Security Policy

A wag once famously observed that, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” The same has generally been true about gas prices.

At least until this week. The hosing of American consumers (hilariously satirized in a new video by Hollywood icons David and Jerry Zucker at www.NozzleRage.com) and the attendant destruction of our economy has finally gotten the attention of the political elite in Washington and especially the Congress. Legislators are palpably in a panic at the prospect of facing voters in a few months having done nothing meaningful to bring down prices at the pump.

Don’t get me wrong. Even now, even in the face of such “Nozzle Rage,” many on Capitol Hill are more interested in posturing than doing something practical. Some leading figures in both parties continue to play to their respective constituencies. They remain more interested in gaming the system so as to avoid blame and secure advantage in the balloting this November than achieving results for either their constituents or the Nation.

Hence, we will see this week the Democratic leadership pushing for legislation to punish “speculators” who are their latest whipping boys for the current crisis. Is it too cynical to think the previous ones – the companies vilified as “Big Oil” – proved too hard to saddle with a windfall profit tax in a year when those profits are fueling, among other things, campaign contributions? Or maybe it finally dawned on these partisans that we are better off having America’s energy companies use their revenues to explore and recover more oil and gas?

Speaking of drilling, a number of Republicans on and off the Hill are promoting more drilling offshore and in Alaska as THE answer to the present national security as well as economic disaster. While that would certainly be part of a sensible solution over the medium-to-longer-term, there is an unhappy reality: As long as the OPEC cartel can reduce its output to offset any increase we make in domestic supply the net effect on prices could be nil. Obviously, that applies as well to the untapped-but-already-licensed reserves Democrats are trying to use to parry the GOP’s effort to open up new ones in what are depicted as “environmentally sensitive areas.”

At the moment, it is not clear – despite the impetus of the public’s outrage – that partisans on either side of the aisle will be able to muster sufficient majorities to advance their energy gambits. All other things being equal, they seem content to blame the other for inaction and hope that the voters respond in a way that doesn’t simply amount literally to a pox on both their houses.

Fortunately, it appears that this week may also produce an alternative initiative that 1) could make a practical and meaningful difference on the price of gasoline in the relatively near-term and 2) enjoy broad bipartisan support.

Tuesday, Democratic Senators Joe Lieberman and Ken Salazar will join Republican Senators Susan Collins and Sam Brownback in introducing the “Open Fuel Standard Act of 2008.” This legislation would put into law a promise made repeatedly by America’s car manufacturers: to make half their new cars Flexible Fuel Vehicles (FFVs) by 2012. These are cars that can use gasoline, alcohols (ethanol or methanol from whatever source) or some combination. It would require foreign competitors to do the same, then up that percentage to 80% by 2015. Companion bipartisan legislation is expected shortly to be put in play in the House of Representatives.

Senators Lieberman and Collins, the chairman and ranking member respectively of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, will precede a midday press conference unveiling their legislation by holding a hearing on the energy crisis and what might be done about it. While much of the attention will likely be focused on the testimony offered by the estimable T. Boone Pickens – who is currently spending tens of millions of dollars promoting the use of wind power to generate electricity and natural gas to power automobiles, Senators and the public alike would be well-advised to listen attentively to the remarks of another witness: Gal Luft of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security.

Together with his colleague, Anne Korin, Dr. Luft co-founded the Set America Free Coalition – an extraordinarily broadly based pick-up team of national security experts, energy specialists, environmental groups, scientists, academics, business leaders and other activists. The Coalition has been the driving force behind a blueprint (www.SetAmericaFree.org) for energy security. At the moment, its highest priority is the adoption of an Open Fuel Standard.

Among many riveting facts in Dr. Luft’s testimony – including his documentation of the insidious role the Saudi-led oil cartel, OPEC, is playing in restricting supply and manipulating prices in a manner consistent with the sort of economic warfare against the West promised a decade ago by Al Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden – is this fact: Unless an Open Fuel Standard is adopted swiftly, during the tenure of a Senator elected in 2008, over 100 million new cars will be introduced onto America’s highways the bulk of which can be powered only by gasoline. Given that these cars will be around, on average, for about 17 years, such an arrangement would mean perpetuating the United States’ present vulnerability to OPEC’s strategically dangerous and economically ruinous extortion for nearly two decades to come.

The time has come to do something meaningful about America’s energy freedom. Adopt the Open Fuel Standard. Accept no substitutes.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy and a founding member of the Set America Free Coalition.

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Try a little thought experiment. What would have happened in this country during the Cold War if the Soviet Union successfully neutralized anti-communists opposed to the Kremlin’s plans for world domination?

Of course, Moscow strove to discredit those in America and elsewhere who opposed its totalitarian agenda – especially after Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s excesses made it fashionable to vilify patriots by accusing them of believing communists were “under every bed.”

But what if the USSR and its ideological soul-mates in places like China, North Korea, Cuba, Eastern Europe and parts of Africa had been able to criminalize efforts to oppose their quest for the triumph of world communism? What if it had been an internationally prosecutable offense even to talk about the dangers inherent in communist rule and the need to resist it?

The short answer is that history might very well have come out differently. Had courageous anti-communists been unable accurately and forcefully to describe the nature of that time’s enemy – and to work against the danger posed by its repressive, seditious program, the Cold War might well have been lost.

Flash forward to today. At the moment, another totalitarian ideology characterized by techniques and global ambitions strikingly similar to those of yesteryear’s communists is on the march. It goes by varying names: “Islamofascism,” “Islamism,” “jihadism” or “radical,” “extremist” or “political Islam.” Unlike the communists, however, adherents to this ideology are making extraordinary strides in Western societies toward criminalizing those who dare oppose the Islamist end-state – the imposition of brutal Shariah Law on Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

Consider but a few indicators of this ominous progress:

O In March, the 57 Muslim-state Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) prevailed upon the United Nations Human Rights Council to adopt a resolution requiring the effective evisceration of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Henceforth, the guaranteed right of free expression will not extend to any criticism of Islam, on the grounds that it amounts to an abusive act of religious discrimination. A UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression has been charged with documenting instances in which individuals and media organizations engage in what the Islamists call “Islamophobia.” Not to be outdone, the OIC has its own “ten-year program of action” which will monitor closely all Islamophobic incidents and defamatory statements around the world.

