HorsesAss.Org

Tonight on “The David Goldstein Show”, 7PM to 10PM on Newsradio 710-KIRO:

7PM: The Stranger Hour: Will Josh kick Will’s rhetorical ass?
The Stranger’s Josh Feit argues that “anyone who fills in the bubble for 50 new miles of light rail … is also filling in the bubble for sprawl and environmental degradation.” Fellow HA blogger Will thinks that makes Josh an uppity urbanite with “too much passion.” Josh joins me for the hour to talk roads, transit, and the local political races.

8PM: Are the righties gonna get sick over Sicko?
I had the privilege of watching a preview of “Sicko” this week, and when I posted some brief observations of Michael Moore’s new documentary (shorter, shorter Goldy: the film is funny, touching and infuriating,) I got just the sort of bile-spewing, anti-reform comment thread I expected. Why does the thought of universal health care make righties so angry? Does wanting the same sort of health care security available in the rest of the industrialized world really make me a dirty, America-hating commie?

9PM: TBA.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

Josh Feit:

Supporting the $904 million on I-405 expansion in this November’s regional transportation plan (the same plan that Seattle voters must vote for if they also want to expand Sound Transit light rail) GOP King County Council Member Reagan Dunn told the Seattle Times:

The I-405 project, especially, will improve traffic for people who must “drive until you qualify” for affordable suburban homes, said King County Councilmember Reagan Dunn. “The benefits are real. It will help young people; it will help our future,” he said.

His point is: People can’t afford to live (“live” meaning big houses, big yards, two car garages) in the city and so, to provide affordable housing we have to provide roads for them.

Josh must not get off the “Hill” much. “Drive Until You Qualify” is not some GOP trick. It’s exists. My folks bought land in what was rural King County, built a house, and raised two kids. My parents weren’t rich; my mom was working in social services, and my dad worked at the gas company. Even back then, gas company wages didn’t get you a house in Seattle. Or Bellevue. Or lots of other places. If they wanted a safe places to raise children, they had to look further away to unincorporated King County.

More Josh:

It’s a clever bit of demagoguery because it plays to the truth that yes, housing is becoming more and more expensive in Seattle. However, the GOP solution is a Catch-22. The more you drive people out to the ‘burbs, the more you keep Seattle from addressing its housing and transportation crisis, because suburban development takes dollars and developers away from transit and in-fill density.

No matter how much Josh Feit protests, young families are not going to buy “in-fill density” in Seattle. Maybe some will, but they are the exception that proves the rule. You can’t force young families into condos. Not when they can buy a house in Algona for the same price.

You can, however, give people options. Let’s build transit- lots more- in the city and elsewhere. Let’s expand HOV lanes. Let’s spend a little less time telling people what they should want and more time giving them options.

Josh has too much passion for correcting other people’s behavior (except when it comes to smoking indoors, in which case Josh is a flaming libertarian!). If Josh thinks the winning strategy is to lecture suburban folks, and to accuse them of defiling the environment, then he’s got another thing coming. People can only be “lectured to” so much. They can, however, be convinced. Perhaps we should try to convince people instead of just pointing fingers at them.

UPDATE (Goldy):
Josh will be joining me on “The David Goldstein Show” tonight at 7PM on 710-KIRO. Will knew that when he posted this. But I guess Will’s not man enough to come down to the studio and say to Josh’s face. He’s afraid of Josh’s passion.

The rumors from Washington are that Rep. Dave Reichert (WA-8) is absolutely miserable, being a bit player in a fractious, fractured, and demoralized minority party. Perhaps Reichert has aspirations for bigger and better things…

This fall, voters in parts of King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties will vote on the largest transportation package in state history. The measure funds both Sound Transit’s Phase Two and RTID, or Regional Transportation Investment District, and it’s roads improvement package. The taxes involved are diverse. They include MVET, sales taxes, a license fee, tolls, and an optional local gas tax. See the update below, folks.

Though no one likes taxes, these tax increases are small and don’t fall disproportionately on any one group. Unlike the tragically flawed Seattle Monorail Project, people who own cars will not alone bear the burden of funding our transportation investments. During the monorail years, people who owned cars but rarely drove were nailed with big motor vehicle excise taxes. Talk about resentment! Thankfully, the ST2/RTID package won’t be funded on one tax. Now, angst-ridden, car-less, Capitol Hill emo kids will be able to fund transportation improvements.

