city got pay raises. Wasn’t much, we are told. An average of somewhere around two to three percent over all. We must have been doing well financially to give pay increases, certainly better than communities around us, because every other municipality either held the line on wages or laid employees off. But we were doing good and had this extra money, so what the heck. The police are still negotiating a pay raise for this year even though the country is in a financial depression.

According to the editorial, Mayor Taylor reports that the general fund balance ended a million dollars less than the previous year. The reason for that is, are you ready for this one, expenses increased but revenue did not. Wow.

What the Mayor said, in a way, is true. What he refers to as expenses is really spending. If you don’t spend it, it is not an expense. You want to cut expenses, you cut spending. It is not that difficult a concept. But last year with what money the City did have, it was spent with the attitude of we have it, let’s use it. No looking forward to the future. No recognition that the economy and its related tax base was still in a freefall. No thought that the money held in reserve might be needed in 2011 or 2012, just use it.

Well, this year we may run out of money. An when we do, there isn’t going to be any more. By law the City cannot run on a deficit budget. To bad the feds and the state don’t have to follow that kind of plan. So what will happen? Cutbacks in services first. Paving, water production and delivery, sewer maintenance, cemetery care, park personnel, cuts in police and fire personnel.

The greatest expense the City has is salaries and wages so personnel will be the first to go. Through a series of badly negotiated union contracts over the years, benefits to union workers in the city, amounting to 48% of their base pay, is added to their wages in the form of medical care, dental care, vacation time, overtime, sick leave, retirement, to mention a few. Think of it. There are people working for the city who are making more in benefits than the citizens who are paying their wages through taxation.

On the other hand, the Mayor is evidently overworked and, according to the Times-Reporter editorial, needs help. Forty percent of his time is spent working with people says the editorial. He needs an Human Resources officer, they go for about 70-thousand dollars a year to start, not including benefits. This would relieve the Mayor from dealing with medical leaves, insurance, the four unions and their bargaining contracts. I am sure his secretary would like that as she does all the paperwork for those types of things and the HR officer would certainly have his own secretarial staff. The mayor would also like to have an assistant general services superintendent and a part-time water clerk. Those additions alone, the way I figure it, will pretty much blow the $219 thousand dollar income tax increase from 2010 without taking the gas bill into consideration.

Such is the problem with the T-R editorial. We have the bright shiny side. Things are good, they say. Things are looking up, they say. Why doesn’t the editorial staff look into what they print? Why don’t they check the facts? What happened to the editorials of past years when they expressed opinions, good or bad, and left the advertisements and publicity to the want ads and social columns? I guess true journalism has succumbed.