A Modest Proposal For Hamas--And Mr Obama

On 20 June 2010 President Obama played the game of Let's Pretend again. This time the Nice Young Man From Chicago decided to pretend that Hamas is a real, honest-to-gosh, all get out, for real, bottle in bond, triple X super-refined, sure enough government.

That's right, bucko, the POTUS has determined from and for reasons explicable only to himself that Hamas is no longer a terrorist entity which shot its way into power in the Gaza Strip whereupon it launched a rocket rain of terror on portions of Israel while entrenching and enriching itself by the open exploitation of those people unfortunate enough to find themselves at the wrong ends of Hamas controlled guns. Having decided that the current situation in Gaza is completely "unsustainable" the president opined, "it demands fundamental change."

The change envisioned by President Obama's "Announcement on Gaza," is not one which sees the overthrow of the Koran-waving, gun-toting, rocket-firing Mighty Warriors of Islam but its transformation via American declaratory policy into a legitimate government. Demonstrating that this "Announcement" was no mere exercise in patented Obama World Vision rhetoric, the Man in the Oval has put four hundred million of our (well, to err on the side of accuracy, borrowed or made-by-the-Feds-computers) dollars into the hands of Hamas and, to show proper balance, the Palestinian Authority.

The effect of the "Announcement" and the largess with other peoples' money serves to put the Palestinian Authority on an equal footing with Hamas. The logic of this defies rational explication considering that the PA at least makes some pretense of acting like a real, responsible government reluctant to fire rockets into Israel and, at least on occasion, showing some semblance of both democracy and a rule of law. The PA, in sharp distinction from Hamas, has even almost, sort-of, provisionally, allowed that Israel has a right to exist within secure borders.

Hamas has offered not even the slightest hint that it is prepared to (a) make peace with the PA, (b) submit its future to an open, transparent vote by the citizens of Gaza, (c) abandon its commitment to drive Israel into the sea, (d) drop its alliance with Iran, (e) stop its strident anti-Americanism, (f) observe even minimal human rights for its citizens, particularly women, (g) halt its antisemitic indoctrination of children, (h) cease all armed attacks on Israel by any person or group resident in the Gaza Strip and (i) commence an open, transparent, and effective program of economic development such as to benefit all residents of Gaza.

Considering that extensive but incomplete list of features, what is the goal of equating Hamas with the PA? What is the goal of the "Announcement?"

Mr Obama apparently believes that he can transform Hamas from its current nasty reality into a mature, responsible, legitimate government with the issuing of an "Announcement" and the provision of money. Of course, this hallucination is on a par with such previous triumphs of self-delusion as his belief that speaking nice, friendly, soft words to the mullahs of Iran would result in an instant abandonment of the quest for the Mahdi Bomb, a total rejection of supporting terrorist and insurgent groups, and the immediate ending of internal repression.

Perhaps Mr Obama would have done better had he thought in a manner less grand. Consider one less sweeping approach. A less grand move, to be sure, but one which would simultaneously test Hamas' will and ability to act the part of a genuine government and improve the lives and economic futures of the residents of Gaza. It would also directly address an ongoing point of friction between the folks of Gaza on the one hand and the PA on the other.

Electrical power is a point of ongoing distress for the people of Gaza. The operation of the one power plant in Gaza is also a subject of intense friction between Hamas and the PA. After the generating station shut down yesterday, Hamas immediately accused PA of causing the outage in order to "punish the people of Gaza." The PA replied that Hamas was seeking to "incite" the residents of the Strip against the PA.

Consider the following: Gaza receives a jilly-poo ergs per square meter from the sun. The number of cloudy days per year approaches zero. Solar panels, even the newer thin film sort, are no longer expensive to fabricate, although the process does include some very real environmental risks. The associated equipment, controllers, inverters, batteries, and so on are also relatively inexpensive to make and operate. The technology is reasonably mature, well understood, and not hard to master.

Solar based systems can be centralized which allows for the use not only of photovoltaic arrays but also solar heated steam turbines. Or the solar generation can be point-of-use based in the most decentralized way. This means the energy can be produced by either some central bureaucracy or by individuals. In short, this dual capacity obviates the he-who-controls-energy-controls-life tendency of Hamas.

On the human factors side of life, surely Hamas numbers among the creative engineering minds usually employed in designing and making rockets, IEDs, and explosives generally some men who can turn to the challenge of designing and fabricating point-of-use solar systems. Certainly, the large number of unemployed people can provide a labor force capable of making and installing solar systems.

