Jay Reding.com

That’s National Review’s argument on Secretary of State Rice’s deal on the Iranian nuclear program. We’ll sit down for talks if Iran agrees to halt their reprocessing of nuclear fuel in a verifiable way.

I’m with NR on this one:

Instead, the U.S. overture to Iran has given the Security Council the cover it needed to flinch. Further negotiations would postpone indefinitely the enactment of targeted sanctions against the regime, a tactic that the Bush administration had recently discussed with its allies. They would reinforce the mullahs’ perception that the West, for all its bluster, is unwilling to do anything but talk. And they would distract attention from the only question that matters—Will the mullahs renounce forever their nuclear aims?—to the intermediate question of whether uranium is currently being enriched and reprocessed. If Iran’s rulers accept our conditions and temporarily suspend those activities, they do so knowing that the Security Council referral was a bluff, leading as it did to more talks. Why will they be more willing to make concessions now—particularly when the U.S. offer was coupled with no statement, from either Europe or the U.S., on the inevitability of punitive action should the talks fail?

The Iranians don’t lose anything no matter what – if they take the deal they get a reprieve and could probably continue manifacturing centrifuges or reprocessing uranium while the hapless and ineffective IAEA was sent on a wild goose chase. If they don’t, they know that the chances of the US having the guts to do anything about it is relatively low.

To put it bluntly, the madmen of Tehran have us by the short and curlies, and they know it.

On the other hand, we don’t have many options vis-à-vis Tehran. A military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities may not be effective even with our impressive array of ground-penetrating munitions, and could invite a major regional conflagration. Letting Iran get the bomb ensures that a man regime possesses some of the most devastating weapons known to man. While negotiation is quite likely to be futile, Tehran knows that the international community is utterly feckless and their chances of ending up like their former neighbor to the west is slim. All Ahmadinejad has to do is delay for a few months while Iranian nuclear scientists inch their way closer to a bomb.

At the very least, we have made an effort in good faith to find a diplomatic solution to this problem. If military action becomes necessary, no one will care except perhaps our allies who need the diplomatic cover. Eventually, something will need to be done to prevent Ahmadinejad from getting his hands on nuclear arms – all that this move will do is perhaps delay that point for a short period of time.

ABC News has an interesting piece on why the booming US economy doesn’t translate into a positive economic outlook for the average American. It is somewhat mysterious – unemployment is very low (4.7%), economic growth is high, and wage growth is steady. By all accounts, the average American worker is exceptionally well off – despite all the worries about outsourcing, 2.3 million jobs have been added to the US economy since August of 2003. Even tax revenues have gone sharply upward. So why is there such pessimism over the state of the economy?

Gas prices are certainly part of it, as they have the largest instant psychological impact. People don’t immediately see a fluctuation in GDP growth, but the second prices at the pump go up $0.05 everyone in the country notices. However, SUV sales are still strong, and people don’t seem to be cutting back on consumption, which suggests that filling up is nowhere near painful enough to warrant people changing their habits. It’s been estimated that $4/gal gas would have a significant impact on people’s habits, but $2.50-$3/gal doesn’t seem to be forcing people to take much action.

If jobs and gas aren’t the issue, what else is? The ABC article mentions debt as being one factor. High levels of credit card debt and home equity debt is altogether too common in this country – if you can fog a mirror, you can get a credit card these days. It’s exceptionally easy for someone to get in over their heads, and payday loan/car title loan shops prey on the financially weak. This would certainly put a squeeze on the average consumer, even if all they have is a few grand in credit card debt.

Of course, the media plays a role in all of this too. Remember in 2004 when Bush was responsible for “the worst economy since Hubert Hoover”? Either the US economy has made a miraculous recovery since then, meaning that Bush’s policies did more than the New Deal in a faster amount of time, or that whole line of argumentation was a crock. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out which scenario is the most likely. However, the media narrative of imminent doom never really went away – part of it is due to our natural sense of pessimism, part of it is because good news doesn’t garner good ratings, and undoubtedly part of it is due to the political biases of the media – any news which might give the Bush Administration credit isn’t likely to make it through the ideological blinders of the mainstream media.

