The Syrian Al Kibar reactor after the Israeli attack

In September of 2007 the Israelis destroyed the Al Kibar nuclear plant in Syria that was under construction.  It got a little press at the time, but many people have dashed this action from their memory.

Clifford May writes about this action in National Review in Cheney Got it Right on Syrian Nukes, 9/22/11.

Excerpt:

In the end, after Bush decided not to act and diplomacy went nowhere, the Israelis took it upon themselves to destroy the reactor. The former advisers write: “Syria then spent months trying to sanitize the site and stonewall the IAEA — confirmation of its non-peaceful intentions. The Israeli attack in September 2007 was flawless, Syria and North Korea did not lash out, and a dire proliferation threat was eliminated for good. America and the world are safer for it.”

History will record that the CIA failed in this mission. Such failures have happened before and will happen again. That is to be expected, but this isn’t: After Bush’s decision not to take out the nuclear reactor, Woodward writes, the CIA officers responsible for providing the “low confidence” assessment “were pleased they had succeeded in avoiding the overreaching so evident in the Iraq WMD case. So they issued a very limited-circulation memorial coin. One side showed a map of Syria with a star at the site of the former reactor. On the other side the coin said, ‘No core/No war.’”

In other words, they considered it a victory that they had prevented Bush from acting. That is shameful. The CIA’s job is to provide the president with the intelligence he needs to make policy. The CIA’s job is not to substitute its policy preferences for those of the commander-in-chief — and then celebrate such power-grabs.

HKO Comments:

Foreign policy is difficult at best and often entails a choice of several bad alternatives.  After the intelligence failures preceding Iraq and the absence of WMD stockpiles we expected to find, our intelligence was understandably reluctant to risk a second bad call.

The problem in politics is that bad decisions are memorialized and actions that truly prevent disasters are often quiet and forgotten.  Fortunately in this case the reluctance to act on good but not infallible information was corrected by the Israelis.  Recall that they also did this when they destroyed the Osirik reactor  in Iraq in 1980.

Intelligence is fraught with fallibility, uncertainty and risk. Yet often the greatest risk is to take no risk until the information is infallible.

Elizabeth Warren is running against Scott Brown in Massachusetts.  She has elicited praises from liberals for her comment that “no body got rich on their own.”  She added “part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that (your profits/ earnings)  and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

Jeff Jacoby retorts in his Boston Globe article Professor Warren’s ire – 9/28/11

excerpts:

Warren’s words reflect the infatuation with government and condescension toward private initiative that have been such hallmarks of the Obama presidency. Her eagerness to minimize the entrepreneur’s achievement while exalting the role of the public sector may win cheers on the Left, but it puts her sharply at odds with mainstream voters.

By overwhelming margins, Americans think well of small businesses and those who create them – Gallup found last year that 84 percent of respondents had a positive image of “entrepreneurs,” and 95 percent felt positive toward “small business.” The public’s view of government, by contrast, could hardly be worse: In a poll out this week, 81 percent of Americans — a record high — express displeasure with their government. Last month, respondents ranked government dead last among 25 business and industry sectors.

Of course that doesn’t mean that some government isn’t necessary. Warren’s implication that Republicans or conservatives who decry “class warfare” are unwilling to pay for roads, schools, or police and fire protection is childish. Not even the most libertarian Tea Partier, never mind a moderate like Brown, wants to zero out basic public services. Warren doesn’t need to hector factory owners, imaginary or otherwise, into acknowledging that they benefit from highways and police departments, or that those benefits need to be paid for.

What’s a lot harder to explain is how they benefit from the kind of government incompetence that can turn a $2.8 billion Big Dig project into a $22 billion Big Dig scandal. Or from government loan guarantees thatsquander fortunes on Solyndra and other ventures in “green” crony capitalism. Or from vast government entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, with their trillions in unfunded obligations andunsustainable costs. Or from government subsidies for airports nobody uses and broadcasters that can support themselves.

And even a Harvard law professor — at least one who aspires to the US Senate — has to realize that most entrepreneurs get rich only when they create value for others.

Yes, there is an “underlying social contract” on which civilized society depends. But there are two sides to that contract — and more to its terms than just taxing away ever-bigger “hunks” of wealth from people who succeed. When 81 percent of Americans are fed up with their government, and when that government already spends far beyond its means, is it really the risk-takers of the private sector who deserve Professor Warren’s ire?

HKO comments:

One of the tricks played with the truth is a false choice.  The choice is not between no taxes and high taxes.  It is childish to propose otherwise. We all know taxes are necessary for property protection and infrastructure and some social services. But to assume that the government can spend whatever amount it desires as part of the social contract is intellectually false. To assume that half the people should pay no taxes is equally shallow.  To ignore the reality that higher taxes can reduce both economic growth and government revenues is economically ignorant.  And to assume that paying people money they did not earn for long periods of time will not disrupt our social fabric is morally blind.

Suppose you had no job and no investments.   All of your assets existed in your checking account.  The only tax you paid was a six per cent sales tax.  A friend of yours has a job and pays 25% income tax.  He complains that since you are paying just a six percent tax on your purchases that you are not paying your fair share.