All that is needed is (a) political will and (b) money. Mr Obama has made it obvious that money is available. In fact, the Europeans have been standing in line as well, all eager to toss money in the general direction of Hamas without any safeguards as to its usage beyond those of the pious hope variety. Only the political will on the part of Hamas has been lacking.

The will has been lacking because there has been no percentage for Hamas in doing so. Hamas gets money, lots of money, from various and sundry donors ranging from humanitarian NGOs to well-intentioned governments to governments whose intentions are not so benign. Hamas has been in the position of getting the wherewithal to do its terrorist thing and being freed of any responsibility to assure the citizens have more than the barest of bare essentials.

If Mr Obama entertained a serious desire to see Hamas change its nature from killer to governor, from bomb wielder to economic developer, he would have done something akin to linking American aid to a measurable, observable project such as the development, manufacture, and installation of low cost, point-of-use solar generation. This approach would have put a doable task before Hamas, a put-up or shut-up test as well.

If Hamas accepted the money, the conditions, and passed the it's-a-government-after-all test, the result would have been (a) green jobs, (b) ample electrical energy for residential, commercial, and limited industrial or agricultural use, (c) functional legitimacy with the citizens of Gaza and (d) a solid economic accomplishment of pervasive effect which would mean Hamas finally had something to risk if more rockets were fired with more IAF or IDF responses.

The "Sun Power For Gaza" concept is far from being the only option in the think-small-think-effectively category. It is an illustration of what should--and might--be employed if Mr Obama would only bring his ideas and ego down to mere human size. Grandiose pronouncements are fine, wonderful even--if substance and results are not considered.

Smaller ideas, lesser goals, do not sound nearly so magnificent. They do, however, have an advantage over their greater cousins. They lead somewhere. They accomplish something. The ancient Chinese put it succinctly and accurately, "The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step."

And, Mr Obama might be reminded, no journey can be completed with a single step.

This Week's Bugs Bunny What-A-Maroon Award

The competition for this week's Bugs Bunny Memorial What-A-Maroon Award wasn't particularly stiff. Indeed there was no competition at all. Not really. Barack Obama won it going away with the combination of his Tuesday Oval Office speech and its penumbra of Brit-bashing "strong arming."

In the second half of his Live From The Oval address, Mr Obama let go of his bad Clinton I-feel-your-pain imitation to charge ahead with one more part of his Great Transformational Agenda effort. It will not have escaped anyone viewing that the Nice Young Man From Chicago has dropped the Spanish "green energy-green jobs" model given its admitted literal bankruptcy.

Spain has been replaced by of all places, China, as the new paradigm of Ain't-It-Great-To-Be-Green. Showing his typical abysmal ignorance of all things foreign (and all matters scientific) Mr Obama lauded the Peoples Republic of China for its creation of "green jobs" and its commitment to "renewable" energy.

China is a leading, even the leading, manufacturer of solar panels. What this means is China has been creating yet one more environmental catastrophe. The made-in-China eco-disaster is on a scale such as to make the great Gulf of Mexico oil blowout seem to be the equivalent of spilling a glass of lemonade on the carpet in comparison. Even the WaPo, a noted cheerleader for the Obama administration acknowledged this inconvenient truth more than two years ago.

The manufacture of silicon based solar panels necessitates the creation of silicon tetrachloride as a byproduct. Silicon tetrachloride is a highly toxic substance. Wherever the stuff is placed, buried, or burned, it poisons the earth and air to an extent that nothing, but nothing, can either grow or live. China has jumped into the making of polysilicon in a very big way as the popularity of "renewable solar energy" has boomed. This means that Chinese land, plants, air, and people are being poisoned by the silicon tetrachloride in ever increasing lots.

The Trolls of Beijing cannot be bothered by such insignificant annoyances given the huge profits which accrue to making solar panels and thin films. In China, you just can't make a few billion yuan without a few Chinese dying.

But, hang on, boyo, it gets worse. As thin film photovoltaic arrays become more popular, another environmental catastrophe looms. The manufacture of thin film produces as a byproduct a gas called nitrogen triflouride. This gas has a greenhouse effect which is some seventeen thousand times greater than carbon dioxide. Currently nitrogen triflouride in the atmosphere is increasing at eleven percent per year according to NASA. Capturing and storing this gas would add greatly to the cost of producing thin film arrays--not something the Trolls contemplate with equanimity.