O Monitoring is just the first step. Jordan’s Prosecutor General has recently brought charges against Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders. According to a lawsuit, “Fitna” – Wilders’ short documentary film that ties certain Koranic passages to Islamist terrorism – is said to have slandered and insulted the Prophet Mohammed, demeaned Islam and offended the feelings of Muslims in violation of the Jordanian penal code. Mr. Wilders has been summoned to Amman to stand trial and, if he fails to appear voluntarily, international warrants for his arrest will be issued.

Zakaria Al-Sheikh, head of the “Messenger of Allah Unites Us Campaign” which is the plaintiff in the Jordanian suit, reportedly has “confirmed that the [prosecutor’s action] is the first step towards setting in place an international law criminalizing anyone who insults Islam and the Prophet Mohammed.” In the meantime, his campaign is trying to penalize the nations that have spawned “Islamophobes” like Wilders and the Danish cartoonists by boycotting their exports – unless the producers publicly denounce the perpetrators both in Jordan and in their home media.

O Unfortunately, it is not just some companies that are submitting to this sort of coercion – a status known in Islam as “dhimmitude.” Western officials and governmental entities appear increasingly disposed to go along with such efforts to mutate warnings about Shariah law and its adherents from “politically incorrect” to “criminally punishable” activity.

For example, in Britain, Canada and even the United States, the authorities are declining to describe the true threat posed by Shariah Law and are using various techniques to discourage – and in some cases, prosecute – those who do. We are witnessing the spectacle of authors’ books being burned, ministers prosecuted, documentary film-makers investigated and journalists hauled before so-called “Human Rights Councils” on charges of offending Muslims, slandering Islam or other “Islamophobic” conduct. Jurists on both sides of the Atlantic are acceding to the insinuation of Shariah law in their courts. And Wall Street is increasingly joining other Western capital markets in succumbing to the seductive Trojan Horse of “Shariah-Compliant Finance.”

Let’s be clear: The Islamists are trying to establish a kind of Catch-22: If you point out that they seek to impose a barbaric, repressive and seditious Shariah Law, you are insulting their faith and engaging in unwarranted, racist and bigoted fear-mongering. On the other hand, pursuant to Shariah, you must submit to that theo-political-legal program. If you don’t, you can legitimately be killed. It is not an irrational fear to find that prospect unappealing. And it is not racist or bigoted to decry and oppose Islamist efforts to bring it about – ask the anti-Islamist Muslims who are frequently accused of being Islamophobes!

If we go along with our enemies’ demands to criminalize Islamophobia, we will mutate Western laws, traditions, values and societies beyond recognition. Ultimately, today’s totalitarian ideologues will triumph where their predecessors were defeated.

To avoid such a fate, those who love freedom must oppose the seditious program the Islamists call Shariah – and all efforts to impose its 1st Amendment-violating blasphemy, slander and libel laws on us in the guise of preventing Western Islamophobia.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for the Washington Times.

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In recent months, a growing number of U.S. commercial banks, hedge funds and other financial institutions have begun promoting products described as “Shariah-Compliant.” By so doing, they hope to attract some of the immense petro-wealth now accumulating in the Islamic Middle East. Neither the management nor shareholders of the firms engaged in such Shariah-Compliant Finance (SCF) appear to admit, however, the civil and criminal exposure to which they are exposing themselves – and the serious dangers this practice entails for their country.

The problem lies with “Shariah.” This is the term used by the most powerful – and virulent – Islamic authorities to describe their theo-political-military doctrine. Its stated purpose is to replace sovereign, secular nations like the United States with a transnational Islamic order governed by a ruling authority, the Sunni’s Caliph or his Shiite counterpart, with Shariah as its foundational law or constitution. Under Shariah Law, violent means are ordered if necessary to effect the world’s submission to Islam.

Shariah is what the Taliban brutally practiced in Afghanistan. It is the law of the land in Iran, Sudan and Saudi Arabia – three of the most repressive regimes in the world, all of which have extensive ties to jihadist terrorism. It is characterized by such barbaric practices as beheadings of apostates, subjugation of Jews and Christians, stonings for adulterers, flagellation for women deemed “unchaste,” amputations for petty crimes, female genital mutilation and martyrdom in the service of jihad.

Why on earth would Western bankers want to be promoting practices that comply with, and therefore institutionalize and legitimate, this repugnant and repressive code?

The answer, of course, is that they perceive in SCF a new way to make money. The sub-prime fiasco demonstrates that it is perfectly possible for American financiers to turn a blind eye to practices that are unwise, even reckless and criminal, when there are profits and bonuses to be garnered. Unfortunately, Shariah-Compliant Finance has the potential to create a national sub-prime meltdown on steroids.

The reason? As a legal memorandum prepared for the Center for Security Policy by experienced securities litigator David Yerushalmi (http://www.stopshariahnow.citymax.com/f/Research_Memo_re_Legal_Risks_of_SCF_(3).pdf) makes clear, Shariah-Compliant Finance entails considerable civil and criminal exposure for firms that engage in it.

For starters, the authoritative Shariah Law is inherently seditious, as it explicitly calls for the violent overthrow of governments like that of the United States and the replacement of democratic, constitutional government with its theocratic code.

The Shariah advisors – Islamist scholars who adhere to the most fundamentalist traditions and interpretations of their faith – enable Shariah-Compliant Finance. They do so in ways that expose their employers on Wall Street to such liabilities as racketeering, anti-trust violations and securities and consumer fraud. Incredible as it may seem, leading Shariah authorities like Mufti Usmani, employed by Dow Jones and HSBC SCF funds, have called for violent jihad against the West. Usmani has even published a book in English explaining how and why this is obligatory for all Shariah-faithful Muslims.

