The Lichfield Group

This article appeared in the August 15, 2006 issue of the Washington Times.

Has Israel used unnecessary force to cripple or destroy Hezbollah?

About 1,000 Lebanese have been killed. Many have been civilians placed in harm’s way by Hezbollah guerrillas. More than 3,000 have been injured, and tens of thousands have been displaced. Hezbollah has fired approximately 3,650 rockets at Israeli civilians, killing 51 and injuring 430. At present, it remains a viable fighting force, and civilian casualties on both sides are not diminishing.

This article appeared in the July 11, 2006 issue of the Washington Times.

Congress should reject President Bush’s plea to authorize military commissions to try noncitizen illegal combatants for war crimes when they are already immobilized indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay.

This article appeared in the June 27, 2006 issue of the Washington Times.

The United States Congress is spineless.

Its spinelessness is most troublesome in matters of national security where its informing function is most urgent. Since Congress shows no signs of acquiring a vertebrate, it should facilitate the media in playing surrogate by fashioning a newsmen’s exception to the Federal Espionage Act.

This article appeared in the November 26, 2005 issue of the Washington Times.

The Bush administration trumpets a delusional exit strategy for Iraq: namely, an orderly departure of troops after entrenching a democratic and unified Iraq capable of suppressing a raging terrorist insurgency. That utopian aim would keep United States troops in Iraq with mounting casualties for the ages. The least bad earthbound departure plan for the post-Saddam quagmire would partition Iraq between Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites. Partition would still make the Iraqi war a modest success, whereas President Bush’s “stay the course” mantra promises a flaming disaster.

This article appeared in the November 22, 2005 issue of the Washington Times.

United States Senator Lindsey Graham (R. S.C.) deserves a salute.

On November 10, 2005, he engineered an amendment to a pending bill that generally ends the absurdity of alien enemy combatants detained at Guantanamo Bay (GTMO) suing United States officials whom they hope to kill in federal courts. Under existing habeas corpus statutes as interpreted by the United States Supreme Court in Rasul v. Bush (2004), approximately 300 GTMO detainees have sued alleging various transgressions of constitutional rights, including a demand for dictionaries, high-speed internet access, and more Mercury footed mail delivery.

This article appeared in the September 7, 2005 issue of the Washington Times.

The draft Iraqi constitution is not worth the last full measure of devotion President George W. Bush is demanding of the brave men and women serving in Iraq. The proposed charter for a post-Saddam Iraq is a joke. It betrays a political amateurism and immaturity destined to shipwreck unity and democracy in Iraq.

The United States long ago reached the high water mark of the good it has done there. It should adopt the least bad exit strategy: a punctual and orderly departure. Better a misfortune in Iraq than a calamity.

This article appeared in the July 19, 2005 issue of the Washington Times.

President George W. Bush should embrace India as the key strategic partner of the United States in Asia. President Richard M. Nixon’s opening to China to obtain an ally against the Soviet Union has exhausted its advantages.

This article appeared in the June 21, 2005 issue of the Washington Times

The Canadian Supreme Court delivered a stunning constitutional rebuke to the welfare state this month in Chaoulli v. Quebec (Attorney General) (June 9).

This article appeared in the June 7, 2005 issue of the Washington Times.

Lavishly subsidized Airbus, the European Union’s flagship company, exemplifies Old Europe’s descent into effeteness. Like Athens before its decline and fall, Old Europe craves security and shuns risk.

Extractive industries—oil, gas, and mining—characteristically evoke economically wayward shrillness or myopia born of popular suspicion. In 2001, for example, the World Bank commenced a comprehensive evaluation of its lending to the extractive industries sector. The exercise culminated in an Extractive Industries Review (EIR) recommendation by independent adviser Emil Salim, former Indonesian State Minister for Population and Environment, to phase out oil-related loans by 2008 in favor of “investments in renewable energy development.” Last Tuesday, the World Bank prudently parried the proposal as a cure worse than the disease, but nevertheless hiked investment standards for extractive industries on the zany assumption that a barrel of oil or lump of coal is saddled with a special burden of alleviating poverty or promoting the rule of law.

Saddam Hussein should be summarily executed.

His uncontestable guilt of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and wholesale slaughter, torture, and rape of Iraqi dissidents would make a trial superfluous, akin to proving that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Summary execution might occasion qualms because of the customary presumption of innocence. But they would be fleeting. Based on voluminous, open, and notorious evidence, every sapient creature is already convinced beyond a reasonable doubt of Saddam’s staggering criminal culpability. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s sermonizing over Saddam’s innocence until a guilty verdict exalts form over substance.

At present, little is known of the circumstances which give birth to terrorists. The periodic reports issued by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (National Commission), for instance, are bereft of clues for diminishing terrorist recruits. Until this dearth of knowledge is overcome, the best way to handcuff terrorism is by killing, capturing, and punishing terrorists period, with no commas, semicolons, or question marks. To paraphrase Churchill on democracy, it is a poor counterterrorism policy, except for all others that have been imagined or attempted.

Expert analysts steeped in history and human nature are desperately needed at the Central Intelligence Agency. The prevailing preoccupation with greater clandestine intelligence collection through informants and spies is misplaced. Open source intelligence properly evaluated is characteristically sufficient to provide the President with enlightened national security or foreign policy advice. While both human intelligence and superb analysts are needed, the latter are more needed than the former.

Presidents should eschew great expectations in foreign affairs. Imponderables dwarf certitudes. Knowledge of how to alter political cultures, to inculcate the rule of law, or to spark successful insurgencies against oppressive governments remains embryonic after thousands of years of experience and observation. At its best, the science of international affairs is a science of educated speculation.

The United States neglected serious planning for governing post-Saddam Iraq. A steep price has been paid. The rule of law, democracy, and secularism are highly doubtful; and, the Iraqi people have turned from United States cheerleaders into sullen critics or insurgent sympathizers.

Time is out of joint.

The miniscule percentage of American soldiers and officers implicated in prisoner and detainee abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere confront charges, trials and punishment that earmark the rule of law. That incriminating photographs and videos will be manipulated to aid the enemy in the Arab and Muslim worlds has been no deterrent. As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld elaborated last Friday before Congress: “We know what the terrorists will do. We know they will try to exploit all that is bad and try to obscure all that is good. That’s their nature, and that’s the nature of those who think they can kill innocent men, women and children to gratify their own cruel will to power…”

As was said of Napoleon’s assassination of the Duc d’Enghein, President George W. Bush’s inanely conducted effort to summon a secular democratic Iraq into being is worse than a crime, it is a blunder. His latest follies unwittingly aid the enemy. The President should publicly confess his monumental miscalculations over post-Saddam Iraq, arrange for an orderly withdrawal of America’s military presence, and accept the inescapable Iraqi convulsions that will follow as less horrific than would be additional aimless American casualties. As the Vietnam war taught, victory is hopeless without a discernable and plausible North star to inform military operations.

“The President [George W. Bush] congratulates [Algerian] President [Abdelaziz] Bouteflika on his [April 8] re-election. These elections represent another step on the road to democracy in Algeria,” according to the lavish praise from the White House. Indeed, Algeria’s landmark presidential election featuring six candidates, including a woman, a 60% voter turnout, and unprecedented transparency stole a march on President Bush’s greater Middle East democracy initiative. It culminated a decades-old indigenous and ongoing embrace of political liberalization despite the formidable vexations Algeria encountered in plucking the flower of democracy from the nettle of Islamic extremism. Algeria is eager to thicken trade, investment, and counterterrorism ties with the United States, to accelerate its democratic advances, and to set a model for President Bush’s democracy goals.