Every Morrissey record, every jar of pomade, and every half rack of PBR will make a difference.

UPDATE:

I received an update from Julia Patterson’s office:

It looks like you are referencing an old RTID web page in your recent post on the taxes used to finance the Roads and Transit Plan. It does not reflect the proposed projects or taxes included in the Roads and Transit plan that will be before voters this November.

The most up to date website is www.rtid.org and www.roadsandtransit.org.

The tax sources proposed to finance the Roads and Transit plan are a .8% MVET and a .6% sales tax increase. There is no license fee included in the plan, nor a local option gas tax. You will also notice a number of Seattle road projects in the current plan, that are not reflected in the 2004 plan that is discussed on the old web page.

Pardon my goof, folks.

Peter Callaghan of The News Tribune notes that Dwight Pelz sometimes uses baseball analogies when talking politics. And sometimes they’re tortured baseball analogies:

So, Pelz said, having the state’s primary on Feb. 19 is akin to having a ticket to the fifth game of the series – it’s not too late and it’s not too early and it might be just right. Maybe you had to be there. And to think that Republican Party Chairman Luke Esser, not Pelz, is the former sportswriter.

Ahhh…yes, Luke “The Truth” Esser. He began his sports journalism career writing for The Daily, the student newspaper at U-Dub. One of my favorite columns was from 1986, where Luke used an interesting sort of political analogy metaphor allusion in describing a national championship football team:

A prominent associate editor of a great big Seattle paper as much as wrote my name in the loss column after the Husky football team lost to B.Y.U. on national television 31-3. According to Columnist ‘X’ and various B.Y.U. players, some unsavory comments I made about the Cougars the season before (when those polygamists won a national championship there was no way in hell they deserved) were responsible for the 28-point win.

Does this mean Luke isn’t going to be a Mitt Romney supporter?

The King County Democrats have just issued a brief press release, disavowing themselves of HA regular Richard Pope.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 15, 2007

The King County Democrats would like to go on record opposing the candidacy of a former Republican PCO who filed as a Democrat in the King County Council District 6 race. He is not a Democrat and we will not embrace him as such. In fact, he denied the Democratic Party the right to do a party file during the week of June 11 – 15, 2007 and we had a candidate ready to file.

We do have a write-in candidate for King County Council District 6 – BRAD LARSSEN, 45th LD Democrats Vice Chair and an elected Democratic PCO in KIR 45-2923. Brad is a committed, dedicated Democrat and will launch a write-in campaign early next week.

BRAD LARSSEN, DEMOCRAT
For King County Council District 6

Susan C. Sheary
KCDCC Chair

A little advice to Susie. You may not consider Richard a Democrat, but for the moment at least, Richard does. So that means you better be awfully careful with your PDC filings this season.

As for the race itself, all I’ll commit to at the moment is to support whoever ultimately wins the Democratic nomination.

Matt Manweller, an associate professor of political science at Central Washington University, recently wrote an editorial in the Seattle Times. There are some interesting insights and some conclusions I agree with, but overall, I think he sees a lot of evidence for what he’s saying that doesn’t really exist. His overall point is that as we stumble about trying to modernize the third world, we’re not understanding that capitalism is the root of liberty, rather than democracy. He posits that if we just help people recognize the benefits of limited government, de-regulation, and free market principles, they will more quickly attain liberty. I agree with that to a point, but I think Manweller is avoiding a much more basic reason why true liberty has been so elusive to much of the third world, especially the Middle East.

He starts off with an interesting observation:

I want to start with a relatively controversial premise. Despite the continual barrage of attacks from the blogging left, the neoconservatives got one core argument correct: Killing Osama bin Laden will do nothing to stop terrorism. If we want to stop terrorism, they correctly argue, we need to bring hope, social and economic mobility, and the rule of law to the places that foster terrorism. The mistake the neocons made was assuming that democracy would foster such an environment in the Middle East.