Worse yet, through practices known as zakat (the tithing to charities required of observant Muslims) and “purification” of funds (the donation to approved charities of proceeds from investments that are “tainted” by interest, speculation, pork or other non-Shariah-compliant activities), SCF’s Shariah advisors and their financial industry employers may be involved in material support for terrorism.

It is unlikely that American investors in the post-9/11 environment would want to support such practices. One would hope that financial institutions would not want to assume the exposure associated with them, either. Yet, because the material facts about Shariah, its authorities and their charities are not being disclosed to investors, both are at serious risk. So is America to the extent that Shariah Law is being legitimated, its adherents are being empowered and its so-called “charities” are being enriched (four out of eight Shariah-approved uses for zakat can translate into support of terrorism – and have).

For these reasons, the Center for Security Policy recently sent the CEOs of dozens of the nation’s leading commercial banks, hedge funds and other financial institutions copies of Mr. Yerushalmi’s analysis. In an accompanying letter, I warned that they “may be exposed to personal civil and criminal liability and [their] firm will be exposed to reputational risk and/or price risk” should they be involved in Shariah-Compliant Finance. (See www.SecureFreedom.org for more on this correspondence.)

From now on, the leading Wall Street firms will not be able to profess ignorance of such risks. They will have a responsibility to disclose them to investors. Call it guilty knowledge.

Unfortunately, it nonetheless may take action by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Department of the Treasury, the Justice Department and/or Capitol Hill to get Wall Street’s attention on SCF. The $800 billion invested in such products to date is expected to grow by 15-25% in the future, powered in part by the dictators’ slush funds known as “Sovereign Wealth” that are recycling petrodollars into various, strategically ominous investments in the United States.

Alternatively, bringing to light the true nature and dangers associated with Shariah-Compliant Finance may fall to civil litigants like those who have brought suit in federal court in connection with Saudi and other interests’ (many of them Shariah-compliant) ties to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The cost to Wall Street of such litigation could be in the billions.

Either way, the financial sector will have guilty knowledge about Shariah-Compliant Finance and be vulnerable to problems that will make sub-prime look like a day at the beach. Those involved are on notice.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for the Washington Times.

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When Defense Secretary Robert Gates summarily fired the top civilian and military Air Force officials last week, the reason he gave was a grave failure of leadership with respect to that service’s nuclear missions. The low priority assigned by the Pentagon to its nuclear stewardship responsibilities is systemic and acute. Consequently, this act of accountability is both warranted and a needed wake-up call to all the armed forces. As it happens, there is another ground on which the dismissal of Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne could be justified. He was specifically brought in to clean up Air Force procurement, but ended up presiding over a disastrously mishandled procurement of the KC-X next-generation aerial tanker. The decision to award this contract worth conservatively $35 billion to a team led by the European aerospace conglomerate, EADS, should be considered a firing offense.

In the next few days, the Government Accountability Office is expected to rule on a protest to that award by the losing bidder, Boeing. If the GAO does its job, there is little doubt it will conclude the Air Force unfairly, even cynically, manipulated the acquisition process so as to enable EADS to compete with an aircraft that did not meet the service’s stated requirements and that was significantly more costly to operate.

In documents that have come to light since the contract award was announced in February, including an Air Force briefing provided to the losing company and a redacted version of Boeing’s protest, a number of facts are clear:

The Boeing tanker, based on the 767 commercial aircraft, is a known commodity. Two were delivered to the Japanese air force earlier this spring. Four more are currently being built for Italy. Its American manufacturing line is well-established. Its estimated costs are grounded in data developed during more than 10 million 767 flight hours.

By contrast, the EADS alternative known as the KC-30 is more the proverbial bird in the bush. None has been delivered. None has moved aviation fuel through an operational boom. And none has been produced by the politically-driven, Rube Goldberg-style production line that EADS proposes to establish on two continents – unless, that is, the costs grow. In which case, it turns out, the French-led conglomerate will build all of the U.S. Air Force’s new tankers in Toulouse, France, not Mobile, Alabama, with attendant loss of the promised American jobs.

Speaking of workforce, there is the natty problem that unions representing EADS employees have a record of rabid hostility towards the United States and its policies. The effect of entrusting one of the most important elements of our power-projection capabilities to foreign labor capable of production sabotage and/or work-stoppage could be catastrophic. That is especially true insofar as the reliance on EADS would not be confined to the manufacturing of the tankers. If past practice is any guide, the company that produced the planes would also be relied upon for maintenance over their expected 40-year service life.

Quite apart from the nationality of the source, there is the basic question of competence. Boeing is no newcomer to the business of building and supporting aerial refueling tankers. In fact it has been at it for 79 years and delivered a total of 2,000 tanker aircraft. It has delivered 1,800 operational refueling booms, the complicated piece of equipment used to move fuel safely and swiftly from the tanker to the recipient aircraft.

By contrast, the EADS team has been trying to develop a tanker business for just the last five years. To date, it has not delivered any aerial refuelers or operational booms. To repose confidence in such a team, to say nothing of its cost projections, entails a leap of faith that seems irresponsible in the extreme.

Finally, there is the matter of the mission. The Air Force, until strong-armed by a few legislators, rightly did not want as big a plane as the KC-30 for the simple reason that it is far better to have a larger number of smaller, more fuel-efficient aircraft capable of operating from many airfields. In the competition, the KC-767 was deemed to have 98 strengths (“discriminators”) to just 30 for the Airbus option, with only 1 assessed weakness versus 5 for the KC-30. If the decision to go with the inferior, but larger aircraft stands, the taxpayer will have to eat an estimated $30 billion in additional fuel costs and billions more in otherwise unnecessary military construction charges.

The new leadership of the Air Force – which reportedly will include as its Secretary Michael Donley, a well-respected veteran and national security official during several administrations – should shortly have an opportunity, thanks to the GAO, to revisit the Wynne tanker selection. If and when it does so, the service must make its decision on the basis of:

O its actual requirement, not one adapted to suit a competitor, EADS, that could not otherwise compete;

O real costs, not those artificially and arbitrarily inflated to make Boeing’s proposal less viable and low-balled to help EADS; and

O the nation’s interest in having an indigenous supplier of vital tanker aircraft, produced by a loyal work-force capable of not only manufacturing the planes properly and cost-effectively but of reliably supporting them for decades to come.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for the Washington Times.

