The United States: A Nation of Prayer and Hope

Adapted from essays written by John Carey and published in The Washington Times

We Americans don’t discuss hope much. Hope, it seems, is for sissies. Americans like action: like John Wayne kicking in the bad guy’s door, six-shooter in hand.

And some people shy away from discussing hope because the concept of hope puts one on the road to prayer and this, WE KNOW, is taboo to a segment of the world’s population.

But there is a day, every four years, when Americans celebrate hope. And that day is Inauguration Day.

And we listen to our elected president’s words. We judge our president-elect by these, his first words, as our commander in chief.

In history, there are many themes that seem to resonate through the inaugural addresses. Education, poverty, crime, war, and peace all appear over and over in inauguration day speeches. But the importance of God’s guidance and the wonderful goodness of hope permeates many of the great American inaugural addresses.

We should not be surprised that many presidents invoke the name of God, maybe even offer a prayer themselves for the success of the nation (and their presidency?), and offer us hope at the inauguration. Their task is looming large; their support sometimes fleeting. One might wonder at the overconfident man in such a difficult situation. Normal men ask for God’s help and offer us all a hopeful vision of the future.

On January 20, 1961, President John F. Kennedy said, “Let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.” He asked us to answer a “call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, ‘rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation’ –a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.”

On another January 20, in 1969, Richard M. Nixon reminded us, “Forces now are converging that make possible, for the first time, the hope that many of man’s deepest aspirations can at last be realized.” He also said, “We see the hope of tomorrow in the youth of today.”

President Lincoln, in his second inaugural, looked with hope at the end of the Civil War. “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and for his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Lincoln delivered these words on March 4, 1865. Just one month and 10 days after he delivered this speech, on April 14, Lincoln was assassinated.

President Eisenhower evoked hope. On January 20, 1953, he reminded the nation that “we view our Nation’s strength and security as a trust upon which rests the hope of free men everywhere.”

President James A. Garfield suggested a halt in the march of mankind, just for a moment, to reflect upon the importance of hope. In his March 4, 1881 inaugural, he said, “Before continuing the onward march let us pause on this height for a moment to strengthen our faith and renew our hope by a glance at the pathway along which our people have traveled.”

Inauguration day is a day of hope and prayer. No other day in American life is so steeped in prayer. No other day in the American calendar so often reverberates with the theme of hope.

Oh, many moments in American life begin with prayer: including the opening of House and Senate sessions in the capitol. But at our inaugurations, one can feel the sincerity of men thrust into the maelstrom. Greater Washington seems to become a great cathedral of hope and prayer: before it immediately returns to a nation that separates church and state.

What, exactly, is hope? You can’t buy anything with it and nobody can prove that it helps you in life. So what is hope?

Hope is an amputee veteran of the war in Iraq who wants to learn to ski. Hope is the cancer victim who won’t give in. Hope keeps the terminally ill calm and the pinned- down platoon together. Hope is the antithesis of despair, the enemy of our darkest fears.

Hope and prayer drive my friend in South Carolina to fight his multiple sclerosis.

Hope is one of those emotions unique to mankind. It sometimes defies reason and fights off evil thoughts of surrender.

Prayer goes hand-in-hand with hope; and America was founded by men deeply governed by their hope and prayer and belief in God.

The Founding Fathers established the United States, wrote the Declaration of Independence; the Bill of Rights and the Constitution; and created a nation firmly rooted in the belief in God and freedom of religion protected by the separation of church and state.

Many of the Founders and their forefathers fled Europe to escape religious prosecution. They wanted this new nation to allow them freedom of religion and thus the very nation is rooted in a belief in God.

The Declaration of Independence starts this way: “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the Earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

After signing the Declaration of Independence, Samuel Adams, who was called “the firebrand of the American Revolution,” affirmed his obedience to God by stating, “We have this day restored the Sovereign to whom alone men ought to be obedient. From the rising to the setting of the sun, may His kingdom come.”

James Madison, the fourth president, made the following statement, “We have staked the whole of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”

Madison is often referred to as “The Father of Our Constitution.”

When historians at the University of Houston conducted a 10-year study of the ideas that shaped our republic, they found 94 percent of the Founding Fathers’ quotes in 15,000 documents were based on the Bible.”God created all men equal,” one of the most fundamental and important acclamations of our government, became an underlying reason for the Civil War, a fundamental reason for the Emancipation Proclamation and a keynote of equality ever since.

