Crunch Time in Iraq

Most great battles seem in retrospect to have been forordained. But Waterloo was reported by the Duke of Wellington as a close-run thing. And many other battles could have gone one way or another.

So we can say that the Battle of Iraq is approaching decision time. Some people are saying that it is all over. In Time Joe Klein quotes all his friends who say that the Iraqis are ungovernable and that “the only plausible reason for remaining in Iraq is to prevent an even greater catastrophe.”

Then in the Sydney Morning Herald Miranda Devine says that it’s the media that has lost its head.

The violence of revenge attacks on Sunnis across Iraq, after last month's bombing of the Shiite Golden Mosque in Samarra, led many commentators to declare the civil war they have been predicting for three years had arrived. But others point to signs the crisis has spurred Iraq's political leaders to sort out their differences and work to form a national unity government, three months after their third successful election.

Former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi tells the Daily Telegraph that things are at a crisis:

"We are losing each day an average of 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more," he said. "If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is. Iraq is in the middle of a crisis. Maybe we have not reached the point of no return yet, but we are moving towards this point.

Iraqi dentist Mohammed of Iraq the Model is optimistic and thinks that Operation Swarmer to clear out an area near Samarra is really a training operation for the Iraqi Army. And he wonders whether the intervention of Iran and Syria in Iraq has really been a benefit to them.

The truth is that the Battle of Iraq is at the crucial stage. All the parties to the conflict are making their final effort: Saddamites, Shi’ite militia leaders, Iran, Syria, and Al Qaeda. Every month allows the Iraqi government security forces to grow stronger, and the Iraqi government to increase credibility. The insurgents must win soon or lose the battle.

Fifty Years of the Shipping Container

In case you forgot, this year we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the shipping container, that ubiquitous item that is forever traveling on ships, trains, and trucks across the oceans and continents.

It has provoked an explosion in world trade. And the reason is the same it always is. The container has radically reducing the cost of shipping.

When the first container ship, the Ideal-X, a converted World War II oil tanker, made its first trip in 1956 from Newark to Houston with 58 containers aboard, it reduced the cost of loading by over 95 percent. According to the Economist (needs sub) of London, the cost of loading loose cargo into a medium-sized ship back in 1956 was $5.83 per ton. It is estimated that it cost $0.16 per ton to load the Ideal-X.

That is a big deal. John D. Rockefeller merely reduced the cost of illuminating oil by 90 percent. Andrew Carnegie was a piker. He only reduced the cost of steel by about two-thirds.

Of course it has been rough on the dock workers. They used to do pretty well enjoying the odd “breakage.”

But the change opened up all sorts of possibilities.

Instead of manufacturing goods locally, a company could afford to replace its overcrowded multi-storey factory in Brooklyn with one in Pennsylvania, where taxes, electricity and other costs were lower, and then ship its goods to New York in a container. Later the factory might move to Mexico; it is now probably in China.

Here’s a factoid to think about. The new container ships on the drawing boards “ill be able to carry enough containers to fill a line of trucks 68 miles long.”

Tony Blair and the Twilight of the Third Way

Remember the Hosannas when the Third Way rode into town in the 1990s? How the media loved Bill Clinton, who was going to show us a middle way between the extremes of right and left.

And then the British got to have their very own Bill Clinton in the person of Tony Blair, and the British people fell in love too.

What was it all about, really? The Clintons threw away all the good will in a disastrous two years that ended up with a Republican Congress. And now Tony Blair, who promised “education, education, education,” is shuffling into the sunset with a pathetic Education Bill that changes nothing, that leaves the “bog-standard” comprehensive schools in place to level the school kids of Britain down to mediocrity (Of the 100 best schools in Britain, one is a comprehensive school).

What was it all about? Well, it was about sleaze, for one thing. Remember the Sleaze Factor with which the media regaled us here in the US in the 1980s? The British media went chasing Tory Sleaze in the early 1990s.