I agree that just simply killing Osama bin Laden from on high would do little on its own to stop terrorism, but bringing the rule of law to a place like Afghanistan would have certainly benefitted by apprehending bin Laden and putting him on trial. He’s also right that democracy alone can’t transform the Middle East, but I think he ignores how much the Bush Administration agrees with his notions of capitalism and thought that it would be a transformative force in the region. It just failed as well.

Where I think Manweller is really getting it wrong is right here:

The neocons were correct to start with their initial premise: Liberty will nurture an environment hostile to radical Islam. From there, however, they should have done a better job finding the variable that actually creates liberty. If they had looked harder, they would have found capitalism, not democracy.

Although there are always exceptions to the rule, history has shown that capitalism (more so than democracy) does an excellent job of fostering property rights, independent courts, the rule of law, and dispersing power to multiple stakeholders — particularly in countries that have few cultural predispositions toward civil society.

Applying this conclusion to Iraq and the greater Middle East relies on a number of bad assumptions. For one, it assumes that those involved in the invasion and occupation of Iraq didn’t try hard enough to introduce capitalism. That’s crazy. The CPA tried very hard to emulate the kinds of anti-regulatory small government principles that Republicans cherish back home. It just didn’t work. The reason is because Manweller’s underlying assumption is completely wrong. Capitalism, like democracy, is not the root of what eventually leads to liberty. The element that has been missing in Iraq (and other parts of the third world) is a sense of trust in the overall system of justice. Manweller dances around this point here:

Democracy does not cultivate liberty because democracy trades tyranny of the one for tyranny of the 51 percent. It does nothing to limit the power of government, protect the rights of minorities, or establish the rule of law. Democracy ends up looking just as ruthless as a dictatorship because it transfers ultimate and unchecked power from one to anyone who can create a coalition of 51 percent. In such a democracy, the other 49 percent usually pick up a gun.

But how is capitalism the cure for this? Just like democracy, capitalism also doesn’t work if there isn’t a certain level of faith in the system. For many of the poorest nations of the world, the problem isn’t one of too much government regulation over commerce, it’s a matter of too little. People in other countries often fear capitalism because they don’t have faith that their government can provide economic justice within the system. They see capitalism as a way for the rich nations of the world to get richer and they reject it and fend for themselves. Even when this is a misperception (and a lot of times it is), it’s what happens in the real world. The more basic element that leads to liberty is a sense that a government can provide justice for the weak against the powerful. This is difficult, especially when the authorities take power by force and certain subsets of a society feel like outsiders. In Iraq, we believed that it was more important to get the stock exchange running than the court system in order. That was a mistake. The most important tasks were to convince the Iraqis that we could keep them safe and prove that the government represented everyone. Capitalism alone couldn’t accomplish either thing.

Even in the greater Middle East, the idea that small-government capitalism is the missing element from having them achieve liberty is misguided. The Middle East has a long history of engaging in trade and many Arab countries have lax regulations on industry. But they are also very authoritarian when it comes to issues of personal liberty. Saudi Arabia is one of the worst. It’s hard to argue that radical Islamism would disappear in Saudi Arabia if they just stopped regulating industry so much. In fact, an argument can easily be made that the country in the Middle East that we consider to be the most free, Israel, is also the most socialist.

I agree with the concept that Tom Friedman discusses in his latest book – that as the world economy becomes more intertwined that we’ll find it harder and harder to sever those bonds for the sake of war. In that sense, capitalism does play a very big part in promoting liberty and generating opportunity. But those bonds aren’t forged until people both here and elsewhere feel that their economic interests can be protected by those who govern them. Capitalism is not some magical powder that we need to bring to the Middle East and spread over the land to sprout freedom. It is no more the magic elixir than was having the Iraqis dip their fingers in purple ink and vote for a civil war. The Middle East doesn’t need our economic system as much as they need our justice system, so that they can more easily count on their governments to protect their rights. Unfortunately, the current occupants of the White House don’t have a lot of respect for our own justice system, so it was kind of useless to expect that they’d be able to export it over there.

Michael Moore was in Seattle tonight previewing his new documentary Sicko, and I was privileged to be there in the audience. I sat next to Postman, who took copious notes, so I’ll leave it to him to describe Moore and his movie in objective detail. But I did want to briefly pass on my immediate impression.