Every president of the United States is sworn into office, by reciting an oath while he has one hand on the Bible. The oath ends, “So help me God.”

Every session of Congress since 1777 commenced with a prayer by a minister paid by the taxpayers.Every military service of the United States pays uniformed religious ministers for the officers and men in service. These ministers are from all faiths that recognize the importance of God in human life. Nearly every base has a chapel.

The Ten Commandments are carved into the doors of the Supreme Court and appear prominently in the court’s chambers.

Every piece of U.S. currency bears the words “In God We Trust.”

In America, you are even free to start your own religion. Nobody (except possibly the Internal Revenue Service) will interfere, so long as you don’t do anything outside the normal bounds of decent behavior.

So, as we all celebrate the blessings of American freedom, justice and government every day, perhaps we should reflect upon the roots and tenets of our democracy. We are not a Godless people. Or are we?

Yes, our democracy is evolving and we are open and accepting to that evolution. But let us not allow the evolution to turn into a careless revolution or even an unintended erosion of the principles by which we live and we are governed.

I am one of those historians that thinks the Founders were pretty smart. Their belief in God, hope and prayer encourages me every day.

And inauguration day is America’s unique day of hope. Whatever the speech, whoever the president-elect: a key player in every inauguration day is bound to be the Almighty and his right hand man: Hope.

Where We Fight al Qaeda

By Clifford D. May
June 24, 2007 

America is at war with al Qaeda — on that surely we can agree — and we know that al Qaeda has bases in Pakistan. In fact, it is probable that Osama bin Laden resides at one of those bases. But we can’t fight al Qaeda in Pakistan because Pakistan is an ally, and America does not violate the territorial integrity of its allies.

Al Qaeda is active in Gaza, according to Egyptian and Jordanian intelligence. Al Qaeda supports Hamas which has just waged a bloody — and successful — civil war against Fatah, its Palestinian rival. But we’re not about to invade Gaza in pursuit of al Qaeda. Even Israel, which withdrew from Gaza two years ago, is not eager to return there. In Lebanon, Fatah al-Islam, which is fighting the Lebanese government, is believed to be linked to al Qaeda. But the last time U.S. troops were in Lebanon, they were attacked by suicide bombers dispatched by Hezbollah, a terrorist organization directed by the regime in Tehran. There is no way the U.S. is going to send troops into Lebanon again.

Groups linked to al Qaeda are in Somalia. We have supported Ethiopian troops fighting there. But a serious effort by Americans against al Qaeda in Somalia seems unlikely.Al Qaeda cells operate in Europe. But it is problematic for American operatives to kill or capture terrorists there: To do so sparks allegations from the “human rights community” and the media about violations of international law, torture and secret prisons. Also, as has happened in Italy, it can lead to criminal prosecutions of Americans thought to be involved. So America’s ability to fight al Qaeda in Europe is limited.

There are probably al Qaeda cells in the U.S. too. One hopes the FBI is monitoring them. But until the members of these cells commit crimes, there is not much that can be done. On what basis could Mohammed Atta, ringmaster of the 9/11/01 hijackers, have been arrested on 9/10/01?What’s more, some judges and legal activists are now insisting that even combatants illegally in the U.S. are entitled to all the rights enjoyed by American citizens. If this view prevails, fighting al Qaeda within the U.S. will become even harder.

That leaves only two places where we know for sure al Qaeda and its associates are operating actively — and very lethally — and where the U.S. can send its best warriors against them with the approval of the local, elected governments. Those places are, of course, Iraq and Afghanistan.But many politicians, looking at polls showing Americans fatigued by a war that was not supposed to be so prolonged or arduous, now favor withdrawing from Iraq — retreating from the battlefield al Qaeda calls the central front in their jihad against us.

And does anyone seriously believe that, after leaving Iraq, we would not soon exit Afghanistan as well? How many suicide bombings of police academies, market places and mosques would be required to get us out — slaughters that the major media will, as usual, blame not on the killers but on the “foreign occupation”? If this is where members of Congress want to go, they ought to be honest about where it leads: Al Qaeda will still be waging a war against us, but we will no longer be waging much of a war against al Qaeda.

To be sure, the war we’ve been fighting is not the war Americans signed up for when President Bush made the decision to enter Iraq four years ago. In the 20th century, international conflicts took the form of great European armies clashing. In the 21st century, Pentagon strategists thought conflicts would consist of short, decisive battles with small, well-trained American forces wielding high-tech weapons to produce “shock and awe” and break the enemies’ will to fight.