But then when Blair and his New Labour got into office, the media weren’t interested in sleaze. And that’s odd, points out Matthew Parris in the London Times, because there was plenty of it from the start. “Mittal, Dr Kelly, Scarlett, Caplin, Campbell, Hutton, Butler, Berlusconi, Cherie, Patel, Garrard, Townsley, Levy,” the roll of the Blair scandals is long and sonorous, just like the Clinton scandals from the White House Travel Office to the White House silver. But nobody was interested.

But now they are. Now finally Blair has got everyone’s attention.

Parris has decided to put it out “delicately.”

I believe Tony Blair is an out-and-out rascal, terminally untrustworthy and close to being unhinged. I said from the start that there was something wrong in his head, and each passing year convinces me more strongly that this man is a pathological confidence-trickster.

And then he goes on to liken Blair to that notorious cad in David Copperfield: “the engaging, handsome and popular James Steerforth,” the well-born man that scarred his governess when a boy and in his adulthood despoiled Little Em’ly, the childhood friend with whom David had innocently played on the beach by the old boat in which Em’ly lived with Mr. Peggotty, Ham, and Mrs. Gummidge.

It is occasionally reported that some poor woman falls in love with a professional fraud and remains his wife for years without realising what she has married. The British electorate are such a woman. Mr Blair’s misdeeds are persistently overlooked, and his excuses credited. By the time we wake up he may have torn his party and its programme apart.

In the last week it came to light that Tony Blair had received several loans from rich benefactors to help finance the last election. Blair had not reported the loans to the Labour Party. Now he is all contrition and wants to reform party funding.

But why should Blair want to reform fundraising now and not earlier. “You know why. He never meant to put matters right. He has been caught out.”

We, who always had our questions about the Third Way and its immaculate conception, are left to wonder. Both Blair and Clinton were so gifted, how could it have come to this?

What exactly was the Third Way all about, apart from being a marketing ploy?

Wearing o' the Green

While we are celebrating St. Patrick’s Day, let us not forget to celebrate the Irish economy. Ever since its landmark economic reform the Irish economy has been showing a lot of green, and not just on St. Paddy’s Day.

The Irish economy doubled during the 1990s, with economic growth hitting 15 percent. Now growth is down to a modest 6 percent annual growth. And Ireland’s per capita GDP is $34,100, ahead of Britain, France, Germany, and Italy.

How did it happen? Well, we supply-siders point to a simple fact. The keystone of the economic reform was a modest reduction in income tax rates and a cut in the corporate tax rate from 50 percent to 12.5 percent. It all started in 1989 “with economic reform, tax cuts, welfare reform, more competition and a ban on borrowing to fund current spending,” according to Wikipedia.

Hmm. 1989. Could the US tax cuts of 1981, introduced by Ronald Reagan, a son of Ireland, have inspired the Oirish?

In fact here are the tax cut numbers, as we published here in June 2005.

IRELAND TAX FACTS 1985 2002 % change Top corporate tax rate 50% 12.5% -75% Top marginal income tax rate 60% 42% -30% Top capital gains tax 60% 20% -67%

The Wall Street Journal has its own little feature today on Ireland’s booming economy. And the Tax Foundation moans that while Ireland booms along with its 12.5 percent corporate tax rate here in the US We're Number One in corporate taxes.

Negotiations with Iran: What's Up?

What is going on? In The New York Times Michael Slackman and David E. Sanger report that Iran has invited the United States to hold negotiations on “how to halt sectarian violence and restore calm in Iraq.”

So what does this mean? Does it mean that Iran feels that they have the whip hand in Iraq and that the militias they have sponsored have the power to take over? Are they offering the United States a face-saving way to get out of an untenable position? Iran’s man Ali Larijani said

"I think Iraq is a good testing ground for America to take a harder look at the way it acts," Mr. Larijani said in his office shortly after making the announcement. "If there's a determination in America to take that hard look, then we're prepared to help."

Or do they see that the new political and security establishment in Baghdad is gradually stabilizing Iraq and that they need to get some sort of a deal with the United States to prevent its power from turning next against them?

