Category Archives: defense policy

Border Walls

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There are lots of reasons for objecting to a wall running the length of our southern border (and I’ll elide the reasons for supporting one for the purposes of this post), but the reasons posited by the National Journal aren’t on that list.

[T]he more difficult it becomes to cross the border, the more likely undocumented migrants are to turn to smugglers for help getting across….

It’s not a perfect solution so we shouldn’t bother trying it at all? Aside from that bit of foolishness, the question of coyotes is a wholly unrelated question that needs to be addressed regardless of the measures we take to tighten security at our borders.

[N]o barrier will ever be high enough or secure enough to completely halt attempts to cross the border illegally.

It’s not a perfect solution so we shouldn’t bother trying it at all?

Research shows an uptick in migrant deaths at the border in the years following efforts by the US to tighten security and construct fences to keep undocumented immigrants out.

It’s not a perfect solution so we shouldn’t bother trying it at all? The source of immigration is a wholly unrelated question that needs to be addressed regardless of the measures we take to tighten security at our borders. We should be working with the source countries to get them to/force them to improve their domestic situation so as to reduce the incentives their citizens have to leave in the first place.

In the long run, that’s cheaper than efforts to control—in isolation—illegal immigration at our border, and it’s more prosperous by making those citizens freer in their home countries and making them better markets for our goods and services.

Another Clinton Lie

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Hillary Clinton’s campaign said Wednesday that emails on the private server she used when she was secretary of state contained material that is now classified, the clearest explanation thus far of an issue that has roiled her bid for the presidency.

At the same time, the campaign sought to play down the disclosure by saying the material had been retroactively classified out of an abundance of caution by US intelligence agencies.

“She was at worst a passive recipient of unwitting information that subsequently became deemed as classified,” said Brian Fallon, a spokesman for Mrs Clinton’s campaign.

This, of course is…nonsense. The material was classified at its inception, and the documents carrying the material was thereby classified at the documents’ creation. They were only marked classified after the fact, and after the material had been recognized—by others—as having been mishandled.

That the material had been being mishandled was well known to Clinton. She has said before that she understands the rules and requirements of handling classified material. That’s what makes her claims above, through her campaign, outright lies.

It’s Not a Mystery

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Except to Steve Chapman, writing in Real Clear Politics.

It’s a mystery why, after allegedly tricking us into giving them everything they wanted, the Iranians would be so eager to evade these easy terms.

Iran’s leadership wants nuclear weapons, and they’ll do what they need to do to get them: talk interminably about a “deal” that purports to restrict their access, for a time, and then disregard the terms of the deal in order to continue their development and building efforts apace. This just isn’t that hard to understand.

Let’s consider the threat of cheating. One complaint is that the accord allows Iran to delay inspections of some sites for up to 24 days or more, making it easy to clean them up before the inspectors arrive. In fact, it wouldn’t be easy, because nuclear materials linger—not for weeks, but for centuries.

Back in 2003, when it was suspected of conducting forbidden nuclear experiments at one facility, Iran blocked International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitors for more than six months. But when inspectors finally got in, they were able to detect telltale residues.

Couple things about this. In no particular order, the materials linger when they’re not cleaned up. Apparently Chapman thinks the Iranians are so stupid they learned nothing over the last dozen years from their less-than-effective cleanup efforts and being caught out.

From that incident those dozen years ago, no consequences ensued from the IAEA’s discovery. There’s little reason to believe a different outcome to any cheating today.

And, what Chapman carefully elided: the Iranians cheated then. Along those lines:

We don’t have to prove guilt. Iran has to prove innocence.

No, they don’t. They don’t have to do anything; they can continue their activities unaltered by any discovery of cheating. Never mind that no consequence can ensue from the cheating until it has been demonstrated that Iran has failed its proof.

But take the worst-case scenario. Suppose Iran commits a violation and our partners devise some ingenious way to block sanctions. Then what? The US would still have the ultimate recourse: military action.

Indeed. But what Chapman ignored is that the longer the delay on taking that ultimate recourse, the more expensive and the more chancy of success it will get.

Russian Disingenuosity

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov blamed the Ukrainian government Monday for an uptick in violence in eastern Ukraine, saying Kiev’s forces were apparently preparing for a fresh offensive, as Ukraine blamed Russia-backed separatists for the escalation.

Never mind that, were it true that Ukraine is readying an offensive, it would only be true because the Ukrainian government has a right—a duty—to drive the Russian troops from Ukrainian soil and to bring the “separatists” to justice.

Obama, Iran, and Justice

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Over two decades U.S. federal courts have found the Iranian government liable for orchestrating or supporting the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut, the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers U.S. Air Force facility in Saudi Arabia, and multiple shootings and suicide bombings in Israel, among other attacks. Judges have awarded some $45 billion in damages to hundreds of plaintiffs such as Embassy bombing survivor Anne Dammarell and the widow and orphaned children of Hamas bombing victim Ira Weinstein.

Naturally, the men governing Iran think these murdered victims of Iranian terrorism are legitimate targets and the terrorism entirely jake, and these men have refused to pay a penny of the judgment.

President Barack Obama and his henchman, John Kerry, don’t care, either. The money from which those judgments would have been paid was $100 billion to $150 billion prior administrations had seized from Iranian (largely oil sales) accounts. But that’s the same money Obama and his have promised Iran in return for their “promise” to stop developing a nuclear weapons capability. For a while.

So much for what the Progressive movement in the Executive Branch thinks of justice.