New Media Alliance - Jeff Lukens

By Jeff Lukens

“Silence is the virtue of fools,” Sir Francis Bacon once said. Instead of silence, today Bacon would be referring to a mindless politeness on what can and cannot be spoken in the public arena. We call it political correctness. Yet silence and political correctness may be luxury we cannot afford if we wish to maintain the way of life this country has known since the founding.

It is no secret Congress has been pushing subprime mortgages to disadvantaged people who could not pay for them. In the name of affordable housing, Congress has resisted all attempts at reforming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and effectively encouraged those organizations to become ever more reckless in their lending policies.

The government does not guarantee Fannie or Freddie, but the widespread assumption has been that they would step in to cover losses. In effect, Democrats were buying votes by giving their constituents a home. The result has been a world wide financial meltdown.

In 1998, Fannie deferred $200 million of estimated expenses to create the illusion of profit to justify enormous bonuses to the management. In 2004, Fannie Mae’s management was discovered to be engaging in a “pervasive misapplication” of its accounting rules. No matter. Fannie CEO Franklin Raines, now an Obama campaign advisor, walked away with millions of dollars in his pocket even with his involvement in improper accounting practices. He should have gone to jail.

While Republicans have tepidly tried to rein in Fannie and Freddie, Democrat Barney Frank has repeatedly said these institutions were sound. In 2005, a Republican reform passed the Senate Banking Committee on a party-line vote, only to be blocked by Democrats from passing the full Senate. If the Democrats had let the 2005 legislation come to a vote, the huge growth in the subprime loan portfolios of Fan and Fred would not have occurred, and the scale of the current financial crisis would have been much less. But that would require some measure of congressional accountability and responsibility. Good luck on that ever happening. Fannie and Freddie top campaign contributions went to Chris Dodd and Barack Obama, at $165,000 and $126,000, respectively.

Another liberal brainchild is the Community Reinvestment Act, or CRA. It was meant to encourage banks to make loans to high-risk borrowers, often minorities living in unstable neighborhoods. Words like “affordable housing” and “redlining” allowed politicos to direct where the loans and investments should go. If home prices kept going up, as was the assumption, this would not be a problem. They could paper over the losers.

Republicans were afraid to confront Democrats on it and now we are all in a jam. What brought us to this financial meltdown was their fear of being called a racist. Let’s just call it White Guilt. Will a takeover of our government and financial system by radical socialists be next? It may not be far off.

The CRA has provided an opening to radical groups like ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) to intimidate banks to making risky loans. ACORN officially registers voters and supports housing. In reality, however, they employ bare-knuckle tactics to advance their socialist agenda. ACORN personnel are facing criminal charges on voter fraud cased in over a dozen states.

ACORN abuses the law by forcing banks to make hundreds of millions of dollars in subprime loans to often poor and minority customers not worthy of credit. Yet risky loans were only part of it. Anytime a lending institution wanted to expand or merge, it had to show it has complied with these community redevelopment measures. Approval could easily be held up by complaints filed by groups like ACORN. Intimidation tactics, public charges of racism to block business expansion have enabled ACORN to shakedown hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and contributions. That’s no big deal. Twice this year Congress has earmarked taxpayer money to ACORN.

So now we have a financial crisis with earnest Americans losing their jobs and life savings due to Democrat machine politics and Republican timidity. The price of political correctness may be a socialist takeover of our country. This is not about race or racism. It is about what is right and what is wrong. It is about an American way of life that may soon be gone by way of mob psychology.

What deserves greater scrutiny is Barack Obama’s history with ACORN. He was the attorney representing ACORN when they pushed the Clinton Administration to expand the CRA. He served on the board of the Woods Fund with William Ayers when they gave ACORN funding grants. Obama’s hands are dirty with ACORN, and his involvement needs to be accounted for. Of course, his silence on his past associations while running for president plays us all for fools.