Our enemies had other plans. They decided to fight from the shadows — kidnapping, torturing and mass-murdering whatever victims are at hand, relying on key groups in the West to blame the carnage not on them but on us, thereby eroding our will to fight.

Today’s wars, military analyst Tom Donnelly has written, are “like the frontier fighting of the 19th century — in the American West but also in the far-flung outposts of the British Empire … the prime directive for U.S. land forces is neither deployability, nor mobility, nor lethality, but sustainability.”

And right now, sustainability appears to be the capability most lacking — not among America’s troops in the field but among the political classes in Washington. Almost a decade ago, Osama bin Laden said that Americans were “unprepared to fight long wars.” Secure in his Pakistani redoubt, he must be pleased that his analysis is proving so uncannily accurate.

Clifford D. May is natioanally syndicated and president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focused on terrorism.

Human Toll of Legal Immigration Hardened Our Hearts a Bit to Illegals (and Congress)

Immigration, the Human Cost of Obeying the Rules, and Now Those that Don’t

By John E. Carey
Peace and Freedom
June 18, 2007

A wonderful thing happened in my mid-life when I met and fell in love with a woman stamped with the word “refugee” by the United States, the United Nations and other nations.

But if you are thinking she’s starving, clothes torn, ready to commit any crime to get into the United States or to get ahead in any way you’d be mistaken.

My bride started to run from an oppressive communist Vietnam in 1975 when she gave her seat up to another in a boat about to leave Vietnam. She was put in jail several times as she tried to escape again. It was illegal to flee Vietnam.  Finally she found a boat to take her out — after 1980 — and she spent more than three weeks at sea without food, water or boat propulsion. Four people died.

 

Lien Do earlier this year at the
Smithsonian Museum’s Vietnamese-
American Exhibit.
******************

Then, what you would think was salvation, they reach the Philippines and washed ashore. She was detained in a “camp” with hundreds of other refugees. This lasted for eight years. Then the good government of the Philippines sent her back to Vietnam: where she had no papers and was an enemy of the state for escaping successfully.

Where do I go yto get this woman back more than two decades of her life?  There is no place.  Instead she stood on lines for what seemed like two more years and became a citizen of the United states.  The first time she asked me for anything she wanted to go to a holy shrine to give thanks.

She arrived in the United States, completely legally, in 1998. She has since become a citizen, worked nearly every day since her arrive in the U.S., and she now owns and operates her own business.

It hasn’t been easy. No corners were cut and no laws broken. And to my knowledge, she hasn’t had help or assistance from anyone. This is the American Dream with many similarities that my Irish ancestors on both sides of the family would recognize.

She is now an American citizen doing what we all do: paying bills on time and making car payments.

Just last week I met a man from Afghanistan. His tale was not unlike my wife’s. he fled the Russian occupation which was followed by civil war. He spent a few years in Pakistan and then Kuwait. He gave his children Arabic names because he had lived among the Arabs for so long. After a years-long wait, he was admitted to the U.S.

I ask the Congress how we should feel once a torrent of illegal immigrants are approved to stay? What was the incentive to go through a wickedly tortuous journey including the government bureaucracy to get here, process through and become legal?

Victims of Communism Memorial
on June 12, 2007, Washington D.C.

***********************

Long waits, onerous rules invite immigrants to break law

Editorial
USA Today
June 18, 2007

In 1989, Mohamad Abdo and his family, living in Lebanon, took their first step toward a dream of living in the USA. A relative, already here, petitioned for the family to join him.

Then they all waited. And waited and waited.

First came the inevitable delay caused by quotas that limit family immigration. Ten years passed before they even got permission to apply for visas.

Then the real frustrations started. For the next four years, they lived a paperwork nightmare as their application bounced around the immigration bureaucracy. In 2003, the Abdos finally were told they could come to the USA as permanent residents, with just one catch: Their eldest son, Raed, who was 8 years old when the process began, would have to stay behind. Because he had just turned 21, he no longer qualified to immigrate with them as a minor.

Welcome to the legal immigration system – a Byzantine world of bureaucratic bungling and unconscionable waits for those who try to play by the rules.

Unless you have a relative here, or a job waiting for you, or you’re granted political asylum, there’s virtually no legal way in. And if you do have a connection, you’ll probably wait for a long, long time. Some people have stood on line for more than 20 years.