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I don’t generally make a habit of disagreeing with Peggy Noonan. She is after all, one of the most thoughtful, accomplished and influential word smiths of our time. She is also a much-admired friend and colleague.

In an essay published last week in the Wall Street Journal last weekend, however, Peggy offered what amounted to a defense of Scott McClellan’s new memoir of his years in the George W. Bush administration, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception. To be fair, it wasn’t much of a defense; she took the former press secretary to task for writing a cliché-ridden, “lumpy, uneven and… embarrassing” tome.

Still, Ms. Noonan welcomed McClellan’s book as a contribution to a needed “debate on the issues” he addressed – notably, the grounds for the United States going to war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. As everyone knows by now, the one-time Bush press flak came, in the course of writing this book (evidently with considerable help, read “spinning,” from the left-wing publisher of George Soros’ screeds, Public Affairs), to view the invasion of Iraq as “a serious strategic blunder” arising from a decision that was itself “a fateful misstep.”

Peggy Noonan declared that she “believes” McClellan and urged that more people “who work or worked within the Bush White House will address the book’s themes and interpretations.” She adds: “What’s needed now? More memoirs, more data, more information, more testimony. More serious books, like Doug Feith’s. More ‘this is what I saw’ and ‘this is what is true.’ Feed history.”

I confess I have not read Scott McClellan’s book. In fact, I could not even get a copy at my local Barnes and Nobles, as they were sold out and hopelessly back-ordered. So this is not a book review, just an observation, based on the wall-to-wall reporting on the contents of What Happened and the post-publication public statements of its author: With all due respect, I think Peggy Noonan is wrong. The world does not need more such books.

Neither history nor the public’s current need for accurate information about its leaders and their conduct are advanced by more self-aggrandizing, -justifying and -serving memoirs characterized by an almost total lack of discipline.

A man who was not present at the wartime councils that led up to the invasion of Iraq is entitled to his views – irrespective of how they differ from those he held at the time. It is, however, altogether another matter to regard McClellan’s current depiction of the subject of the Iraq war as somehow illuminating of what went on “inside the Bush White House,” let alone as dispositive concerning whether the President deliberately misled the American people on the timing and content of his decision to launch the invasion.

The irony is that, even as she erred in this respect, Ms. Noonan recognized what really is needed: “more serious books, like Doug Feith’s.” Readers of this column will recall that Mr. Feith, the former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and another friend and colleague, has written War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism. It is the definitive account of the considerations and deliberations that led to the liberation of Iraq and other actions taken in the wake of and in response to the September 11 attacks. An objective reader will see the case for war was thoughtfully arrived at and persuasively made, not “a fatal misstep” or “strategic blunder.”

The difference between the two ostensibly “insider” accounts could not be more stark. Where McClellan was not a participant in the decision-making he finds so objectionable, Feith was. Where McClellan fails to document any of his pronouncements, Feith documents all of his – including, notably, via a website devoted to making declassified papers and other decision-related materials readily accessible to historians and interested citizens (http://www.waranddecision.com/documents_and_articles/).

Of course, the most profound contrast between the two books is in how they have been received. McClellan’s has dominated the airwaves and print outlets for days. Feith’s has received considerable critical acclaim and pick-up in the alternative media – which recognizes the book’s value in countering the “Bush lied, people died” and other urban legends, but nowhere near the mainstream media coverage. In fact, the New York Times and Washington Post have refused to review it.

It is not as though Mr. Feith has been uncritical of the Bush administration. War and Decision lets the chips fall where they may, including with respect to errors made by the author himself. Interestingly, the day before the McClellan book-selling bandwagon got underway, Ms. Noonan’s Journal published an op.ed. article adapting part of the Feith book under the headline “How Bush Sold the War.” It took to task the President and his handlers – which, ironically, included at the time Scott McClellan – for failing in the aftermath of Saddam’s overthrow consistently to justify that act on vital national security grounds, rather than exclusively as a contribution to democracy-building.

There is one other noteworthy contrast in this tale of two books. Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace suggested during last weekend’s show that Scott McClellan might want to counter criticisms of his cashing in on his memoirs by donating the proceeds of the book sales to a charity for veterans of the war that has, evidently, caused him such anguish. No such encouragement was needed by Doug Feith; he made that commitment from the get-go.

On this Peggy Noonan and I agree. We certainly need more serious books like Doug Feith’s War and Decision.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for the Washington Times.

There is a Greek tragedy unfolding today in the Middle East. In response to past mistakes and as a result of hubristic political calculation, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is setting in motion forces that promise to lead inexorably to grief for his nation. The result could be staticide, the destruction of the Jewish State, with incalculably serious repercussions for the Free World in general and the United States in particular.

In the pursuit of peace with its neighbors, Israel has made one strategic concession after another. In 1979, it surrendered the Sinai to Egypt when Anwar Sadat promised peace and then was murdered for doing so. In 1993, Israel adopted the Oslo accords, legitimating one of its most virulent enemies, the PLO terrorist chief Yasser Arafat, and setting the stage for Palestinian control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Eight years ago this month, Israel unilaterally withdrew from South Lebanon, creating a vacuum promptly filled by Iran’s proxy army there, Hezbollah. Then, in 2005, Israel forcibly removed its citizens living in Gaza and turned the Strip over – temporarily – to Arafat’s right-hand man and successor, Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas.

Space constraints will not permit a full rendering of the costs associated with these serial mistakes. The “peace” with Egypt proved to be a very cold one. In Sadat’s stead, the government of Hosni Mubarak has promoted virulent hatred for Israel among its people and assiduously armed for renewed conflict with the Jewish State. It has also used the Sinai to funnel ever-longer-range missiles and other advanced weapons from Iran to the Gaza Strip – now under the control of another Palestinian terrorist faction, Hamas.