Al Gore! Call your office! This is a really inconvenient truth. More to the point, Mr Obama had best hire a fact checker before he does his Joe Biden impression and runs off at the mouth regardless of reality.

There are some other problems with Mr Obama's hosannas onto China. For example, China is both the biggest producer and single largest consumer of coal. The absence of scrubbers on Chinese thermal power plants, cement factories, and similar high density users is as conspicuous as the smog bellowing through Beijing and other Chinese cities. Without scubbers and other relatively expensive air treatment devices, coal is very dirty. Particulate matter, sulphides, and the demon carbon dioxide are all present in impressive quantity.

The facts of contemporary Chinese life show that the country and its leaders are even less environmentally friendly than the BP blowout. The combination of fume belching coal fired plants, silicon tetrachloride, and nitrogen triflouride suggests that anyone visiting China ought to wear a Hazmat suit with scuba gear.

Somehow this unpleasant--and most assuredly ungreen--picture somehow eluded the ever so perceptive Mr Obama in his haste to let no crisis go unexploited. What a shock!

Equally unshocking was Mr Obama's performance as a Saul Alynski community organizer in his constant, egregious, and ultimately unjustifiable attacks on what he and his White House crew insist on calling "British Petroleum." One of the most basic tactics put forth by the Alynski approach to community organizing is that of designating a "sinner" and then lambasting the hell out of that wicked entity.

Big Oil is a large slow target in the best of conditions. With the blowout, BP became the perfect microcosm for all of Big Oil. BP and its CEO, Tony Hayward, became perfect "asses" to kick. And, kick them Mr Obama did. With far more relish and delight than beneficial long term effect, Mr Obama and his associates (including those in Congress) let go with their rhetorical Doc Martins.

This is not to imply that BP should be held harmless, let off from any responsibility for cleaning up its mess. That would be absurd. But, it is equally, if not more absurd, to blast, blast, and blast BP until there is a real risk of the company (thirty-nine percent owned by US stockholders and employing three times as many Americans as Brits) will go belly up, or be snatched by takeover specialists--including the Chinese national oil company.

It makes even less sense in the real world to go after BP in a way and with a furious energy which seems to imply a profound anti-British bias at the highest levels of US government. Mr Obama and his fellows of the Chicago Gang in the White House should take note that BP is critical to British economic stability, to the welfare of numerous British pensioners, to the strength of the British stock market. They might also take notice that the old style Brit-bashing which was the stock in trade of the long dead Colonel McCormick and his Chicago Tribune is all too yesterday to employ now.

Mr Obama has already made his distaste for the British and the presumed "special relationship" between the UK and the US very evident. His insultingly cavalier treatment of the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, was a violation of both diplomatic protocol and a slap at the only country which has been a real ally in our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The new PM, David Cameron, is far more competent than his predecessor and far more low key and rational than Mr Obama. But, the treatment meted out to BP including the the Obama insistence that BP not pay dividends to its stockholders but rather place them in an escrow account will test both the patience of the British public and Mr Cameron to the fullest.

The continued presence of British troops in Afghanistan is highly unpopular with the majority of the British electorate. At the same time the Brits are doing heavy lifting in Helmand province and we would like them to do the same during the scheduled offensive in Kandahar. Mr Cameron has already made noises regarding the pullout of British forces in a carefully understated way during his visit to the troops last month. The Press responded favorably to these hints.

Not to put too fine a point on the matter, Mr Cameron could buy himself a great deal of political breathing space for his proposed austerity program by announcing a rapid evacuation of Her Majesty's Forces from Afghanistan. He needs or at least would benefit from the breathing space such a move would create since any austerity will hit lot of Brits right where it hurts most. But, the withdrawal of British forces would introduce an impossible complication for General McChrystal at a time when time is short.

President Obama has sought to gain short-term political advantage by getting right with an American public already disenchanted n0t only with his Great Transformational Agenda but his conduct during the long, long weeks of the blowout in the Gulf. Simultaneously, he is trying desperately to gin up support for his vision of "green" by a typical mix of mendacity and gross exaggeration.

Overlooked in the feeding frenzy of agenda driven politics is the real possibility that his actions will redound to America's disadvantage in Afghanistan--and elsewhere. The naive young man simply hasn't gotten a grip on the reality that all aspects of politics both domestic and foreign are interconnected. That is the sort of thing which only a "Maroon" can do.