Small wonder so many people just skip the process and enter the country illegally, or come here on temporary visas and then stay. For all the screaming about illegal immigration, now focused on a bill in the U.S. Senate, the truth is that legal immigration is so difficult that it gives normally law-abiding people potent incentives to cheat. No immigration reform will work unless that changes.

Of those who choose the legal route, by far the largest group is people such as the Abdos, who have relatives here. At the moment, the waiting list is more than 4 million people long, allocated by country.

The Senate compromise attempts to deal with this by promising to clear the backlog within eight years. Until then, no green cards would be given to people now here illegally.

That’s not entirely fair. It’s still a long wait, and in the interim, immigrants here illegally could get safe harbor while those seeking legal entry wait outside. But it’s at least a start. The 12 million people here illegally aren’t going to be rounded up and deported in any case.

The Senate could do better, though. The bill fails to address the nonsensical age-21 glitch leaving Abdo and his family in Memphis and his now-adult son in war-torn Lebanon.

More broadly, it does nothing to help legal residents bring their children and spouses here more quickly, which is heartless. Nuclear families should be able to stay together.

An even larger question is whether the glacial immigration system is capable of trimming the backlog. The money is supposed to come later.

As Congress tries to fix the immigration mess, it needs to remember that any system of legal immigration as onerous and time-consuming as the current one is doomed to undermine respect for the law and encourage even greater levels of illegal immigration. And that people such as the Abdos, who’ve followed the rules, deserve fair treatment and an opportunity to realize their dreams.

This is the fourth in an occasional series of editorials about this year’s immigration debate. View the previous editorials at blogs.usatoday.com/oped/immigration_editorial.

Vote of No Confidence: Is this Congress or Parliament?

By Paul Greenberg
The Washington Times
June 18, 2007

Where do these people think they are, the House of Commons? The other day the U.S. Senate, sometimes laughingly referred to as the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body, considered a motion of no confidence in the country’s attorney general.
    
To what end? There is no constitutional provision for a vote of no confidence. It’s a parliamentary, not congressional, maneuver. And should remain so. Let’s leave it to the Brits — like cricket, haggis and toad-in-a-hole.
    
In a parliamentary system, a government that loses a vote of no confidence is toppled and may even have to face new elections. Here our chief executive serves for a fixed term — four years, for all you civics students out there — and the members of his Cabinet, including the attorney general, and, yes, all those federal prosecutors who just got fired, serve at his pleasure. Not at the pleasure of the U.S. Senate. So what was the point of this motion of no confidence? The short answer: none at all.
    
The news stories kept referring to the vote as “symbolic.” It would have been a way to signal the Senate’s displeasure with the current attorney general. A particularly pretentious way. Like putting on an English accent. Like the ones you hear these days on tonier office receptionists and National Public Radio. Trendy bunch, these senators.

Andrew Jackson

Why not just pass a good ol’, all-American resolution of censure? That’s what the Whigs did to Andrew Jackson — before the Jacksonians came back in the next election and expunged the resolution from the Senate journal in a boisterous ceremony. Resolutions of censure can backfire. 
    
Even if this vote of no confidence had passed — instead, it failed to garner the 60 votes required to proceed — the effect would have been the same: nothing at all. Symbolic votes are just that, only symbolic.
    
It’s the president of the United States, one George W. Bush, who gets to pick the members of his Cabinet, including the attorney general. Here’s what he had to say about the Senate’s action, or lack of same, last week: “They can have their votes of no confidence, but it isn’t going to make the determination about who serves in my government.”
    
Linguistic note: In his typical (awful) way with words, the president tends to use the terms administration and government interchangeably, but that’s a whole other problem. The problem with the Senate is that it seems to have confused itself with a European parliament.
    
There is no shortage of paeans to the Constitution of the United States in senatorial speeches, but any senators who think it contains a provision for a vote of no confidence might need to study it some more. Some senators seem to think it’s their confidence in a Cabinet officer — or lack of it — that should determine whether he continues to serve. They are, to put it mildly, dead wrong.

Alberto R. Gonzales

No doubt about it, Alberto Gonzales wouldn’t win any popularity contests in the U.S. Senate — or in the country. For that matter, neither would Mr. Bush. But maybe that’s one reason the Founders settled on a fixed term for the president, so that the executive branch wouldn’t come to resemble a revolving door, with its chief officials leaving office whenever their popularity waned. The Founders took pains to separate the executive and legislative branches of government, rather than allow one to dismantle the other.