The film was funny, it was moving, and yes, at times it was uplifting. I laughed out loud throughout, which those who know me well will tell you is a huge compliment indeed. The film also brought tears to my eyes on a number of occasions. (Postman was busy taking notes, so I don’t think he noticed. Good. I wouldn’t want him to see through my fierce facade.)

But as I sat there watching the film, I just found myself getting angrier and angrier and angrier. Angry at our health care industry, our political leaders, my nation… and myself.

Sicko opens June 29th. Watch it.

“Listen, the immigration debate is a tough debate,” Bush said. “I’m under no illusions about how hard it is. There are people in my party that don’t want a comprehensive bill. There are people in the Democrat Party that don’t seem to want a comprehensive bill.

“Now, it’s going to require leadership from the Democrat leaders in the Senate, and it’s going to require me to stay engaged and work with Republicans who want a bill,” he said. “We made two steps forward on immigration, we took a step back, and now I’m going to work with those who are focused on getting an immigration bill done and start taking some steps forward again.

Thanks Mr. President for reminding Democrats why we should be treating you like the lame duck that you are. Why are we bothering to try to work out a compromise that’s too heavily corporate and that still treats people who want to come to this country like shit when we’ll probably have a few more seats in the Senate and a Democratic president in a year and a half? Why bother giving President Bush a victory that’s starting to compromise our values?

I mean, the fact that he can’t even be bothered to not distort the name of the party he’s trying to work with was hardly the first breach of conduct (I’d say stealing the 2000 election) or the most serious (that would probably be disappearing 7 and 9 year olds but really, who knows at this point?). But someone should tell him that maybe the President of the United States should be able to get the name of the majority party in both houses of Congress right on the first try.

The party has been called the Democratic Party in one form or another (Democratic Republican for a while) at least informally since Jefferson’s day, because whatever their faults Jefferson and the people who followed him since then have been the party of the demos. The Federalist party with it’s Alien and Sedition act, and its strong use of force against the people and even more so the Whigs were pretty explicitly the party of the aristocracy. And the Republicans have been since fairly early on a big business and corporate minded party. And in most of the time that we’ve been a party, being the democratic party was considered an insult in many quarters.

Of course, it’s not an insult today, and if Bush says, “the Democratic Party” or, “Democratic Leaders” well people will hear “the democratic party” or “democratic leaders.” At But in the same way, we’re perfectly willing to call the Republicans the Republicans or the Grand Old Party, even if they aren’t grand and they are a younger party.*

There was a time when only crazies intentionally distorted the name of the Democratic Party; John Birchers, and the like who nobody took seriously. But at some point, bloggers with a screw lose (hell with a few missing) and the former House Majority Leader decided to join the act. Eventually the President started saying it. And while it may have been cute when his party ran the show in Washington, D.C., he needs us more than we need him. We can wait him the hell out, get a good deal, and not give some political cover to a madman. He’ll be gone in less than 2 years, the least you’d think that he could do was pretend to try to work with us.

*With some exceptions

Immigration is a big, big deal in agricultural communities. Fruit growers, who often vote Republican, know how important immigrant labor is to their industry, so they back common sense reform.

So it’s hilarious to read this about one of Yakima’s state rep’s [From The Other Side] moral quandary:

No part of American agriculture would benefit more from a temporary worker program than our bountiful Yakima Valley – rightfully known as the Fruit Bowl of the Nation.

But apparently Charles Ross, Yakima’s newly elected state representative and lifelong resident of these parts, is a picture of confusion on this vital national and regional issue.

Sunday’s Herald-Republic carried a full-page ad – in purple ink – that delivered this thunderous message: “WE SUPPORT COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM.”

The hundreds of names was a list of the pillars of agricuture in Central Washington: the decision-makers, major employers, orchardists, growers, packers and suppliers, many of them members of pioneer families who founded the state’s tree fruit industry.

This impressive group of industry leaders implored Congress to pass an immigration reform package that will strengthen Yakima Valley ag in particular and the American economy in general.

Fast forward to Tuesday’s Herald-Republic and read where Rep. Ross had committed to speak at a rally in downtown Yakima hosted by Grassroots on Fire – a racist organization viscerally opposed to immigration reform of any kind.