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in Sydney, Australia, that talks with Iranian envoys in Baghdad could be "useful" but would be limited to discussions on Iraqi security. "This isn't a negotiation of some kind," she said.

In the Washington Times, as reported by Joseph Curl, it looks like it might be the Iraqis who are pushing the talks.

Iraqi Shi'ite leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim had urged Shi'ite Iran to become involved in the talks in an effort to address U.S. accusations that Iran is meddling in Iraq.


"We will accept the proposal to help resolve the problems in Iraq and establish an independent government there as it was made by Mr. Hakim," said Ali Larijani.

What is going on? Obviously, something is up. But we ordinary mortals don’t know what it is, and probably won’t know for a while.

UPDATE: But here’s an interesting take from James Kurfeld of Newsday. He’s upset that the administration is sounding just like it did in the runup to the Iraq invasion.

It was that same combination of a bellicose National Security Review and saber rattling from Cheney that set the stage for the invasion of Iraq.

Back then it just looked like a threat—until Bush and Cheney actually went ahead and invaded. Kurfeld is afraid that they really mean it this time too.

But suppose that the Iranians agree with Kurfeld. They might want to tame the beast by accomodating the US in Iraq.

Iraq: Two Views

It is now three years since the invasion of Iraq. What was the point, and what have we gained?

At Princeton University, former Secretary of State George Schultz called for a dual track of military strength and diplomatic outreach, according to Regina Lee of the Daily Princetonian.

"The world has never been in a situation of better promise than now," Shultz, who served as secretary of state for seven years under President Ronald Reagan, said. "The terrorists must not be allowed to abort this opportunity. We win the war against them by positive action and helping people see these improvements."

Schultz noted the three stages of the terror war. First was the period prior to 9/11 when the US did nothing. Second was the active phase when the US invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, and the third phase of consolidation requires “economic and military sustainability.”

In the London Times Gerard Baker relates what might have happened if the US had not invaded Iraq.

in Iraq Saddam strengthened his hold. Shia “enemies” disappeared by the tens of thousands; even Kurds no longer felt safe.



Outside Iraq, in the Middle East, it was business as usual. The region remained immune, as it had done for 600 years, to the currents of democratic change that had swept through the rest of the world. Syria tightened its grip on Lebanon, with targeted murders and intimidation.

And in Iran the mullahs took Saddam’s ability to escape attack as a green light for them to proceed with their expansionary adventure.

It’s easy to point to all the mistakes made in Iraq. It is always easy to criticize any endeavor. But the fact is that the US has got Iran and Syria surrounded by inserting itself into Afghanistan and Iraq. If you were a mullah in Iran you would regard the US occupation of Iraq as a very serious obstacle for your plan to rule the Middle East.

Maybe that is why Iran wants to talk to the United States about Iraq.

Teachers' Unions Say the Darndest Things

A couple of weeks ago ABC’s house libertarian John Stossel did a “TV special on education, Stupid in America, which was critical of union work rules.” Stossel is an advocate of school choice.

Pretty soon, a posse of teachers-union types turned up at his office to protest. They came to make “a demand for respect for teachers and students.” (Why should this be necessary, anyway?)

But the protesters turned out to be pretty clueless. They told Stossel that

school choice, whose value I had shown in the broadcast, would "take money away from . . . our union leaders" and a special program they had built to pay college tuition for a special-interest group within their union.

Oh my. That would never do. Then they told him that

a country without strong public schools "lends itself to authoritarian thinking."

...

I guess having a unionized government monopoly running most of our schools, and forcing students to attend those schools regardless of whether they or their parents approve of what's taught there, will make sure that the government can never indoctrinate our children -- and neither can labor unions.

One speaker insisted that public education was needed to ensure that children got an education “regardless of income . . . or geography.”

But that is exactly what school choice provides. It gives the parent the right to send their children to the schools of their choice, regardless of income, or geography, or the reigning fashions at the Department of Education.

How long till we free our children from the influence of these clueless timeservers?