Trent Lott

Here is what Sen. Trent Lott, Mississippi Republican, told his colleagues as they solemnly debated a parliamentary vote of no confidence: “This is a nonbinding, irrelevant resolution proving what? Nothing.” And then he added: “Maybe we should be considering a vote of no confidence on the Senate or in the Congress for malfunction and an inability to produce anything.” A decent immigration bill, for example.
    
Expressions of no confidence, like resolutions of censure, can backfire. And at last report, Congress was doing even more poorly than the president in the polls. The Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll just found Congress’ approval rating had fallen “to its lowest level in more than a decade” — 27 percent, down from 36 percent in January. Compare that showing with the president’s 34 percent approval rating, which is no great shakes, either, but it’s better than Congress’.
    
Yet the Senate is inviting a constitutional confrontation with the executive branch by issuing subpoenas for former White House officials like presidential counsel Harriet Miers and political director Sara Taylor — the kind of subpoenas a long list of presidents from Thomas Jefferson to Harry Truman have stoutly resisted. And for good reason. For the power to subpoena is the power to destroy, and once the executive branch submits to such inquisitions, its independence is compromised. It becomes answerable to the legislative branch, which is not how America’s system is supposed to work — as opposed to a parliamentary system.

Harry S. Truman

No wonder the American people are losing confidence in this Congress.
    
Paul Greenberg is a nationally syndicated columnist.

Reid adjusts antiwar strategy

By S.A. Miller
The Washington Times
June 15, 2007  

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has refocused his antiwar crusade as his and Congress’ job-approval ratings plummet to all-time lows.
    
Mr. Reid began the week Monday by vowing to “push very, very hard” for troop withdrawal from Iraq in a Defense Department budget authorization bill in two weeks.

    
The next day — as the Senate began work on the energy bill and tried to revive immigration legislation — the Nevada Democrat and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California sent a letter to the White House imploring the president to heed the Democrat-led Congress’ call for a pullout.
    
That same day, Mr. Reid railed against the war and U.S. military leaders in a conference call with a group of liberal bloggers.
    
And yesterday, he said the Pentagon’s quarterly report on Iraq shows that President Bush’s war strategy is not working.
    
“Attacks on U.S. forces are up, not down,” said Mr. Reid, who with Mrs. Pelosi last month capitulated to Mr. Bush’s demand for a war-funding bill without a troop-withdrawal timetable.
    
The spate of antiwar activity by Mr. Reid follows a drop in the Senate leader’s poll numbers and coincides with the start of the “Iraq summer” antiwar campaign.

The Americans Against Escalation in Iraq — an umbrella group of liberal organizations including MoveOn.org and the Center for American Progress Action Fund — will target Republican lawmakers in 15 states “from Nevada to Maine.”
    
Voters say Democrats failed to deliver on promised changes, especially with the war in Iraq, which helped them win control of Congress in the midterm elections, said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute in Hamden, Conn.
    
“The war is still going on, which is a reason many of them voted Democrat,” he said. “Voters want results, and this indicates they are not liking so far what they are getting.” 

Just 19 percent of voters nationwide had a favorable opinion of Mr. Reid in a Rasmussen Reports survey conducted last weekend — down from 26 percent a month ago and still lower than Mr. Bush’s 35 percent favorable rating. Congress’ job-approval rating also is tanking, down to a 23 percent in polls this week by NBC/Wall Street Journal and Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
    
Mr. Reid’s early return to the war debate signals to the party’s antiwar base that it still tops the agenda, a Democratic leadership aide said.
    
“That’s what the base is demanding,” the aide said.

Earlier this week, Mr. Reid acknowledged dissatisfaction among opponents of the Iraq war.
    
“I certainly understand how they feel,” Mr. Reid said.
    
“When we were able to get a [troop-withdrawal] bill passed — the president vetoed it — that raised everyone’s expectations,” he said. “But I say this: On Iraq, we are going to hold the president’s feet to the fire.”
    
Mr. Reid yesterday praised the Bush administration’s decision not to renominate Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
    
“He was never as candid as he should have been about the conduct and progress of this war,” Mr. Reid said.
    
White House spokesman Tony Snow questioned why the majority leader would impugn the integrity of a general who had “demonstrated to us to be straightforward with the American people.”
    
“There used to be a tradition that partisanship stopped at the water’s edge in a time of war,” Mr. Snow said.
    
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, strongly disagreed with Mr. Reid’s characterization that the general lied about the war, McConnell spokesman Don Stewart said.
    
