Diplomacy failed to stop Pyongyang from getting the bomb. Trump didn’t make the same mistake.
And
President Trump decided to use military force to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon after diplomacy failed. This was a choice, as critics are quick to note, and a risky one. But the strangely forgotten US experience with North Korea suggests the alternatives were even riskier.
Nothing more to add; it’s hard to get any clearer.
On the matter of reopening the Strait of Hormuz, we get this from Europe’s government men and women:
Naval escorts for tankers through such a narrow waterway in a war zone would be nearly impossible, say allied officials and military experts. Reopening the strait would more likely come after a cease-fire and through international pressure on Iran, they say.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron made the claim explicit:
“It would take forever and would expose all those crossing the strait to risks” of Iranian attack[.]
Never mind the far greater risks to Europe’s (and Asia’s) economies from letting Iran keep the Strait closed while the chattering classes of politicians yap and arf with Iran’s surviving mullahs.
UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper:
Iran is trying to hold the global economy hostage in the Strait of Hormuz[.]
NSS. But, international pressure? Who will feel that the most? The short answer is Europe and Asia. Iran has already named its terms: pay us a toll and stop supporting the US in any way, and your ships may pass. Tribute by any name….
Stalin’s question regarding the Pope has relevance today, rephrased by me: how many ships do Europe’s navies have? Embarrassingly for those nations’ governing men and women, the answer is virtually none. Farzin Nadimi, Washington Institute Senior Fellow, on the matter of dealing with Iran’s small fast attack boats blocking the Strait:
Such vessels can largely be deterred by the US dominant air power, but “European powers will not be able, and probably not willing, to replace that capability[.]”
This sort of…shortfall…both in physical capability and mental toughness is the result of those governments’ conscious decisions, through generations of governments, to not bother with their own defense establishments and instead to freeload off rely on American defenses, blood, and treasure.
Now they’re hiding from that simple fact and bleating that military action won’t open the Strait. Which of course is true enough absent American participation. Those nations don’t have any military establishment worthy of the name, much less one capable of the task of reopening and holding open the Strait so the oil and natural gas they need far more than we do can flow freely and without humiliating tribute paid Iran.
President Donald Trump (R) has submitted his budget proposal for the next year to Congress, and on its surface, it does little to address the current large budget deficit and its attendant borrowing on top of the current national debt. It does, though, seriously plus up defense spending, with its request for $1.5 trillion for the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security.
There are a couple of ways to think about that. One is to deal with the threat to our economy, and so to our national security, of that burgeoning debt resulting from the continuing large deficit by raising taxes (as Progressive-Democratic Party politicians demand to do, especially on those Americans of whom they so vociferously disapprove) or by cutting spending (as budget hawks in the Republican Party demand to do).
Raising taxes, though, hurts all of us, not just those Evil Rich. Taking money away from the folks who make it and put it to gainful use reduces private economy investment and innovation—things us citizens do far better than even the most well-meaning government ever can—and that drop negatively impacts business competitiveness, expansion, and jobs, each of which hurts all Americans who are not part of the Evil Rich cohort.
Cutting government spending, on the other hand, always is a very good way to help our economy since it takes government competition for resources and more direct inputs to production out of the competition among businesses for those same factors, which puts downward pressure on prices that both businesses and consumers face. The cuts do, though, reallocate lots of jobs away from politicians’ districts and toward more efficient locations for the work, with efficiency defined by the businesses themselves rather than government politicians.
The other way to think about the budget with its deficit and attendant borrowing is articulated quite clearly by Trump:
We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country.
Indeed. We can’t protect our economy and its health, much less reduce deficits and borrowings, if we can’t defend our nation and instead have our futures dictated to us by our enemies—as the People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping has committed himself to doing.
The answer writes itself, as anyone to the right of the Progressive-Democratic Party can see: plus up our defense spending, cut Federal spending everywhere else, and either cut taxes further or at least leave them alone.
Or it shouldn’t be. Harvard may be moving to control grade inflation for its students—everyone gets an A—by capping the number of A’s a professor can hand out in his classes.
The whining and bellyaching from the students are loud and hysterical—”crude and absurd” they caterwaul. That shouldn’t matter to school management, though; the kiddies are there to learn in what should be a challenging environment, not to get stars on their calendars and Blue Ribbons for showing up.
A frenzied debate has gripped campus, with students protesting that the changes would increase stress, fuel competition, and discourage academic exploration.
Bunch of crybabies. Stress, as much as happiness and ease, are a part of life and is much more productive than celebrating unearned plaudits and partying. It’s cowardly of them to fear competition; aside from strengthening them for life in the world, competition is how progress is made—good ideas, mechanisms, techniques, et al., survive, even flourish, while bad ideas fall by the wayside. Without competition, the latter simply clutter to the point of pollution everything else. Finally, only the timid would be discouraged from exploration, and the stress and competition would only strengthen the timid, or move them out of the school altogether. Those pupils don’t belong in school, anyway; they’re only wasting their parents’ money and whatever school financial aid they’ve been getting.
“The fact that this policy even MIGHT go into effect with 94% student disapproval is absurd and goes to show how much this administration cares about us,” said one commenter on a Harvard discussion forum.
Crybabies, indeed. The school’s caring would be coming—if management has the backbone to proceed—in the form of badly needed tough love.
If the students put as much energy into their studies as they are in protesting having to work at those studies, they’d be doing better and be stronger graduates for that.
There’s another aspect to this, though:
Harvard’s faculty is set to vote next week on a proposal to cap the number of A’s per course, which now comprise more than half of undergraduate grades after years of inflation. The plan also suggests getting rid of GPA as an internal metric, instead using percentile rank to calculate honors like cum laude recognition.
It shouldn’t be up to the faculty, either. Their input would be useful on something like this, but they work, at least nominally, for the school management team, not the other way around, and this sort of thing more properly belongs as a management decision.
In the end, three things need to happen. The first is to implement the system without hesitation while recognizing, and acting on the recognition, that this is only a first step (capping A’s but not A-‘s is just silly). Second is to recognize that the decision is management’s not faculty’s and proceed with or without faculty “approval.” Third is handling the pupils and faculty members who can’t handle this academic culture change: expel the students who don’t adapt, and send the faculty members who don’t adapt (including by slow-walking implementation or finding ways to weasel-word around the change) on their way to another enterprise’s payroll.
The Cuban government released 2,000 prisoners from its jails in conjunction with Easter celebrations (I’m writing this on Friday in anticipation of the government having followed through on its Friday plans).
Cuba’s Communist government said on Thursday that it would free 2,010 prisoners from its jails in a “humanitarian and sovereign gesture” as it carries out negotiations with the Trump administration.
The cynic in me has doubts regarding any humanitarian motive. I see two others. One is that this is just a PR move of no further import than virtue signaling and trying to curry favors, even though it might be good for those released.
“Might be” brings me to the second motive. The Cuban government can no longer support the prisoners it holds, even in the truly deplorable conditions extant in Cuban jails, so it’s dumping them out onto the street and into an economy that also cannot support them, much less support the not-jailed Cuban population.