The political class and all of its groupies in the punditry industry just can’t stand it.  They cannot abide a major disaster of the nature of the Gulf oil well blowout that doesn’t have a political solution.  This frustration is manifest in every media update on the well and every White House press briefing–the 21st century expectation of government, particularly one in the hands of the “chosen one”, is that it should “take charge”, be more “hands on”, demonstrate that it is in control, that it “cares”, that it is enraged,  etc. etc. etc.  Finally, at long last there is the reality expressed by Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen: “The government doesn’t have everything we need to solve this problem”.  Thanks for the belated understatement, Admiral.  He could have and should have added, “and it is not the role of government to assume the on-board technical or management expertise to solve such a problem”, that the solution is far beyond the core competencies of government at any level.

David Brooks has recently suggested that the systems that run our world are based on technologies that are so complex that no one person can or should be expected to understand them or the risk they present, let alone government bureaucrats.  There may be some truth to that as we continually are reminded in crises such as the mortgage finance meltdown of the past couple of years.  But these risk assessment failures are compounded by the hubris of government intervention and its very often disastrous unintended consequences.  In fact, no evaluation of the role of government in this particular event will be complete without considering the consequences, intended and unintended, of the misguided environmental and energy policies that have placed energy abundant areas in Alaska, the western U. S., and shallow offshore areas off limits for oil and gas production.  These policies have pushed the companies into deeper, more expensive, much more complex, and higher risk environments, and should be reconsidered in light of the recent disaster.

Over recent history, we have created the unfortunate environment in which no elected official is willing to admit or level with the American people as to the competency limits of government.  And, in fact, in many corners of the left wing of the political class there is the incredible belief that government should have the on-board capability to directly solve such problems and be prepared to deal with disasters such as once-in-a-lifetime oil well blowouts.  Is there a role for government here?  Sure there is: assurances to the public that government is monitoring progress, making its public facilities available to the private sector effort, and helping to explain the difficult complexities involved are all parts of that role.  No doubt that there was significant human error on the part of British Petroleum here and there will be ample time to assess the damage and the accountability.  But self-serving statements of blame such as “we’re keeping a boot on the neck of BP”, criticizing the previous administration for “gutting regulations and putting insiders in charge”, and, above all ridiculous moves, launching a criminal investigation against the very people who are in the midst of the ongoing efforts to shut down the well flow have made this administration’s response to this disaster a complete disaster in itself.  There won’t be a political solution here, but there will no doubt be huge political fallout.

Recently we have heard the reports of a Connecticut candidate for the Senate who has consistently lied about his Vietnam War service and I was struck during one TV discussion of the issue by comments from Katrina van den Heuvel, Editor of the leftist magazine, The Nation, who wonders why we so revere our veterans and assign their military service such a high ranking in our criteria for serving in public office in the first place.  After all, she says, we are glorifying war service.  Meanwhile, Pat Buchanan reminds us that of all the generals who have gone on to serve the country as President, not one led America into a new war, and only one 19th century President who had seen combat as a soldier led us into war.  This may be coincidental, but I think not.  Of all people, warriors hate war the most.  So in these days between Memorial Day and the anniversary of D-Day, I thought it appropriate to pass along the following anonymous  observations recently sent to me that might help Ms. van den Heuvel and others understand why we honor those who served.

It is the veteran, not the preacher, who has given us freedom of religion; it is the veteran, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press; it is the veteran, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech; it is the veteran, not the campus organizer, who has given us freedom to assemble; it is the veteran, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fair trial; and it is the veteran, not the politician, who has given us the right to vote.

Hug a veteran this week.

The details on the confrontation between Israeli commandos and a flotilla of Turkish  “humanitarian” aid ships bound for Gaza is still being sifted as I write, and there will be other such incidents as the provocations continue.  As usual, Israel will bear the large majority of the brunt of the public outrage from all the usual “blame Israel first” crowd and, although their actions can be justified in long-standing international law, their tactics clearly left something to be desired.  But the most important story here is the “backstory”, which is the decline of Turkey as a reliable American ally and the distancing of its foreign policy from the interests of Israel and the U. S.  The evolving shift of the Turks away from the strict statutory secularism that has been in place since the early 1920s is much in evidence in the Ergodan regime, and its growing coziness to Hamas, the Iranian regime, and other radical Islamic groups should be of great concern.  The other part of this backstory, however, is the degree to which the messages sent by the Obama foreign policy team over the past 18 months have provided cover for such drift and encouragement for such provocations.  After all, U. S. relations with the Netanyahu government in Israel are not exactly warm and the shabby treatment of a number of other American allies in Europe is not lost on the Turks, not to mention the acquiescence evident in the handling of Iran’s nuclear advances.