He noted that Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, said Sunday that he would have voted to confirm Gen. Pace to a second term. 
    

O.K., Which Is It? The Many Takes on the Pentagon’s Assessment of China’s Military Build-Up

By John E. Carey
Peace and Freedom
May 27, 2007

The U.S. Congress requires the Department of Defense to annually assess and report on the status of China’s military.

Each year this report garners more than its share of discussion and controversy. This year, however, more than most, the news reports surrounding the Pentagon’s report on China’s military make one wonder, “What really is ground truth?”

Officially it is the “Annual Report to Congress, Military Power of the People’s Republic of China 2007.”  One of the first media reports on the document came from Bill Gertz of The Washington Times.

I have known Bill Gertz for perhaps 15 years. He is a true professional at evaluating Pentagon documents, meanings and intentions. Pentagon insiders frequently take him into their confidence. It is not entirely unknown for Gertz to practically quote from secret Pentagon documents.

Under the headline “Pentagon details China’s new military strategies,” on May 25, 2007, Mr. Gertz wrote, “China’s military buildup is moving beyond countering Taiwan to global operations from the Middle East through Southeast Asia, according to the Pentagon’s annual assessment of Chinese military power.”

This article continued with, “The statement, released yesterday, contradicts assessments of some pro-China analysts and intelligence officials who have said the nation’s military buildup is relatively benign and limited to resolving the sovereignty issue of Taiwan, which was separated from China in 1949 during a civil war.”

The next day (May 26) Mr. Gertz wrote under the headline “Pentagon tracks global buildup in China’s military.”

In the two articles Mr. Gertz documented several areas of Chinese activity of concern to the Pentagon. These included China’s recent destruction of a satellite in space with anti-satellite (ASAT) capability and China’s aggressive hacking and intrusion attempts into U.S. military computer systems.

In stark contrast to Mr. Gertz’s reports, Foster Klug of the Associated Press took practically the opposite approach under the headline “U.S.: China lacks power for Taiwan fight.” Mr. Klug wrote, “The Pentagon is warning China in blunt language that despite Beijing’s massive military buildup, it lacks the power for a successful attack against rival Taiwan.”

Meanwhile, China’s state controlled People’s Daily editorial staff writer Xi Laiwang said “China maintains a certain level of military strength out of an objective need for self defense, which is proper in order to safeguard its national security and territorial integrity and does not pose a threat to any country.”

So which is it? Is China an emerging global super power or an ineffective military power unable to overcome its neighbor Taiwan? Or is China, as Xi Laiwang says, merely maintaining a force sufficient for self defense?

Only one thing is agreed by most analysts. As Mr. Klug wrote, China is engaged in a “massive military buildup.” The question is, for what purpose and how effective can it quickly influence world events?

Pentagon details China’s new military strategies

Pentagon tracks global buildup in China’s military

U.S.: China lacks power for Taiwan fight

China: U.S. exaggerating military threat

Read:
“Annual Report to Congress, Military Power of the People’s Republic of China 2007″
http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/pdfs/070523-China-Military-Power-final.pdf

Economic situation:

World Economies: China comes into view around almost every corner

Chinese-made Hongqi-2 missile on display at the Military Museum in Beijing. (AFP/File/Frederic J Brown)

UnAmerican ACLU: Aggression against military memorials

By Paul A. Morin
The Washington Times
May 27, 2007

If you think the American Civil Liberties Union’s interest in removing memorial markers from military cemeteries and other treasured locations is simply a matter of clarifying church-state jurisdictions … you’re gravely mistaken.
    
On Mount Soledad, overlooking San Diego, crosses of one kind or another have stood since 1913. The current edition, erected in 1954, was designed as a memorial to Korean War veterans. For more than 75 years, no one complained, and the cross became a treasured landmark to most of the San Diego community.
    
Then, in 1989, one atheist decided the cross on the hill offended him, and the ACLU hurried to his aid, waving the so-called “separation of church and state” doctrine.
    
Almost 20 years later — despite the outspoken wishes of the great majority of San Diego citizens and the deliberate protections of the U.S. Congress, the ACLU doggedly persists in its efforts to tear down this landmark.
    
Meanwhile, a similar showdown has been going on out in the Mojave Desert, where a 70-year-old memorial cross honors those who died in World War I. Across those seven decades, not one citizen ever filed a single complaint against the memorial. But some ACLU attorneys got wind of it, anyway, and a judge listened.
    