Constitutionally minded people must stand and fight this takeover if we wish to preserve our capitalist free-enterprise way of life. It starts now and it starts with each of us. And it is not over on November 4 no matter who is elected. This struggle for our way of life will go on for years to come.

Jeff Lukens is a Staff Writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc., a non-profit (501c3) coalition of writers and grass-roots media outlets. He can be contacted at www.jefflukens.com

By Jeff Lukens

Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August marked a return to their historic pattern of imperial conquest. Without confronting NATO directly, Vladimir Putin signaled he intends to keep Georgia and Ukraine in Russia’s sphere of influence, and keep them from joining NATO. Putin can now bully other Eastern European countries as well to sway their policies away from the West and toward Russia. If any of these countries fail to comply, the implied message is they can expect a fate similar to Georgia.

The European Union gets more that a quarter of its oil from Russia, and the pipeline through Georgia is the only oil from the Caspian oil fields not controlled by Russia or Iran. Putin now is able to shut it down anytime he wants to.

The attack on Georgia also exposed a dangerous overextension of NATO forces in Eastern Europe, and United States forces around the world. Power abhors a vacuum, and when there is any uncertainty about it in the Kremlin, instability follows. Putin has proven Russia will brutally fill any power void around them. NATO needs to reexamine its long-term strategic purpose, and determine what it should do about a newly aggressive and revitalized Russia.

There are two compelling sides to the debate over what to do. One line of reasoning says we should promote democracies everywhere, and holds that Russia must face the consequences for its actions. Naked aggression will happen again if unanswered. If Russia wants to act like the USSR, then NATO should treat it as it treated the USSR. For the alliance to cave now would only heighten the possibility of armed conflict later. Promoting democracy would ultimately mean supporting NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine. If we offer them membership, however, we must be prepared to defend them. And this we are not able to do.

The other line of thinking says we should recognize the Russian sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, and not tread on their turf. NATO has already committed more to the region than it is prepared to support. No one wants to go to war over Georgia or Ukraine, and the US cannot confront the Russians alone.

While Russia’s neighbors worry about the renewed threat, Western Europe, and Germany especially, care more about their oil. Eastern Europe has been under the Russian domination before and has no intention on going back to it again. This makes for a divide in NATO that is quite literally big enough to drive a tank through – which of course Putin is not above doing. This political fissure could ultimately unravel the alliance.

NATO served its purpose well until the collapse of the Soviet Union. But unlike the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia is currently flush with cash. With a declining population and a single source economy, Putin apparently believes he needs to act now because time is not on his side. He knows the US is overextended in the Middle East, and now is the time to reassert Russian dominance in Eastern Europe before the US can capably respond.

Besides attacking Georgia, Putin has threatened to dismember large portions of Ukraine if it joins NATO. Even if Georgia had been a member of NATO, it is questionable whether any ally in Western Europe would have been willing to fight for them. As NATO has expanded its boundaries toward the Russian border, the military power that backs the alliance has become more diluted and less likely to honor its commitments. The alliance has written checks it is not able to cash.

The Baltic States present a special problem. These former Soviet republics all have large Russian populations within their borders. If Russia brings its armies to the borders of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, would anyone in NATO send troops there to honor the alliance’s guarantees? Possibly not. And definitely it would not in the numbers necessary to turn back an invasion.

In 1914, a series of misunderstandings and miscalculations that started in the Balkans lead to World War One. A similar set of misunderstandings and miscalculations may be awaiting us in the Baltics. With these countries already members of NATO, such uncertainty before a confrontive Russia could escalate into a larger war with the West.

Another piece on Putin’s chessboard is Iran. He knows the US wants out of Iraq, and to do so completely we will need to contain Iran. The US needs Russian support for economic sanctions to work against Teheran, which sets the stage for Putin to offer up a deal: The US gets its way with Iran in exchange for Russian domination of Georgia and Ukraine. It may be an offer we find hard to refuse.

