Reigning in the Executive Branch

Slate comes up with a few things that the next President can do to negate the damage that W has done to the office. This is something you'll only hear on the far-right:

Withdraw all U.S. troops from foreign countries. The Declaration of Independence explains that the purpose of government is to secure unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The United States was not created to build an empire, to aggrandize government, or to purge the planet of nondemocratic regimes. Accordingly, the next president should announce that we are withdrawing all U.S. troops from foreign countries and that, hereinafter, all the nation's military resources will be devoted to building missile, electronic, and other defenses against potential foreign attacks. The United States lacks the wisdom necessary to spin modern democratic gold from centuries of despotic flax by military force or otherwise. Iraq and Afghanistan are clear proof. Further, the United States has no moral responsibility for the destiny of persons outside its jurisdiction who pay no taxes to support the government and pledge no allegiance to the republic.

Read the rest here.

Pilfered from LewRockwell.com

Senate Panel backs Law of the Sea Treaty

From AP:

The Reagan-era "Law of the Sea" treaty was primed for its first-ever Senate vote, boosted by strong support from the Bush administration and an emphatic vote of approval Wednesday by the Foreign Relations Committee.

With Senate ratification, the United States would join 155 nations that are party to a convention that sets rules and settles disputes over navigation, fishing and economic development of the open seas and establishes environmental standards.

Really, why do we even have a State Department? It's their job to talk to other countries. Do we really need to submit our sovereignty to the UN? What a joke. If I were running for President, I would be hammering all of the Senators who want to abdicate their duty to protecting and defending the Constitution by supporting this ridiculous treaty. This should be brought up at every debate for every presidential candidate to answer.

Zakaria says that we have lost all perspective on Iran

From Newsweek:

The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality. Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative ideologist whom Bush has consulted on this topic, has written that Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is "like Hitler … a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religio-political culture of Islamofascism." For this staggering proposition Podhoretz provides not a scintilla of evidence.

In fact, Zakaria writes, the evidence is to the contrary:

Here is the reality. Iran has an economy the size of Finland's and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?

Why does President Bush feel that Iran is such a threat to our national security, going as far last week as to say that World War Three would be inevitable if Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons? Here is something that Zakaria fails to mention about Iran. The war rhetoric from Bush on Iran has been nonstop since his "Axis of Evil' speech in 2002. Our transformation of Ahmadinejad into Hitler started when he was elected to office in 2005. One gets the feeling that Mother Theresa could be elected into the Iranian presidency, and, come hell or high water, they would be the new monster that the administration would have to slay in the name of stopping terrorism.

The New Hitler

Pat Buchanan weighs in on Ahmadinejad and his visit to the US this week:

It would be an obscenity, we are told, if Ahmadinejad were allowed to place a wreath at Ground Zero. This is a public relations stunt that should never be permitted.

That the Iranian president has PR in mind is undoubtedly true. Much of what national leaders do is symbolic. But that wreath-laying would have said something else, as well.

It would have said that, to Iran, these Americans were victims who deserve to be honored and mourned and, by extension, the men who killed them were murderers. Bin Laden celebrates 9-11. So do all America-haters. By laying a wreath at Ground Zero, the president of Iran would be saying that in the war between al-Qaida and the United States, he and his country side with the United States.

Which I can't say I disagree with. The rhetoric we've heard from Bush since his "Axis of Evil" speech has been one of provocation. But does Iran represent a direct threat to us? Maybe to our military that is in Iraq he is, but follow Pat's reasoning on what would compel Iran to seek nuclear weapons:

After seeing what America did to its non-nuclear neighbor Iraq, which had done nothing to America, and after hearing Bush call them an axis-of-evil nation and prime candidate for U.S. pre-emptive strikes, a not-unreasonable ayatollah might conclude they need nuclear weapons, or the Americans will be dictating to them forever.

Read the rest here.