The latter and its friends, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, al Qaeda and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, are now using Gaza as a safe-haven for planning and executing terrorism against Israel. It is a safe bet that Israel’s most important ally, the United States, is being targeted from there, as well.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah has not just taken over South Lebanon – its dominance of which was greatly strengthened when Olmert’s government proved incapable of decisively defeating the forces of this so-called “Army of God” in 2006. In recent days, Hezbollah launched attacks in Beirut that effectively produced a coup d’etat. The hopes for a democratic Lebanon, free of Syrian and Iranian interference, have given way to a dark future for the Lebanese people and their neighbors in Israel, alike.

Tragically, despite this sorry record of retreat followed by intensified danger, Ehud Olmert is making further and even more strategic territorial and political concessions to Israel’s enemies. By so doing, the Israeli prime minister evidently hopes to stave off accountability for these past mistakes. He also appears to be calculating that “peace-making” will spare him prosecution on myriad corruption charges.

Unfortunately, there is now no basis for depicting such a policy as one in which Israel trades “land for peace.” Today, Israel is giving up land for war

In the illusion that that there is any appreciable difference between Fatah and Hamas, Olmert’s government is trying to turn over nearly all the West Bank and even parts of Jerusalem to Abbas and his faction’s Palestinian police force. A similar illusion is causing the United States to give Fatah’s troops training, intelligence collection equipment and arms. The latter have already used their American-supplied know-how and weapons to kill Israelis.

Olmert is also allowing the Egyptians to broker a cease-fire with Hamas. The result is predictable: Hamas will be legitimated, effectively ending international efforts to relegate it to pariah status and probably producing a unity government whereby the two Palestinian factions join forces once again. The stage will then be set for the ultimate defeat of Fatah by Hamas in the West Bank as well, putting all of Israel within range of its weapons.

These tragic steps are now being compounded by one further, potentially staticidal act: Olmert has just launched negotiations to surrender all of the Golan Heights to Syria.

This concession would place Syrian – and quite possibly Iranian – forces on high ground which, in Israeli hands, has kept the peace for 35 years. If once again at the disposal of Israel’s enemies, these heights will put northern Israel at risk of, at best, harassing fire and, at worst, a new invasion in force.

Moreover, as my esteemed colleague, Caroline Glick, observed in her Jerusalem Post column last week, if Israel can no longer use the Golan to threaten Syria, Damascus and Tehran may feel free to redouble their subversion in Iraq. Iran may even conclude the Golan can allow it to checkmate any lingering Israeli willingness to interfere with the mullahs’ pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Importantly, the Israeli people finally seem to have had enough of false peace processes. Recent polls indicate that two-thirds of Israelis oppose their country’s surrender of the Golan; a majority believe it is motivated by Olmert’s efforts to stave off prosecution. Even the Bush Administration is said to be unhappy about his Golan initiative.

This weekend, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) – universally known as “the Israel lobby” – holds its annual Policy Conference in Washington. The organization exists to support the Israeli government. At this juncture, however, attendees have an opportunity and an obligation to object to that government’s increasingly reckless, and predictably tragic, conduct. After all, friends don’t let friends commit staticide.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for the Washington Times.

Q. What do the following recent events have in common?

O The President of the United States has prostrated himself for the second time in five months before the King of Saudi Arabia, pleading for more oil. Despite Mr. Bush’s inducements – an array of advanced, offensive arms; the promise of nuclear technology with which the Saudis can expect (like the North Koreans, Iranians, Pakistanis, etc.) to acquire the ultimate weapons; and U.S. help securing Saudi Arabia’s borders (something the President has declined to do at home) – the American plea was spurned. The contempt felt by the House of Saud was captured in its oil minister’s quip, “If you want more oil, buy it.”

O The Senate rejected, by a vote of 56-42, an initiative offered by Republicans that called for opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska and some offshore waters now closed to exploration and exploitation of their substantial oil reserves.

O In addition, that chamber’s appropriations committee refused by a similar party-line vote to lift its moratorium on oil-shale production in Colorado. It seems that, if we want more oil, we will have to buy it at ever increasing prices from the Saudis and others even more unfriendly to this country’s national security and economic interests – like Venzuela’s Hugo Chavez or Russia’s Vladimir Putin, perhaps even Iran’s Mahmud Ahmadinejad.

O One thing the Senate and House did agree upon, by overwhelmingly bipartisan majorities, was suspending purchases of oil to fill the remaining three percent of the capacity of the Strategic Petroleum Reserves. This action will have negligible (if any) impact on energy prices. But it will ensure that less oil will be available to us than would otherwise have been the case in the event, for example, the next terrorist attack on the Saudi oil infrastructure succeeds where others have failed and seriously disrupts world supplies.

O Then there is the newly formed coalition, ostensibly spearheaded by the Grocery Manufacturers’ Association, that has launched a multi-million dollar lobbying effort aimed at discouraging the development of one alternative to oil: domestically produced or imported ethanol. Wrongly asserting that producing this transportation fuel from corn is largely responsible for rising food prices and the attendant global shortages, this instant grassroots (read, “astroturf”) coalition appears to want America to remain essentially dependent on oil. Wonder where the money for this campaign is coming from?

A. These actions – taken against the backdrop of soaring energy prices and the attendant hemorrhage of U.S. petrodollars to, among others, people who wish us ill – represent the sort of behavior in which only a nation utterly unserious about energy security could indulge.

The truth of the matter is that, no matter what we do, we are going to need oil for the foreseeable future. As a result, we should do our utmost to find it and exploit it in places that are either under our control (for example, near where the Cubans and Chinese are getting it off the coast of Florida) or at least friendly to us (notably, Canada, Mexico and Brazil).

It is equally axiomatic that, no matter what we do, we are almost certainly going to have less oil than we need, certainly at prices we can afford. The question is: Are we going to do something to meet the shortfall? Or are we simply going to allow the economy and security of the United States to bleed-out at the hands of the Saudi-led OPEC cartel?