The only diplomatic leverage we can exact on Russia now is to exclude them from the WTO, the G-8, and other international economic organizations, and such actions take time to work. And while the threat of exclusion is of no major concern to Putin, the flight of capital from the West is already exacting a toll in Russian financial markets as nervous investors pull back.

Global financial markets have punished Russia much more quickly than any diplomatic sanctions ever could. And the economic toll served on Russia has been severe. The RTS stock index in Moscow has fallen by more than half since May. The exodus of foreign capitol and the collapse of domestic credit have transformed the mood in Moscow from boldness to dismay. Putin is unlikely to reverse course, however, unless he is forced to by a collapse in the price of oil.

From any rational standpoint, the need for the US to more fully develop its petroleum resources has never been clearer. More immediately, some vital decisions need to be made about NATO’s future. By drawing clear lines between Russia and NATO, we can help stabilize the region. NATO must be firm with Russia about its respect for rules in dealing with other countries, or accept the position that Russian aggression is the price it must pay to keep oil flowing to Europe.

Russia’s attack on Georgia was not an isolated event. Their historic pattern of conquest will not go away because we wish it away. The events in August marked the return of geopolitics as it has been played since the dawn of civilization.

We cannot just say that NATO must adjust to new realities or fade away into irrelevancy. We may soon discover a greater danger lies in security promises made to Eastern European states that we cannot militarily support, which Putin misreads, and then becomes a major war. NATO must show commitment and clarity of purpose to prevent such a catastrophe.

By Jeff Lukens

The war in Iraq may be ending in much the same way the war in Vietnam appeared to be ending in 1973 with the signing of the Paris Peace Accords. We had finally won in Vietnam, but then lost the peace two years later. The outcome of the 2008 presidential election could determine whether Iraq becomes “another Vietnam” should there be a significant renewal of insurgent activity.

The Left would have us believe we were stuck in Iraq in an endless and unwinnable quagmire like they said we had in Vietnam. That comparison, however, has not held up. While much about the two wars is similar, a key difference was Lyndon Johnson’s muddled strategy in Vietnam compared with George W. Bush’s winning strategy in Iraq.

In 1965, Johnson should have decided either to win the war quickly or to pull U.S. forces out and go home. Instead, he chose a middle road that resulted in a series of “measured responses” and troop escalations that lead to a debacle. One measured response Johnson employed was restrictive rules of engagement. Barry Goldwater identified a few in his autobiography:

“American pilots were not permitted to attack North Vietnamese MIGs sitting on the runway. It could only be attacked when it was flying and showed “hostile intent.” . . . SAM missile sites and supporting radar could not be struck while under construction, only after they became operational and actually fired at U.S. aircraft.”

And on and on they went. Not surprisingly, North Vietnamese aggressiveness increased in direct proportion to our restraint resulting in many needless U.S. casualties. It is an ironic fact that the threat of swift and effective military action is one of the best ways to insure peace. A quick and decisive war, moreover, will result in far fewer casualties for both sides than one that drags on for years.

If Johnson was serious about winning, he should have made that clear early on. Goldwater believed LBJ should have publicly stated what he intended to do if the North Vietnamese continued to wage war against the South. That probably would have meant the threat of destroying their factories, ports, dikes, and infrastructure. Such an attack would have to have been launched when we were still a credible adversary, and not years later when our resolve was clearly fading.

When any president goes to war, he has a limited amount of time to win it before the people grow weary and want out. By March 1968, that time had come for LBJ.

Contrary to the media’s portrayal of an endless unwinnable war in Vietnam, however, we virtually annihilated the Viet Cong during the Tet Offensive. In a matter of weeks, Ho Chí Minh effectively lost the “people’s war” by solidifying the South against him. That year, it also became apparent that a negotiated settlement was perhaps the best outcome we could hope for in Vietnam. To reach that end, however, several difficult years of building up South Vietnamese forces would lay ahead. Richard Nixon’s Vietnamization policy was designed to achieve just that, and proved to be successful.