You could argue that you already paid taxes on your income, or that the sales tax does not compare to income tax.  But the emphasis on fairness seems silly in the light of these two different taxes.

This example was used by Neal Boortz on his radio show to explain the ludicrous comparison of Warren Buffet’s income to his secretary.

Some rich pay a lower percentage of their total income because a bigger percentage comes from investments that are taxed at a lower rate.  They can avoid taxes with tax free municipal bonds.  Do we want to eliminate that favored status and raise the financing costs of our cities and states?

Buffet’s income is largely capital gains tax while his secretary is likely to have mostly earned income.  Is Obama suggesting that capital gains tax should be as high as income tax? If he is then this would surely drive us into another recession, longer and deeper than the one we just left.  We compete in the world market for capital. We have one of the highest corporate taxes in the world and China has a capital gains tax rate of zero. I doubt if he could even get the  Democratics in Congress  to raise the taxes on capital gains as high as the income tax or eliminate tax free munis.

If he is not suggesting an equalization of capital gains and dividend tax rate to income tax rates, or the elimination of tax free bonds, then his whole argument is intentionally false and misleading.

This whole debate has become a distraction from the serious work of reducing the deficit and shrinking the size of government.  There are reforms in the tax code that have merit and should be considered.  A limit on mortgage interest deduction would be at the top of my list.  But this is far secondary to the more urgent and important task of reducing the size and expense of our government.

Even Warren admits that this higher tax rate will not seriously impact the deficit.  And Obama has admitted that higher rates may reduce revenue. But both are so enamored with a sense of fairness that they are willing to make a public deficit problem worse. How is that fair for anybody?

Charles Schwab makes a critical point in Every Job Requires an Entrepreneur in the 9/29/11 Wall Street Journal.

Excerpts:

We cannot tax our way out of this. We cannot artificially stimulate our way out of this. We cannot regulate our way out of this. Shaming the successful or redistributing income won’t get us out of this. We cannot fund our government coffers by following the “Buffett Rule,” i.e., raising taxes on Americans earning more than $1 million a year.

What we can do—and absolutely must—is knock down all hurdles that create disincentives for investment in business.

The simple fact is that every business in America was started by an entrepreneur, whether it is Ford Motor Co., Google or your local dry cleaner. Every single job that entrepreneur creates requires an investment. And at its core, investing requires confidence that despite the risks, despite the hard work that will certainly ensue, the basic rules of the game are clear and stable. Today’s uncertainty on these issues—stemming from a barrage of new complex regulations and legislation—is a roadblock to investment. We have to clear that uncertainty away.

HKO comments:

Even the Bush tax cuts had a muted effect because they had an expiration date. When the GOP lost in 2006 and 2008, voters assumed they would expire and thus they had little faith to rely on them to make their decisions. Every couple of months another barrage of rhetoric about fairness and raising taxes keeps businesses sitting on their cash.  More than a tax cut we need tax consistency and we need to stop changing the rules every few months.

The regulations have long passed the absurd level.  We can not buy the light bulbs we want, we can not flush our toilets with as much water as we would like, and Gibson guitars cannot even use the wood they prefer to make guitars without some government goons raiding the place.  An while these regulations are visible to all of us the volume and absurdity of the rules and regulations businesses face is beyond comprehension.  Even the agencies that enforce them do not understand them, and the legislators who pass them into law are utterly clueless.  The same is true for this amateur administration which has by far the lowest representation from the private sector of any president in a hundred years.

There are a few myths that are repeated but never questioned.  Ann Marlow dispels one such myth in her Wall Street Journal article The Truth About Who Fights for Us, 9/27/11.

Excerpts:

Indeed, the Heritage report showed that “low-income families are underrepresented in the military and high-income families are overrepresented. Individuals from the bottom household income quintile make up 20.0 percent of Americans who are age 18-24 years old but only 10.6 percent of the 2006 recruits and 10.7 percent of the 2007 recruits. Individuals in the top two quintiles make up 40.0 percent of the population, but 49.3 percent of the recruits in both years.”

What about the charge that our Army is disproportionately black? This too is false, as is clear from data for fiscal 2010 available on the Army’s website: Whereas blacks comprise 17% of Americans ages 18-39 with high school degrees, they represent only a slightly larger proportion of enlisted soldiers, at 21%.

Meanwhile, whites were significantly overrepresented among enlisted Army personnel in 2010. While 58% of Americans 18-39 years old are white, 64% of the Army’s enlisted men and women are. Whites are underrepresented to a minor degree in only one category, in which blacks are overrepresented: Army officers. While 74% of 25-54 year-olds with bachelor’s degrees are white, 72% of Army officers are white. While 8% of 25-54 year-olds with B.A.s are black, 13% of Army officers are.

HKO Comments-

The reason that this defies the assumptions and claims of many has much to do with the bias of the media and our political elites.  A dominant media that is far different politically from the average voter is also much less likely to know anyone in the military.  Their life experience is likely to confirm their presumptions even if they are factually unfounded.