The Set America Free Coalition – an initiative launched several years ago by unlikely array of national security-, environmental- and energy-minded people and organizations from across the political spectrum – is advancing practical, near-term alternatives to that unappetizing and unacceptable prospect.

At the moment, the Coalition is mounting its own campaign aimed at achieving in the immediate future, a simple yet far-reaching goal: Ensuring that each of the 17 million new cars added to America’s highways each year is capable of being powered by ethanol (from whatever source), methanol (ditto) or gasoline (or some combination thereof).

There are already some 6 million of these Flexible Fuel Vehicles (FFVs) on our roads today. Most of these are American-made (name another technology in which Detroit has a competitive advantage?) It costs less than $100 per car to equip new cars with this feature.

Ask yourself, and your elected representatives and would-be Presidents: As each of these cars will last, on average, roughly 17 years, do we want any more of them to be built the old way – namely able to use only gasoline? Can we responsibly continue for another generation to lock our transportation sector (the principal, and most profligate, consumer of imported oil) into dependence on oil substantially imported from unfriendly places?

Dr. Robert Zubrin – a leader of the Set America Free Coalition and author of the terrific new book, Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil – observes that at today’s oil prices, we are allowing the Saudis and their friends to impose the equivalent of a 40 percent income tax at a cost of approximately $3300 on every man woman and child in this country. We literally cannot afford to allow such lunacy to continue.

Sooner or later, Congress will adopt an Open Fuel Standard requiring every new car sold in America to be an FFV. The effect will be, in short order, to create an immense and highly competitive market for alternative, “Freedom Fuels” that we can make here or buy from friends. That, in turn, will set America free by beginning to end its cars’ present addiction to oil. Why wait any longer?

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy, a columnist for the Washington Times and founding member of the Set America Free Coalition.

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There is something unique about what has come to be called the War on Terror. In this conflict, as the U.S. government struggles to defeat the enemy and keep our people safe, it is up against not only those who overtly and unambiguously seek to destroy us. It also confronts those who are prepared to reveal classified information and programs, even when doing so makes it harder to vanquish our foes and protect this country.

The latter fall into four principal categories:

O Some call themselves “journalists” who work for traditional news organizations, notably the New York Times. On occasion, they win Pulitzer Prizes for compromising the Nation’s secrets.

O Some are members of what has come to be called the “new media” or “alternative media.” Most traditional journalists detest the idea that their trade is being practiced by people who find in outlets like on-line publications, the Blogosphere, YouTube and FaceBook vehicles to disseminate information worldwide and instantaneously. But the reach of the world-wide web is, well, world-wide and so is the impact of its “journalists.”

O Among those making use of these “New Age” tools are some who use the guise of journalism as a cover for our enemy’s disinformation and propaganda. In fact, some of the most capable users of the Internet routinely engage in information warfare on behalf of Islamofascist terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas and their state-sponsors.

O Then there are the individuals who hold positions of trust in the federal government itself. They have been given access to secret data and capabilities on the promise not to reveal such knowledge without authorization. Yet, some choose to violate their oaths in the furtherance of divergent policy agendas. Of course, folks in this category are not journalists. They are called “sources.”

It is imperative to consider these four categories as the U.S. Senate prepares to consider legislation with the unobjectionable-sounding name of the “Free Flow of Information Act (FFIA) of 2007.” The bill, S. 2035, is better known as the “media shield” law. It would be more accurate to call it the “Leaker and Other Enemies Shield Act.”

Freedom of the press is, of course, one of the bedrock principles upon which this nation was founded. And those who dare criticize the media and its efforts to expand privileges it enjoys under the rubric of press freedoms – notably, officials responsible for prosecuting journalists’ “confidential government sources” for the illegally revelation of classified information – generally are subjected to very bad notices.

Still, it is a terrible idea – particularly in time of war – to be providing “media shields” to anyone who can claim to be a journalist and to their law-breaking sources in government. Yet, that is precisely what S.2035 would do.

The FFIA creates a highly problematic journalist’s privilege. It would effectively prevent the federal government from compelling anyone “engaging in journalism” to give testimony or produce any document revealing that journalist’s source, if the source gave the information under cover of confidentiality.

Were S.2035 to become law, investigators and prosecutors charged with bringing to justice sources who have engaged in criminal leaks would have to prove all of the following to the satisfaction of a federal judge: (1) The government has first exhausted all other avenues besides the journalist to obtain a source’s identity; (2) there are reasonable grounds to believe that a crime has taken place; (3) the source’s identity is “essential” to the investigation; (4) the information that was disclosed was “properly classified” to begin with; (5) the person who leaked the information had authorized access to it; (6) the source’s unauthorized disclosure “has caused or will cause significant, clear, and articulable harm to the national security; and (7) non-disclosure of the source’s identity would be contrary to the public interest when weighed against the other public interest in “gathering news and maintaining the free flow of information.”

As a practical matter, as an array of Cabinet and subcabinet officers responsible for keeping us safe and enforcing the law have warned the Senate, no source is going to be held accountable under this law. For example, Attorney General Michael Mukasey and Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell advised the Senate’s leadership they would be hobbled by myriad Catch-22s inherent in the FFIA.

Consider two of these cited by the AG and DNI: How can a prosecutor show that a person who leaked information had authorized access to it (Requirement 5), without first knowing the identity of the source? How can a prosecutor show that a leak “has caused or will cause significant, clear, and articulable harm to the national security” (Requirement 6), without first having to offer evidence to a judge that will reveal even more classified information?

By assuring “journalists” – the bill’s definition is broad enough to cover all of the first three categories described above – they need not fear having to divulge the source of a leak, sources will feel even less compunction than they do today to break their promises and leak with impunity.

In short, the Free Flow of Information Act is not about freedom of the press. It is about freeing government officials of their legal responsibilities and enabling those who would do us all harm – whether intentionally or in the name of “the people’s right to know.” The President’s senior advisors have rightly indicated that they will recommend his veto should this bill make it to his desk. Senators should ensure that the Leakers and Other Enemies Protection Act never gets there.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for the Washington Times. Ben Lerner, the Center’s Senior Research Associate contributed to this column.