When Congress tried to move the cross to private property, the judge nullified the legislators’ order. Then, to add petty insult to legal injury — he has had the cross covered with a box, pending a resolution to this still-ongoing case.
    
Understand, there is big money involved here, as well as points of law. ACLU attorneys can haul down some fat fee awards when they win cases. And anyone going up against them faces a legal juggernaut of virtually limitless resources. Government officials sued by the ACLU know what’s coming, and far too often, that fear alone is enough to let the ACLU “win” another one.
    
That gives ACLU attorneys a wonderful incentive for tearing down these markers, and local citizens very little reason to oppose them.
    
Well, the American Legion is opposing them, anyway. With the strong legal assistance of the Alliance Defense Fund and Liberty Legal Institute, it has managed to keep both of these historic markers standing and saved taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.
    
We believe the efforts of the ACLU are misdirected and contrary to the will of the American people and the spirit of our Constitution. Therefore, the American Legion will continue to fight for the right of all Americans to publicly display any symbol that reaffirms that we are, indeed, “one nation under God.” 
     
Paul A. Morin of Chicopee, Mass., is national commander of the 2.7 million-member American Legion, the nation’s largest veterans organization.
    

Gates Gets Going: SecDef Addresses Naval Academy Grads

 By Brian Witte
Associated Press
Saturday, May 26, 2007

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates encouraged the U.S. Naval Academy’s Class of 2007 yesterday “to remember the importance of two pillars of our freedom under the Constitution: the Congress and the press.”

“Both surely try our patience from time to time, but they are the surest guarantees of the liberty of the American people,” Gates told 1,028 graduates during a sunny ceremony at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis.

Gates told the freshly minted Navy and Marine officers that they will have the responsibility to inform people below them that the military “must be nonpolitical” and to recognize the obligation to truthfully report to Congress, “especially when it involves admitting mistakes or problems.”

“The same is true with the press, in my view a critically important guarantor of our freedom,” Gates said.

Gates cited news reports of poor outpatient treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center as an example of the role of the press.

“When it identifies a problem, as at Walter Reed, the response of senior leaders should be to find out if the allegations are true, as they were at Walter Reed, and, if so, say so,” Gates said. “And then act to remedy the problem. If untrue, then be able to document that fact.”

Gates said the Founding Fathers wisely understood that Congress, a free press and a nonpolitical military are needed in a free country.

“The press is not the enemy, and to treat it as such is self-defeating,” Gates said.

Gates commended the graduates for beginning their military service in a time of great necessity, and he pointed out that their class motto, “liberty through sacrifice,” was appropriate.

“Today, we ask you to make the extraordinary expected,” Gates said.

An estimated 27,000 people attended the academy’s 157th traditional ceremony. This year’s graduates number 862 men and 166 women.

Rebecca Phelps, who will be a weapons officer aboard a ship in the Persian Gulf this summer, said it was the “best feeling in the world” to make it through four years of rigorous academy life and become an officer.

“I really feel like I’m ready to meet the challenge,” said Phelps, of Santa Cruz, Calif. “This is what I signed up for. I’m ready to jump in and do it.”

She also recalled recent academy graduates from her company who have come back from the war missing limbs.

“That makes it really hit home,” she said. “It’s so real. I mean, I recognize the fact that it’s a dangerous place, and I may not come back in one piece or alive.”

P.J. Riester, a fourth-generation academy graduate from Valley Lee, said he felt “total elation” holding his diploma, having admired his father’s since he was a child. He was eager to get started in Pensacola, Fla., where he will attend school to be a Naval flight officer.

“I can’t wait to get out of Annapolis,” Riester said.

Democrats back reform – unless it hits their wallets

USAToday
Commentary
May 22, 2007 

When Bob Livingston, designated to become the next House speaker, quit Congress in 1998 amid allegations of an extramarital affair, the Louisiana Republican didn’t have to worry about subsisting on unemployment checks.

Livingston followed a well-worn, well-paid path into private life: He became a lobbyist. He started his own firm and pulled down nearly $6 million in the first two years of selling influence and access.

Cashing in on public service is one of the Capitol’s most insidious problems. The more easily lawmakers slip from representing the public to representing private interests, the more likely they’ll blur that distinction while still in office.

A few decades ago, most lawmakers returned to their home districts when their time on Capitol Hill was finished. Lobbying was regarded as somewhat disreputable. Today, congressional service is increasingly seen as a stepping stone to Washington’s lucrative K Street lobbying corridor. In the seven years starting in 1998, 43% of the lawmakers who left office for private life became lobbyists, according to a study by Public Citizen, a non-profit advocacy group that favors ethics reform.