Ross canceled his appearance. But the very notion of this legislator playing footsie with the extreme right wing is disturbing to say the least. If he read Sunday’s paper, he probably saw the names of the very people who got him elected last fall – his voter base, solidly rooted in ag.

The GOP doesn’t know who to listen to- their business base or their crazy, racist/nativist base. All the while, the latino/hispanic vote, after flirting with the GOP in ’00 through ’04, is running away from the GOP.

Classic.

Convicted liar Scooter Libby lost his bid today to stay out of jail.

A few days ago I wrote a rather whimsical post about political gadflies. The post was inspired by Richard Pope filing as a Democratic candidate for King County Council, District 6. In the general election Pope will be running against the Republican incumbent, Councilmember Jane Hague.

The interesting thing about this race is that District 6 is demonstrably a strong Democratic district. For example, the 6th incorporates parts of the 32nd, 41st, 45th and 48th legislative districts for which Democrats hold eleven out of twelve legislative seats. The 6th voted 61% in favor of Cantwell in the 2006 general election.

Considering how blue the 6th is, the King County Republicans ought not ignore Richard Pope. (Besides the taste of shame in losing to Mr. Pope will be all the more bitter because of a $40,000 fine levied on them by the PDC last month for campaign finance reporting violations. Richard Pope filed the complaint that resulted in the fine.)

Also, given what a motley band of tricksters that go under the Republican brand name in this state, we might well expect some dirty pool from the King County Republicans. And when it comes to goofy tricks, the Republicans never seem to disappoint.

Case in point: if you do a WHOIS query on the domain names “RichardPope.Org” and “RichardPope.Net”, the names were registered on June 9th, 2007 by Mr. Matthew Lundh of Seattle. A quick web search reveals that Matthew Lundh is both the Political Director and the Secretary for the King County Republicans.

So far, nothing has been done with the domain names (besides making them unavailable to Mr. Pope), but it is hard to believe that collecting domain names is simply one of Mr. Lundh’s weekend hobbies.

Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but I do believe the King County Republicans are, um…rather concerned!

Thanks for the comments, folks.

Some people suggested I look for a cheap-o bike for sale on Craigslist or in the neighborhood or something. Because I’m without a car, this sort of garage sale, Craigslist type method can be a real pain. This is why I’m looking into buying from an honest-to-God store at this point.

Cross bike or Mountain bike? I’ve found that new mountain bikes are cheaper than new cross bikes. So I’m leaning mountain bike right now. The bike shop guys told me the UW campus is perhaps the most “bike theft” prone place in the Pacific Northwest. Since I plan to be riding to the UW in the relative near future, I’m very conscious of the price I’ll be paying for the bike, considering it seems likely to be stolen at some point. But if I do get into riding as a real activity, I’ll look into getting a dope ride.

drool said:

Performance Bike offers free lifetime tuneups if you buy from them at their brick/mortar store.

Very nice!

rae said:

Hopefully it goes without saying, but judging the number of cyclists I see running red lights, please remember that those and other traffic laws, apply to you as well.

Well, you’re right, but when a cyclist runs a red light, the cyclist is dead, whereas the car that hits him isn’t. Cyclist have a lot more to lose. Sometimes cyclists aren’t able to trigger the sensors in the roadway that makes the lights change. While it is technically illegal, I have no problem seeing cyclists look both ways and go.

Also, I’ve heard conflicting things about bike lanes. Use ’em or not? I’ve heard it’s safer just to ride in the regular lanes.

Yesterday, GOP frontrunner Rudy Giuliani sent out an email to supporters boldly proclaiming his “12 commitments to the American people”:

1. I will keep America on offense in the Terrorists’ War on Us.
2. I will end illegal immigration, secure our borders, and identify every non-citizen in our nation.
3. I will restore fiscal discipline and cut wasteful Washington spending.
4. I will cut taxes and reform the tax code.
5. I will impose accountability on Washington.
6. I will lead America towards energy independence.
7. I will give Americans more control over, and access to, healthcare with affordable and portable free-market solutions.
8. I will increase adoptions, decrease abortions, and protect the quality of life for our children.
9. I will reform the legal system and appoint strict constructionist judges.
10. I will ensure that every community in America is prepared for terrorist attacks and natural disasters.
11. I will provide access to a quality education to every child in America by giving real school choice to parents.
12. I will expand America’s involvement in the global economy and strengthen our reputation around the world.

