With their champion out, will a new movement form?
Hatchet
By Lucas Roebuck
Huckabee, hanging on till the bittersweet end, is out of the 2008 presidential race, but the new social conservative movement that coalesced around his campaign will forge on.
This time last year, as Mike Huckabee started building his campaign to be president, few people expected he would be a contender. Huckabee, however, outperformed all but the most optimistic expectations — you know, the expectations of a miracle — by coming in second place from a field of over a dozen GOP hopefuls.
He won eight states and hundreds of delegates, but more importantly, across the country, millions of people punched his name on a ballot. Many of the people who voted for Huckabee were frustrated social conservatives (SoCons), who had found in Huckabee a voice like their own.
The modern conservative movement, which saw its first fruits in President Ronald Reagan's 1980 victory and revitalization in the Newt Gingrich's GOP revolution of 1994, has been a sometimes awkward alliance of social conservatives, fiscal libertarians and security hawks (or neo-cons). Of those three camps, social conservatives have almost always gotten the short end of the stick — getting lots of lip service from GOP politicians, but little passion.
SoCons, many of whom are evangelical Christians, have felt particularly used by the GOP establishment this election cycle. Gov. Mitt Romney, embraced by the fiscal libertarians, made what seemed to be a disingenuous switch on the social conservative issues of abortion and gay marriage. Sen. John McCain has a decent pro-life voting record, but would not support a constitutional amendment protecting life. One commentator noted that McCain is far more comfortable and passionate talking about global warming and carbon taxes than he is about protecting unborn children and traditional marriage. Mayor Rudy Guiliani made no pretense about his social liberalism.
Only Huckabee stood as a true champion of the SoCon, not just someone who was trying to shore up the SoCon vote. Huckabee was someone who had the same core passion for SoCon issues as the rank-and-file SoCon voter. Huckabee's candidacy showed just how much the SoCons as a voting bloc (at least 30 percent of the GOP base) has been used and abused by those whose primary interest is preservation of GOP party. Or just getting elected.
SoCons naturally gravitated to Huckabee, a gifted communicator, and propelled him into contender status.
Social conservative ideology is formed around two basic tenants of the role of government. First, the government is responsible for protecting life, and upholding the sanctity of life. Second, where government is involved in family issues (i.e. granting of marriage licenses, taxation structures), the government should favor traditional family structures. Social conservatism is informed by the Judeo-Christian worldview, and recognizes that the family is basic building block of a healthy society.
After spending scores of hours communicating and volunteering with fellow SoCons over the past few months at HucksArmy.com, what I see happening is the seeds if the new social conservative movement being planted. SoCons no longer feel they need to be content to hope for crumbs from the conservative table largely dominated by fiscal libertarians and neo-cons who have other priorities.
Old school social conservative leaders, mostly religious figures, have been content to sit in the shadow. Pat Robertson endorsing Guiliani, and National Right to Life endorsing Sen. Fred Thompson, come to mind as examples of complacency and acceptance of second-tier conservative status for SoCons.
What Huckabee has given social conservatives is desire to have a leading voice in the greater conservative movement. Huckabee may be out for now, but for a new wave of social conservatives, 2008 is just the beginning.
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Surprise! Iran is working on the bomb!
New EU reports question the NIE
Hatchet
By Lucas Roebuck
The American media gave little play to an International Atomic Energy Agency report issued last week that blasted Iran for dodging questions about documents from 2005 that point to its nuclear weapon ambitions.
Reuters had this Feb. 23 report: “ In unusually strong wording, the IAEA said in a report Iran had not so far explained documentation pointing to undeclared efforts to ‘ weaponise’ nuclear materials by linking uranium processing with explosives and designing of a missile warhead. Publishing details of the intelligence, the IAEA described tests on a 400-meter (1, 300-foot ) firing shaft seen as ‘ relevant’ to atomic arms research and a schematic layout of a missile cone ‘ quite likely to be able to accommodate a nuclear device. ’ ”
Meanwhile, the spooks working for the European Union claim that Iran could have enough uranium for a bomb by the end of this year, according to a report from Germany’s Spiegel.
Writes Markus Becker in Spiegel, “ As part of a project to improve control of nuclear materials, the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC ) in Ispra, Italy set up a detailed simulation of the centrifuges currently used by Iran in the Natanz nuclear facility to enrich uranium. The results look nothing like those reached by the U. S. intelligence community. ”
The U. S. results Becker is talking about is what is found in the executive summary of the last National Intelligence Estimate.
Nuking the credibility of the National Intelligence Estimate released last year that said Iran had suspended its nuclear bomb making program in 2003 is easy enough. Iran used it as a propaganda piece, touting it as proof they were now on the up and up, even though — if the NIE is true — Iran said it never had a program.