Only after determined South Vietnamese resistance against the 1972 offensive, and twelve consecutive days of devastating B-52 air strikes on North Vietnam did Hanoi move toward a genuine peace agreement. As part of the deal, we agreed to be the enforcer of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords. But when North Vietnamese violations occurred, antiwar liberals in Congress prevented us from fulfilling our commitments to the treaty.

Congress cut funding and slowly starved South Vietnam of the supplies they needed to defend themselves. The Soviets, meanwhile, continued to pump arms into the North. Public apathy, a scandalized president and a liberal Congress gave up all for which we had struggled. The U.S. effectively abandoned Southeast Asia, and the North Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge moved in – with horrific results. And in doing so, we betrayed our trusted allies and our own good name.

In both Vietnam and Iraq, our cause was just. A valid debate continues on whether we should have fought either one of them. But it must be acknowledged that once we are committed to war the only acceptable way out is victory. Bush may have been unprepared for the insurgency that followed his initial success, but we always knew he would ultimately do whatever was necessary it win. For more than five years he has been able to maintain Congressional funding and public support and to achieve success.

Unlike Johnson in Vietnam, George W. Bush clearly warned Saddam Hussein of the consequences of not abiding by UN resolutions. Saddam ignored them, and was crushed within days of the start of the war. Our early aggressiveness in the war was a principle reason casualties in Iraq were so much lower than they were in Vietnam.

The effectiveness of Iraqi soldiers and police were agonizingly inept in the early days, but they eventually improved. The “Anbar Awakening” and the counterinsurgency surge strategy were major turning points in the war. Today, Iraqis are taking over security of their country.

The media’s cries of “another Vietnam” started even before Baghdad fell, and increased as the insurgency took hold. Their “objective reporting” served mostly to encourage the terrorists in Iraq and to discourage the American people. Their misrepresentations ended only when the success of the surge became unmistakable to even a causal observer.

We would have lost Iraq by now if not for Bush’s stubborn insistence that losing was not an option. When the media and most of the political establishment were united against him, he found a way to win.

A decade after his presidency, Nixon wrote: “‘No More Vietnams’ can mean we will not try again. It should mean we will not fail again.”

To avoid future Vietnams, we must swiftly win on the battlefield and then maintain the peace afterward. Keeping the peace especially applies now to Iraq and the 2008 elections. One for the first decisions the new president will make is to determine what circumstances we will withdraw for Iraq. Any perception that jihadist forces drove the U.S. out of Iraq in defeat will have a huge destabilizing effect in Iraq and in the region.

Should insurgent activity return to Iraq in a major way, we can be reasonably assured John McCain will do what is necessary to overcome it. With McCain, we can be confident the U.S. will leave Iraq honorably.

On the other hand, Barack Obama’s many contrary and incoherent statements about Iraq reassure no one about our ultimate success there, and essentially invites our enemies to return. His failure to even admit the surge has worked raises doubts about his fitness to be president. With Obama, we can only wonder how long a recurrence of insurgency would continue before he would abandon the Iraqis and condemn them to “another Vietnam.”

By Jeff Lukens

They say if it bleeds, it leads on the nightly news. The recent silence from the mainstream news media on Iraq, however, is speaking volumes. While the war remains unpopular, our success there has been unmistakable. The Iraqi people, with the help of the U.S. led coalition, have succeeded in establishing the world’s first Arab democracy. Their achievement is a milestone in the war on terror and for the cause of liberty.

Beyond the Iraqi Constitution and the elections, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has emerged as the true leader of the governing coalition. He has battled and won against fellow Shiite and problem child Muqtada al-Sadr and his militia. The Sunni, Shiite and Kurd people work together in a national Iraqi Army. Together, they are taking their county back from the foreign insurgents that have invaded their homeland. Iraqi troops took the lead in clearing Basra and Sadr City, and are now finishing off the insurgent remnants.

No one likes to go to war, but even an elective war is sometimes necessary. With all the consternation these past years, President Bush may finally be able to say “Mission Accomplished” to what he originally set out to do.