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In response to questions about the Iranian nuclear threat, Democratic Senator and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has recently adopted a dramatic stance. She has taken to talking about how, if she were President, she would “totally obliterate” Iran if it attacks our friends in the region with nuclear weapons.

When asked during her most recent debate with Barak Obama in Philadelphia whether an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel would result in an American nuclear attack on Iran, Senator Clinton responded: “Of course I would make it clear to the Iranians that an attack on Israel would incur massive retaliation from the United States.”

Senator Clinton subsequently went even further. During an interview last week with “Good Morning America,” she declared: “I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran….In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”

The former First Lady has even offered explicitly to extend the protection of America’s nuclear umbrella to new parts of the world. In the Philadelphia debate, she said: “We should be looking to create an umbrella of deterrence that goes much further than just Israel….I would do the same with other countries in the region….You can’t go to the Saudis or the Kuwaitis or U.A.E. and others who have a legitimate concern about Iran and say, ‘Well, don’t acquire these weapons to defend yourself’ unless you’re also willing to say we will provide a deterrent backup.”

We can only speculate as to the motivation for these pronouncements. Do they reflect a genuine concern that Tehran will shortly be able to act on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s oft-stated threat to wipe Israel off the map? Are they little more than cynical posturing, animated by the perceived need to demonstrate toughness as a prospective Commander-in-Chief?

Or is Mrs. Clinton staking out a basis for opposing any effort the Bush Administration might make in its last days in office to prevent the Iranian regime from acquiring a nuclear weapon? Is she espousing deterrence in the belief that that a nuclear-armed mullahocracy can be contained via the sort of “balance of terror” that operated during much of the Cold War?

Whatever the rationale, the Senator from New York has helpfully elevated a topic that should be featured prominently in the presidential election now approaching its end-game: Does the United States need a credible nuclear deterrent – for its own security and/or that of its friends and allies? If so, are the candidates espousing policies that will ensure we have such a deterrent?

Certainly, Hillary’s recent statements suggest a conviction that we must have – at least for “the next ten years” – a deterrent that is credible in order to protect ourselves and our allies from the nuclear ambitions of terror-sponsoring states like Iran. Presumably, she would agree that any such deterrent has to be safe, reliable and effective if it is to be able to dissuade successfully.

Yet, Sen. Clinton has long espoused policies with respect to our nuclear arsenal that are undermining our deterrent and rendering ever-more-incredible threats such as those she is now making.

In fairness, Hillary is not alone in her incoherence on nuclear weapons. Her husband’s administration deliberately pursued what Bill Clinton called “denucleari­zation.” At the time, the House Armed Services Committee characterized the Clinton program as “erosion by design” of our deterrent and the infrastructure required to assure its reliability, safety and effectiveness.

Concerns about the Clinton policies prompted a majority of the U.S. Senate to reject their cornerstone: the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). This unverifiable treaty would have made it impossible for the United States to perform the sorts of underground nuclear tests that assure its weapons work when they are supposed to, and don’t when they are not.

Not content with perpetuating a seventeen-year-long, unilateral U.S. moratorium on testing – which has given rise to growing uncertainty on both of these scores, Senator Clinton announced in Foreign Affairs last winter that she “will seek Senate approval of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) by 2009, the tenth anniversary of the Senate’s initial rejection of the agreement.”

Mrs. Clinton has also staked out other positions dear to the denuclearizers. She told a March 2007 meeting of the National Education Association of New Hampshire: “I will certainly reduce our [nuclear] arsenal….I also am strongly against [the Bush administration’s] efforts to have a new generation of nuclear weapons….I voted against them several times, they want to create these new nuclear weapons, they want to modernize the existing weapons, they want to have a new nuclear weapons program in America, and I think that’s a terrible mistake.”

Sen. Clinton’s record in the Senate bears out these sentiments. For example, she has voted for a ban on low-yield nuclear weapons research and development and against R&D on a nuclear earth-penetrator (“bunker-buster”).

Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama and John McCain – and, for that matter, every other candidate for federal office – must address forthrightly their views on the need for U.S. nuclear deterrence. It is no longer acceptable to simply talk the talk. They must walk the walk, by espousing policies and activities that assure the future of our nuclear arsenal and the infrastructure that makes possible its safety, reliability and effectiveness, and therefore its credibility.

Frank J. Gaffney is President of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for the Washington Times. Ben Lerner, the Center’s Senior Research Associate, contributed to this column.

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By Caroline Glick Guest Writer
CSP Fellow

Speaking in February of the man she knows better than anyone else does, Michelle Obama said that her husband, Illinois Senator and candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination Barack Obama, is the only candidate for president who understands that before America can solve its problems, Americans have to fix their “broken souls.”

She also said that her husband’s unique understanding of the state of souls of the American people makes him uniquely qualified to be President. Obama can do what his opponent in the Democratic race Senator Hillary Clinton, and Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, cannot do. He can heal his countrymen’s broken souls. He will redeem them.

But then, saving souls is hard work, and Mrs. Obama won’t place the whole burden on her husband. He’ll make the Americans work for him. As she put it, “Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zone. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.”

At base, Mrs. Obama’s statement is nothing less than a renunciation of democracy and an embrace of fascism. The basic idea of liberty is that people have a natural right to live their lives as usual and to be uninvolved and uninformed. And they certainly have a right to expect that their government will butt out of their souls.

IN CONTRAST, fascist societies, as Jonah Goldberg notes in the latest issue of National Review, are all about the notions of “unity” and “change” and melding our broken souls into a fixed, united will for change that Obama has made the core theme of his campaign. Goldberg compared “unity” with “patriotism,” and explained that while the latter connotes the willingness to defend the moral values of a society, unity is bereft of any moral content. “The only value of unity is strength, strength in numbers - and… that is a fascist value. That’s the symbolism of the fasces, the bundle of sticks that in combination are invincible.”