There are some who believe that Obama is actually working to arrange the failure of the Netanyahu coalition government and that the embellished outrage over the housing projects in Jerusalem is one manifestation of this.  This, too, would be obvious to the Turks and others in the region.  But if there is even the chance that Obama is in the midst of a major reassessment of long-standing U. S.-Israel relations, he had best be very careful to remember that, to the Israelis, this is about much more than simply property lines and state borders or dreams of a “peace process”; this is existential, and it might not be the best time to risk a test of Mr. Netanyahu’s fortitude.

The Deputy National Security Adviser to President Obama is John Brennan, who first came to my attention in the aftermath of the Ft. Hood shootings and the almost successful Christmas bombing of an airliner in Detroit.  Here is a man who is on the front lines of a war that has been underway in its most intense phase for almost nine years and, in reality, for over 30 years.  One would think that he has the enemy pretty well identified, right?  Well, not quite, and he seems to have a tendency to think out loud in his deliberations, as evidenced by recent appearances.  In a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, he repeated the administration’s argument that our enemy is not “terrorism”, but then said that the word “jihad” should not be used either, as follows:   “Nor do we describe our enemy as jihadists or Islamists because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community, and there is nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women, and children.”  This despite the fact that enemy leadership itself describes their struggle with the West as jihad, that the word almost always connotes war, and that Osama bin Laden and other Islamic radicals commonly use the word to call for war against us.  And this guy is one of the administration’s principal spokesmen on national security?

Alas, these remarks are consistent with the characterization of the perpetrator of the shootings at Ft.  Hood by the Army Chief of Staff on the scene and later by the Attorney General before Congress.  They also fall in line with the initial identification of the intended airline bomber as a “lone wolf”.  New York Mayor Bloomberg speculated that the recent Times Square bomb might be the work of someone unhappy with the health care bill, and our Attorney General again avoided the obvious by saying “there are a variety of reasons why people do these things”.   How can we continue to prosecute a war without properly identifying the enemy?  It’s people like these who are aiding and abetting our real enemy by refusing to face the truth and misleading us from clarity on the objective.

The new Arizona immigration law continues to resonate around the country and now figures to become a tipping point for advocates on all sides of this issue and a level of activism that has now risen to a fever pitch.  In a recent edition of The Houston Chronicle, my friend Bill King wrote an insightful piece on the term “sanctuary” in lamenting the degree to which it has become laden with such negative connotations and the designation as a “sanctuary city” so subject to derision, and he wonders how such a noble idea became so scornful.

In an exchange of e-mails, I responded to his article as follows:

I share your concern that the traditional “sanctuary” represented by the beacon of America has become a pejorative for many otherwise charitable, generous, and welcoming Americans, but we need to consider what made it so: the complete abdication of our political leadership in fulfilling the most basic responsibility of stewardship–the protection of our sovereignty.

We have been able to accommodate the “tired and huddled masses” because we have been and remain the exceptional nation, the only one in world history based on a proposition.  But there was always a catch–that, as Teddy Roosevelt so aptly put it, “there is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American.  The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.”  In his forthright manner, he was referring to complete assimilation, one of the great miracles of the 20th century, and I don’t believe he had in mind a disavowal of cultural heritage.

The American cultural mosaic produced by late 19th and early 20th century assimilation was a model to be applauded, but over the past several decades the ideology of multiculturalism has gone far beyond healthy cultural pride to divided loyalties.  What we have today in far too many cases is a new proposition, one that contemplates dual citizenship, dual loyalties, multiculturalism, bilingualism, and yes, often sanctuary from enforcement of the law, while our leadership class does nothing.  It’s not about cultural holidays, it’s the ethnic nationalism, primarily initiated by the radical advocacy groups and aided and nurtured by the “open borders” crowd and their fellow travelers.  All of this causes many otherwise well-intentioned people to become cynical and to reach for the lesser angels of their nature.  This, and the total disregard for the law and American sovereignty, is what has sullied the honorable concept of sanctuary.

We can fix this problem and restore the word sanctuary to its traditional meaning, but it will require political courage that I don’t see in place in either major party, and the American people have already been fooled once by a “comprehensive” solution that made the problem worse.

I will have more on the European financial crisis in a future edition, but I couldn’t pass up the following quote from a recent article by George Will:

“The EU has a flag no one salutes, an anthem no one sings, a president no one can name, a parliament no one other than its members wants to have power, a capital of coagulated bureaucracy no one admires or controls, a currency that presupposes what neither does nor should nor soon will exist, and rules of fiscal behavior that no member has been penalized for ignoring.”

That about sums up the European dilemma.