So did Iran really quit its nuke program in 2003 that it lied about having in the first place (and is still lying about today )? And why did it take four years for the intelligence community to make this conclusion ? Could it be that after the embarrassing failure on the WMD / Iraq fiasco, someone in the CIA wanted to make neo-con policy makers in the Bush administration look bad ? The Wall Street Journal made the case for political motivations of the NIE just after it was released.
More importantly, even if Iran has suspended its quest to build the apparatus for creating a nuclear explosion, it certainly hasn’t suspended its operations to make sufficient quantities of radioactive materials for weaponization. Getting the fuel to make the bomb is the hard part. Once you have the fuel, the technology to make an actual explosion isn’t so hard to create.
From these two non-American reports on Iran’s nuclear program we can draw two conclusions.
First, the American intelligence bureaucracy needs to be dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up. The intelligence community should be like the military — let the politicians decide policy and don’t interfere in politics. In the words of Tennyson, “ There’s not to reason why, there’s but to do — and die. ” The intelligence community is too vested in politics and in trying to shape policy. A representative democracy should be left to elected officials. The failures on Iraq WMDs and now on Iranian nuclear ambition show our intelligence assets are dysfunctional.
Second, the Iranian leadership excels at double-speak and deception. Why do we think they are interested in some sort of “ peaceful compromise ? ” The anti-Semitic rulers of Iran have nothing to gain from “ talking” with America and her allies except to buy them time. America cannot deliver to Iran’s extremist leaders what they want: the destruction of Israel and, ultimately, worldwide implementation of Sharia law.
Nuclear weapons, on the other hand, would be much more helpful in fulfilling their ambition.
Lucas Roebuck is a former managing editor of the Northwest Arkansas Times and the Siloam Springs Herald-Leader.
Hatchet
By Lucas Roebuck
The American media gave little play to an International Atomic Energy Agency report issued last week that blasted Iran for dodging questions about documents from 2005 that point to its nuclear weapon ambitions.
Reuters had this Feb. 23 report: “ In unusually strong wording, the IAEA said in a report Iran had not so far explained documentation pointing to undeclared efforts to ‘ weaponise’ nuclear materials by linking uranium processing with explosives and designing of a missile warhead. Publishing details of the intelligence, the IAEA described tests on a 400-meter (1, 300-foot ) firing shaft seen as ‘ relevant’ to atomic arms research and a schematic layout of a missile cone ‘ quite likely to be able to accommodate a nuclear device. ’ ”
Meanwhile, the spooks working for the European Union claim that Iran could have enough uranium for a bomb by the end of this year, according to a report from Germany’s Spiegel.
Writes Markus Becker in Spiegel, “ As part of a project to improve control of nuclear materials, the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC ) in Ispra, Italy set up a detailed simulation of the centrifuges currently used by Iran in the Natanz nuclear facility to enrich uranium. The results look nothing like those reached by the U. S. intelligence community. ”
The U. S. results Becker is talking about is what is found in the executive summary of the last National Intelligence Estimate.
Nuking the credibility of the National Intelligence Estimate released last year that said Iran had suspended its nuclear bomb making program in 2003 is easy enough. Iran used it as a propaganda piece, touting it as proof they were now on the up and up, even though — if the NIE is true — Iran said it never had a program.
So did Iran really quit its nuke program in 2003 that it lied about having in the first place (and is still lying about today )? And why did it take four years for the intelligence community to make this conclusion ? Could it be that after the embarrassing failure on the WMD / Iraq fiasco, someone in the CIA wanted to make neo-con policy makers in the Bush administration look bad ? The Wall Street Journal made the case for political motivations of the NIE just after it was released.
More importantly, even if Iran has suspended its quest to build the apparatus for creating a nuclear explosion, it certainly hasn’t suspended its operations to make sufficient quantities of radioactive materials for weaponization. Getting the fuel to make the bomb is the hard part. Once you have the fuel, the technology to make an actual explosion isn’t so hard to create.
From these two non-American reports on Iran’s nuclear program we can draw two conclusions.
First, the American intelligence bureaucracy needs to be dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up. The intelligence community should be like the military — let the politicians decide policy and don’t interfere in politics. In the words of Tennyson, “ There’s not to reason why, there’s but to do — and die. ” The intelligence community is too vested in politics and in trying to shape policy. A representative democracy should be left to elected officials. The failures on Iraq WMDs and now on Iranian nuclear ambition show our intelligence assets are dysfunctional.
Second, the Iranian leadership excels at double-speak and deception. Why do we think they are interested in some sort of “ peaceful compromise ? ” The anti-Semitic rulers of Iran have nothing to gain from “ talking” with America and her allies except to buy them time. America cannot deliver to Iran’s extremist leaders what they want: the destruction of Israel and, ultimately, worldwide implementation of Sharia law.
Nuclear weapons, on the other hand, would be much more helpful in fulfilling their ambition.
Lucas Roebuck is a former managing editor of the Northwest Arkansas Times and the Siloam Springs Herald-Leader.
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