The new Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, formerly of Goldman Sachs has his work cut out for him – the US economy is doing very well, but we’ve also gone through one of the lengthier periods of economic growth in recent times – and what comes up must come down. Not only that, but Paulson is going to have to combat that sense of economic pessimism, which is a difficult job in itself. John Snow, Paulson’s predecessor at the Treasury was an able economic steward, but a very poor salesman. Paulson’s position as the former CEO of Goldman Sachs means that he’ll have much more influence over the markets than Snow did. Paulson’s not the showy type, but he is the sort of person who can make an effective Secretary of the Treasury.

The US economy is performing exceptionally well, and nearly every sign of growth and success bear that out – but because the Bush Administration hasn’t fought back against the pessimism of their critics in any real, that negative public perception is hurting Bush’s approval ratings. Paulson will have a difficult job in combating that perception, but at least the Bush Administration seems to be willing to combat the problem.

Ahmed Rashid has an interesting piece in The Telegraph about the rising violence in Afghanistan as the Taliban – flush with opium money – has begun to reemerge in many Afghan provinces:

Fighting a full-scale guerrilla war is not what countries such as Italy, Spain, Holland, Germany and others enlisted for. The mandate from their governments is reconstruction, not combat.

“Nato will not fail in Afghanistan … the family of nations will expect nothing less than success,” General James Jones, the head of US and Nato forces in Europe, told a recent seminar in Madrid.

Gen Jones is now desperately trying to persuade contributing countries to end the restrictions they impose on their troops, making it impossible for some of them to fight or commanders to run a proper military campaign.

“What is the point of deploying troops who don’t fight,” ask many Afghans. That is why Gen Jones calls these caveats - they now number a staggering 71 - “Nato’s operational cancer”.

As in Bosnia, Europe’s military weakness is ensuring that reconstruction fails due to a declining security situation. NATO simply doesn’t have the ability to project force unless the US does the majority of the fighting – and the security situation in Afghanistan has gotten to the point where more fighting needs to be done.

US troop strength in Afghanistan has been relatively constant since 2001, with just under 20,000 US troops operating in the region. The Pentagon had planned to reduce this number by 3,000, but it doesn’t seem like the degraded security situation will allow that to happen – nor should it until the violence is brought under control.

Al-Qaeda is realizing that Iraq may be a lost cause, but refocusing on Afghanistan can be more profitable for them. They know that NATO is weak and unable to fight, and that the opium trade provides a ready source of funding. However, every conflict in which the US involves itself ends disastrously for the Taliban and al-Qaeda. We’ve been operating in the region for five years, and despite our relatively small numbers the troops in Afghanistan are predominantly Special Forces troops with years of anti-terrorist and anti-insurgency training under their belts.

The Pentagon needs to realize that Afghanistan needs more US troops, not less. The combination of US air power and Special Forces is an exceptionally deadly one, and the desolate topography of Afghanistan is in many ways an advantage to us – but we can’t both pull out 3,000 troops and fight a Taliban that’s getting funding from Pakistan’s ISI, the Iranian government, and the opium trade. As Michael Yon personally observed, opium is undoubtedly one of the chief problems in the region – but also the only thing that keeps many Afghans from starving to death.

Rashid is only partially right when he suggests that radical militant Islam is centered in Central Asia – it began there during the Soviet invasion, but was always an Arab-dominated movement. However, even as we fight in the Arab theater in Iraq, we can’t forget that Central Asia is also a key region for the jihadist movement, and allowing al-Qaeda any safe refuge is unacceptable. NATO cannot do the job, and if we are to once again suppress the Taliban, American troops will be needed supported by American air power. Other than the UK, Europe has neither the force of arms nor the political will to fight al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Al-Qaeda knows where our weaknesses our, and now that Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi’s al-Qaeda splinter group in Iraq has been largely ground into dust, Afghanistan is reemerging as al-Qaeda’s new primary front for international jihad. Central Asia has always been a critical front in this war, but also in terms of international geopolitics as Tehran, Moscow, and Beijing all have interests in the region. Ensuring American interests are protected in this region remains one of our key foreign policy challenges.