This we know, Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction. He even gassed his own Kurd and Shiite populations in the 1980s. What happened to those chemical weapons? Who knows? Whether they buried them in the ground somewhere or trucked off to Syria, we had every reason to believe he had them.

In the months leading up to the war, Saddam acted as if he were hiding a nuclear program by obstructing UN inspectors visiting his installations. We have since concluded that his nuclear program was still in its infancy, but we could not have known that then. Saddam’s power was in his bluff, but his bluff was called.

Following 9/11, we had to show we meant business in the fight on terror. Afghanistan fell quickly, but it was a sideshow. Look at any map of the Middle East and smack in the middle of it is Iraq. Think about it, if we could flip Iraq form a dictatorial state that sponsored terrorism to a democratic republic, there would be profound implications throughout the region. When most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi, we needed to show Saudi Arabia, as much as anyone, our resolve. Regime change in Iraq was militarily and politically feasible, so Iraq was where Bush chose to make his move.

Saddam fell quickly too, but the subsequent insurgency dragged on for another five years. Though our casualties have been mercifully low, the political angst against Bush has grown virulent. Maybe Bush could have handled the occupation better, and the war should have been over more quickly, but our reason to go there was strategically sound. Bush made the proper decision with the urgency of 9/11 still fresh, and with the information available to him at that time.

In the early years of the Civil War, Lincoln lost battle after battle with a revolving door of generals who could not or would not fight Robert E. Lee. Lincoln finally found his general with Ulysses S. Grant who took after Lee’s army and ground it down.

Bush had a similar problem with Don Rumsfeld and generals who would not adapt to insurgents who did not wear uniforms and hid among the people. Bush finally replaced Rumsfeld and found his Generals in David Petraeus and Ray Odierno. The counterinsurgency strategy they employed made quick work of our enemies in Iraq.

Back in the U.S., however, liberal opposition to the war has at times reached hysterical levels and threatened to unravel all that we sought to achieve. Some things do not change. They have been acting this way since our days in Vietnam. And like our experience there, instead of finding ways to win they sought the worst possible outcome by unilateral surrender.

Liberals have never considered Bush a legitimate president. They have never gotten over the myth that the 2000 election was stolen. For them, Bush’s decision to enter into an elective war that took longer than expected was just too much. His presidency is too emotional a subject for them, and reasoning with them about any aspect of it has become nearly impossible. But for anyone who still cares and is willing to listen, what we are seeing in Iraq today is exactly what we set out to accomplish from the beginning — establish a beachhead for democracy in the Middle East.

Before the war, state sponsors of terrorism in the Middle East were Iran, Syria, Libya and Iraq. Today, only Iran and Syria remain — with a democratic Iraq located between them. And in the information age, don’t believe for a moment that the infectious seeds of freedom are not being sown in those countries and throughout the region. The promise of freedom for the oppressed is America’s greatest strategic weapon in this war. In due time, tyrants in those countries may come to fear their own people more than any army that may threaten them.

We must remember that the struggle in Iraq is only one campaign in the larger global war on terror. History will intimately judge, but yes, early indications are that President Bush’s victory was a worthy step in that overall goal.

Radical Islam is at war with the civilized world because of our tolerant values toward women, different lifestyles and different religions. For Americans, understanding the threat posed by this enemy, finding ways to triumph over them, and mobilizing public opinion to support that effort remain as challenges for the years ahead.

By Jeff Lukens

As the leader of the free world, the United States has a responsibility to lead. This has been our reality as a nation since the 1940s. As such, we need a well-funded military. Today, however, our military forces are desperately in need of recapitalization and modernization. We have been on a “procurement holiday” since the end of the Cold War, and catching up will be expensive.

During the 1980s, the active duty Army had 18 combat divisions. Since 1994, there have been only ten. In that same time, the number of tactical air wings in the Air Force has fallen from 37 to 20; and the Navy has been reduced from 600 ships to less than 300 today.