Many commentators have argued that Jews in both Israel and the US have a specific reason to fear an Obama presidency. Much attention has been paid to Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the anti-Semitic, black supremacist preacher who has served as Obama’s spiritual guide for the past 20 years. Then too, there are Obama’s foreign policy advisors who range from the viscerally hostile towards Israel (Zbigniew Brzezinski, Robert Malley, Samantha Power, Merrill Tony McPeak) to the messianically hostile towards Israel (Dan Kurtzer). Obama’s close associations with Palestinian and pan-Arab champions and jihad apologists like the late Edward Said and Prof. Rashid Khalidi, and his stated intention to have open negotiations with Iran about the mullocracy’s nuclear weapons program, his monetary ties to anti-Israel donors like George Soros and to anti-Israel organizations like Moveon.org are similarly pointed to as reasons for concern.

But the fact is that for all his associations with Israel-bashers, Obama’s stated positions on the Palestinian and Arab conflict with Israel are all but indistinguishable from those of his opponent Senator Hillary Clinton. Both Democratic candidates assert that the Palestinian conflict with Israel is the root of the pathologies of the Arab world. Like President George W. Bush, both embrace the Fatah terror group as a legitimate organization and acceptable repository of Palestinian sovereignty. Both have hinted that they may be willing to open negotiations with Hamas. Both argue that the establishment of a Palestinian state will be a key foreign policy objective of their administrations.

While Sen. Clinton rejects Obama’s desire to openly appease the Iran’s mullahs, her announced strategy for contending with the specter of a nuclear-armed Iran would not necessarily be more effective than Obama’s plan to appease the ayatollahs. Last week, Clinton explained that she believes that the US’s position on Iran should be based on a credible threat of “massive retaliation” in the event that the mullocracy develops and uses nuclear weapons.

THERE ARE two reasons that a deterrence model will be as ineffective in curbing Iranian aggression as Obama’s appeasement model. First, as last week’s 25th anniversary of the Iranian-sponsored bombing of the US embassy in Beirut recalled, Iran has been attacking the US and its allies both directly and through proxies since 1979. To date, not only has the US failed to deter such attacks, it has never made Iran pay a price for them. With this abysmal track record against a non-nuclear Iran, it is hard to see how the US can threaten a nuclear-armed Iran with sufficient credibility to make a deterrence-based strategy successful.

The second reason that basing US policy towards Iran on a deterrence model will likely fail is because Iran’s leadership has made clear that is not necessarily concerned about the survivability of Iran. From Ayatollah Khomeini to Ayatollah Khamenei to Ali Rafsanjani to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s leadership has made clear that they are not Iranian patriots but global Islamic revolutionaries. Given their millenarian, apocalyptic view of their country’s purpose in world affairs, there is good reason to believe that a strategy based on some form of mutually assured destruction would have only marginal impact on Iran’s decision-makers.

So from a foreign policy perspective, there is little to distinguish Sen. Clinton from Sen. Obama. Indeed, there is little that distinguishes the two candidates from a domestic policy perspective. But that gets us back to the messianic business.

OPPONENTS OF Clinton claim that she is a soulless woman who will do whatever is necessary to have power, because she likes power and wants it. But if this is true it is hard to see why a power-hungry president is worse than a president who believes that he is the people’s redeemer. It is hard to see why a leader who wants power because she likes power is less reasonable than a president who thinks he has a right to demand that the American people follow his lead and fix their souls in the name of unity. In the former case, opposition to the leader is a policy dispute. In the latter case, it is apostasy.

When someone wants power for power’s sake, that person tends to be fairly pragmatic. In his first term of office, when former president Bill Clinton - another consummate pragmatist who liked having power - understood his wife’s healthcare plan was about to be defeated overwhelmingly by Congress, he shelved the plan and cut his losses.

A messianic wouldn’t do that. When a messianic leader is faced with failure, his tendency is to castigate the people, or his political opposition, or the media as evil and to continue on unmoved and bring his country down with him. President Woodrow Wilson’s unpopular and unsuccessful championing of US membership in the League of Nations and former president Jimmy Carter’s wooing of American enemies in the name of peace are examples of what happens when messianic redeemer types are confronted with reality.

So with this distinction between the two senators in mind, the question is, how will a President Hillary Clinton or a President Barack Obama respond after being shown that appeasement of the Palestinians has once again failed and that appeasement or deterrence of the Iranian regime has also failed once again? Given their distinct emotional makeup, it can be assumed that Obama will argue that reality is wrong and continue on - Carter-like - into the abyss and drag his country and Israel down with him. Acting in a Clinton-like way, Clinton on the other hand, would be more likely to pick a fight with Serbia - or call for a federal ban on chewing tobacco in a bid to change the subject.

What is most interesting about the danger that Obama constitutes for Israel is how un-unique it is. It is no different than the danger the prospect his presidency constitutes for America. The reason that pseudo-realist Israel bashers and messianic peace mongering Israel bashers support Obama is because they naturally gravitate towards a man on a mission to save the free world from itself.

An empowered, free citizenry will question the realism behind their decision to pretend that the global jihad is the figment of the Jewish lobby’s imagination. A cowed, on its way to being redeemed by Obama’s cult of personality citizenry will be in no position to argue with them.

The same is as true of domestic issues as it is of foreign policy. When the Obama/Clinton tax hikes and economic protectionism exacerbate the current US recession, under an Obama presidency, rather than debating the merits of the administration’s failed economic policies, the American people will be told that they need to have more “discussions” about race to remind them how mean they are and how much they are in need of President Obama’s spiritual healing. If they are again attacked by jihadists, they will be lectured by Rev. Wright’s longtime follower, their president, about how black enslavement, his white grandmother, Israel, anti-abortion senators and their own “cynicism” played a role in convincing the jihadists to kill innocents.

US Jews have always had a weakness for messianic leaders and movements. Sometimes, as in the case of the civil rights movement, that tendency towards utopianism has had good results. More often it has not. In the current presidential race, American Jews, like all their fellow Americans, would be wise to consider if they are truly ready to accept Obama as their savior.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.