While the DNC tries to push the Republicans as being mired in a “culture of corruption”, Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid took free boxing tickets from the Nevada Boxing Commission while Reid was involved in legislation that would have put more federal controls on the sport.

What Reid did was not a violation of Senate Rules, but it certainly looks shady. Sen McCain paid for his tickets, and Sen. John Ensign recused himself from the issue when they accompanied Reid to the fights. Senate ethics rules recommend against taking gifts from organizations that may be effected by pending legislation. Reid was also heavily involved with Jack Abramoff’s various lobbying efforts.

Reid’s ethical lapses demonstrate why Congressional corruption is a bipartisan problem. Neither party can get much traction on the issue when both are complicit in a legislative culture of lobbyists, wasteful junkets, and earmarking. The entire system has dramatically expanded in power and scope, and as the Founders warned, the more government there is, the more the incentives to use the levers of government for one’s own personal ends. The fact is that the “culture of corruption” is really just another facet of Big Government run amok, and sadly, few in either party seem to have the political will to do much to fight it.

The New York Times has a frightening article on how Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is consolidating power in Iran:

Mr. Ahmadinejad is pressing far beyond the boundaries set by other presidents. For the first time since the revolution, a president has overshadowed the nation’s chief cleric, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on both domestic and international affairs.

He has evicted the former president, Mohammad Khatami, from his offices, taken control of a crucial research organization away from another former president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, challenged high-ranking clerics on the treatment of women and forced prominent academics out of the university system.

“Parliament and government should fight against wealthy officials,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said in a speech before Parliament on Saturday that again appeared aimed at upending pillars of the status quo. “Wealthy people should not have influence over senior officials because of their wealth. They should not impose their demands on the needs of the poor people.”

In this theocratic system, where appointed religious leaders hold ultimate power, the presidency is a relatively weak position. In the multiple layers of power that obscure the governance of Iran, no one knows for certain where the ultimate decisions are being made. But many of those watching in near disbelief at the speed and aggression with which the president is seeking to accumulate power assume that he is operating with the full support of Ayatollah Khamenei.

There are two possibilities here: either Ahmadinejad has someone seized an unprecedented level of power himself, or he’s a puppet for Khamenei and the Guardian Council. Either way, it looks bad. Ahmadinejad’s attempt to consolidate power and directly challenge the West indicate that Iran’s policy is becoming increasingly aggressive. It appears quite likely that the Iranians will possess nuclear weapons soon – possibly even before the end of the year. Their enrichment program is continuing at a rate that was much faster than initial estimates, and their ability to enrich uranium will only grow in the future.

Meanwhile, Iran is hit with mass protests by ethnic minorities including Iranian Arabs from Baluchistan, Azeris, and Kurds. The regime’s reaction has been to strike back at the protesters, but it remains entirely uncertain as to how widespread the anti-regime sentiment is. There have been rumors that the Iranians are not happy with Ahmadinejad’s inability to fix the sputtering Iranian economy and ethnic minorities are angered by increasingly discriminatory policies that further marginalize them from Iranian society.

The problem here is that it seems very unlikely that the anti-Ahmadinejad resistance has nearly enough force to topple the government – if anything, it strengthens Ahmadinejad’s hand to crack down on dissent and suppress opposition to his regime. It would be nice if Iran would have a nice democratic revolution and become a less dangerous country – it’s just that such a scenario seems profoundly unlikely right now. It took a million Lebanese in Martyr’s Square to force Syria to leave Lebanon – 10,000 Azeris in Tehran won’t force Ahmadinejad to budge.

Ahmadinejad, despite the protests, seems increasingly brazen in his attempts to consolidate his own power and set Iran’s policy against the West, especially Israel and the United States. Unless there is a major mass uprising by the average Iranian Persian, the violence in Iran seems unlikely to topple the regime. Unfortunately for the rest of the world, praying for a revolution is simply not a sound policy. Sooner or later, the world will need to confront the reality of an increasingly aggressive and dangerous Iran – and hopefully it will be before something truly catastrophic happens.