Our defense budget hit a postwar high of 14.2% of GDP in 1953 during the Korean War. At the height of Vietnam in 1968, it was 9.5%, and it was 6.8% in 1986 at the height of the Reagan buildup. In 2000, defense spending reached the lowest point on 3.0%. Today, seven years into the Global War on Terror, we are still spending a paltry 3.7% of GDP on defense.

Our procurement needs will, if anything, grow in the years ahead. For example, our primary air-supremacy jet, the F-15, is old, metal-fatigued, and coming apart. Stress cracks from age and overuse are causing them to crash. Many were built before the pilots flying them were even born. Now, one-third of all F-15s are either grounded or headed to the scrap yard.

The Air Force consists of roughly 6,000 aircraft, and is replacing approximately 60 piloted aircraft per year. You don’t need to be a math wiz to figure out that it will take 100 years at that rate to modernize our air fleet.

The need for increased military funding, however, does not stop there. Long term, we may need to station 30 to 50 thousand troops in Iraq as we have done in Germany, Japan and Korea. Yes, we are going to be there a long time, and it is vitally necessary no matter what Democrats are saying. When a quarter of the world oil flows through the Persian Gulf, we need to be there to take care of business when things go haywire.

The entire world economy rests precariously on the flow of oil out of that region. That part of the world is already a hotbed for extremism, and Russia and China are meddling there too. Deploying troops overseas in large numbers is expensive, but it is vitally necessary we have a presence there. Moreover, we need a larger Army to ease the deployments of individual soldiers to manageable levels.

Iran in particular is a problem that no one wants to face, but hasn’t gone away. Contrary to last year’s National Intelligence Estimate, Iran did not stop its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Instead, they are working overtime to make a nuke, and when they have one their tone will noticeably change. Tehran will then be able to threaten its neighbors, including Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Iraq, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may finally be able to carry out his promise to annihilate Israel.

With our commitments around the globe and the rising strength of would be adversaries, our Navy could soon be stretched beyond its capability as well. Trans-Pacific trade surpassed trans-Atlantic trade in the 1990s, and will continue to grow in the years ahead. US Naval strength is essential along key trade routes to keep world peace.

The Asian export powers - China, Japan and South Korea - all are among the top economies in the world. In each case, however, their dependence on energy and other raw material imports, and access to overseas markets for their exports, have grown beyond their military reach. The need for secure resources and market access drive them, and especially China, away from their natural inward focus toward a more proactive international involvement.

And, still, our military challenges keep coming. Russia may be slipping back to the bad old days of the USSR. Washington’s challenge, in sum, is to transition our alliances and military capability to meet these ever-changing economic realities and military threats of the 21st Century. One thing for sure, current budget limitations severely restrict the Pentagon in meeting these needs.

The United States will be hard pressed to make up the lack of funding of its military since the end of the Cold War. With the growing pressure of entitlement spending on the federal budget in the years ahead, restoring military funding to adequate levels becomes an even greater challenge.

Naturally, our resources are limited and must be used wisely. Although our NATO allies would rather push responsibilities off on us, perhaps we should step back in places like Kosovo and other places in Europe. The Cold War is over and they can handle these places for themselves.

Korea is probably another place that needs a plan for a drawdown of ground troops as well. In recent years, Korean defense policy and capability has seen a significant shift with South Korean forces taking a larger role in defense of their peninsula.

Perhaps the current economic stimulus check we are receiving courtesy or the US Treasury should be spent for more ships, planes, and tanks – and for more troops. At least then, our country would have something to show for it. But such is the lack of foresight in Washington. Seeking votes long ago replaced responsible governance for most politicians.

When we inadequately fund our military, we plant the seeds of future conflict. Strength begets peace just as weakness begets war by would-be aggressors. When the inevitable crisis comes, we may be forced to pay in blood and treasure many times over what we could have paid today with sufficient military funding.