If Democrats – who wrested control of Congress from Republicans last November – were as serious about cleaning up Capitol Hill as they claimed during last fall’s campaign, they’d slow the quick transition from the Capitol to K Street. Instead, the House Democratic leadership caved in to opponents of new restrictions.

Their inaction makes senators look like ethics champions. As part of its reform package in January, the Senate placed meaningful restrictions on lawmakers and senior aides leaving the public payroll to become lobbyists. For example, ex-senators would have to wait two years, rather than the current one year, before lobbying their former colleagues. The measure also closed a loophole that allows ex-lawmakers to do everything but lobby during that cooling-off year, including setting strategy and advising other lobbyists.

In the House, however, the thought of having to wait another year before making big bucks on K Street was apparently too much to bear. House leaders stripped their ethics reform measure, scheduled for a vote this week, of the two-year waiting period and didn’t even consider closing the “advising” loophole.

The only thing that could be called progress in this area is a requirement that members and senior staff tell the House ethics committee when they are negotiating an outside lobbying job while still in office – and not participate in legislation affecting their potential employer. That’s designed to prevent a repeat of the scandalous situation in which former representative Billy Tauzin, R-La., led the panel that wrote a new drug benefit law while negotiating a job as the pharmaceutical industry’s chief lobbyist.

During last year’s campaign, Democrats railed about the Republicans’ “culture of corruption”, and the voters listened. Since taking control of Congress, the new leadership has made some welcome changes – banning gifts, meals and swanky trips paid for by special interests.

The latest House measure would require lobbyists to report their activities faster and in more detail. That’s all for the good. But when faced with doing something to limit their ability to parlay public service into private gain, representatives shamefully balked.

US Congress Cuts Missile Defense, Space Weapons, Nuke Funding

by Staff Writers
Moscow, Russia (RIA Novosti) May 11, 2007

A United State congressional panel has cut administration defense spending for next year by 9% of the total requested, blocking funds to build a missile base in Poland. In a resolution focused heavily on greater independent control over President Bush’s missile defense projects, the House Armed Services Committee cut $764 million from the requested total of over $10 billion.The cuts put under threat spending on a Polish interceptor site and other projects, such as space weaponization, the development of a new nuclear warhead for the Trident missile and the replacement of its nuclear warheads by conventional ones.

Cutting $160 million from $310 million originally requested by the Bush administration for deployment of ten interceptor facilities in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic, head of the Strategic Forces subcommittee Ellen Tauscher, a California Democrat, said that if the bill becomes law, the administration would be able to resubmit its request for the blocked funds, when and if, the Polish government approved the construction, and if a special independent comprehensive inquiry reassured Congress about the “political, technical, operational, command-and-control, and budgetary aspects” of the European missile defense concept.

She also said the subcommittee would like to hold another independent inquiry into the role and importance of the Missile Defense Agency which currently oversees crucial missile defense activities.

The Anti-Ballistic Laser (ABL) program was severely hit, along with other “less mature” initiatives, such as Space Tracking and Survelliance, Multiple Kill Vehicles, and Missile Defense Space Test Bed, primarily linked to the deployment of missile defenses in the outer space.

Tauscher said these programs could undermine efforts to prevent an extraterrestrial arms race.

The Union of Concerned Scientists, a U.S. NGO standing up against political interference in science, has accused the Bush administration of attempting to continue research into space weaponization under the cover of classified military budget spending.

The Committee fully upheld the U.S. Army request for the already operational PAC-3 Patriot surface-to-air systems.

The funding for the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program, under which a new nuclear warhead is to be developed for the basic U.S. nuclear missile Trident instead of the W-76 commissioned in 1978, was cut by $20 million from the requested $88 million. Its future will also be subject to approval by a special independent expert commission on nuclear non-proliferation, similar to what former State Secretaries Henry Kissinger and George Schultz had called for in January.

The Armed Services Committee also cut the $135 million request for the Conventional Trident Modification Program, under which some of the Tridents based worldwide were to be equipped with non-nuclear warheads to employ them in the war on terror, leaving only as much money as is needed for further research and development. Tauscher highlighted concerns over potential Trident launches, saying such a launch might be misinterpreted by other states as a nuclear strike.

The bill approved by the Armed Services Committee has yet to be approved by both houses and by President Bush to become law.

Source: RIA Novosti