And Giuliani will be able to fulfill all these campaign promises because… well… I guess, because he’s God. An angry, Old Testament God. And a somewhat nutty one, at that.

Let’s just consider Giuliani’s “12 Commitments” one at a time.

“I will keep America on offense in the Terrorists’ War on Us.”
Because “if we don’t fight them over there…” blah, blah, blah, and all that. Though a little defense wouldn’t be so bad either. You know, like protecting our ports, securing our nuclear facilities, inspecting cargo containers, and other boring stuff like that. On the bright side, in promising America an endless war, you can’t accuse Giuliani of pandering to voters by, um, actually listening to them.

“I will end illegal immigration, secure our borders, and identify every non-citizen in our nation.”
Just like he did in New York — all we need are 12 million taxi medallions. But really… identify every non-citizen in our nation? How’s he gonna do that? How large an immigration gestapo is he gonna need to “check the papers” of all 301,139,947 US citizens and residents? How militarized a border is Giuliani envisioning, and what exactly does he plan to do with the 12 million “illegals” he rounds up? I’m not sure what’s more frightening — that Giuliani thinks he can deliver on this promise… or that he wants to?

“I will restore fiscal discipline and cut wasteful Washington spending.”
For example, just think of all the wasteful spending Washington could save if the Justice Department doesn’t have to respond to habeas corpus writs from the 12 million Mexicans Giuliani plans to round up? On the other hand, fighting the eternal “War on Us”, building a wall around our nation, and identifying, detaining and deporting 12 million people, well, that costs big bucks. So I suppose to both restore fiscal discipline and pay for his ambitious foreign and domestic agenda, Giuliani is going to have to raise taxes, right?

“I will cut taxes and reform the tax code.”
Oops. My bad.

“I will impose accountability on Washington.”
And, um, I suppose if Giuliani “imposes” accountability on Washington, that must mean Washington will be accountable to him? Is he running for President or Dictator?

“I will lead America towards energy independence.”
The rendered fat from an average Mexican immigrant could fuel a bio-diesel powered SUV for a week. Hmm. Giuliani’s immigration plans are beginning to make sense.

“I will give Americans more control over, and access to, healthcare with affordable and portable free-market solutions.”
Because the ultimate “portable free-market solution” is for Americans to pick up and move to a country that actually offers affordable health care. You know, like Canada. Now if we can only sneak past the troops at the border….

“I will increase adoptions, decrease abortions, and protect the quality of life for our children.”
Just like he did as Mayor of New York. And of course, nobody is better qualified to “protect the quality of life for our children” than a man whose own kids won’t campaign for him.

“I will reform the legal system and appoint strict constructionist judges.”
We need judges who will strictly construct the US Constitution. Except for those pesky Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth and Ninth Amendments. And possibly the First. And certain inconvenient paragraphs in Article I, Section 8. And some other parts. Other than that, we need strict constructionist judges.

“I will ensure that every community in America is prepared for terrorist attacks and natural disasters.”
You know, just like Giuliani prepared New York City for 9/11 by ensuring that police, fire, and other rescue workers used communications systems that could not communicate with each other, and by insisting on locating the city’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) crisis center in the heart of New York’s most likely terrorist target. (The thousands of gallons of diesel fuel stored in WTC 7 to power OEM’s backup generators was a particularly bright idea… except for the part where the fuel spilled, burned, and likely led to the building’s collapse.) With preparation like that, who needs terrorists?

“I will provide access to a quality education to every child in America by giving real school choice to parents.”
And nothing increases access to quality education like defunding public schools by siphoning dollars to religious institutions and for-profit “charter” schools. After all, an unfettered free market always leads to the most efficient allocation of resources. (You know, except when market forces entice 12 million Mexicans to come across the border to fill low wage jobs.)

“I will expand America’s involvement in the global economy and strengthen our reputation around the world.”
… By deporting 12 million workers, and staying the course in Iraq.

Giuliani doesn’t bother to tell us how he will keep these commitments, just that he will keep them. Apparently, all of our nation’s problems could be easily solved if only America had a president who had the will to solve them. And the power to impose his will.

No, Giuliani isn’t a God, he’s just a man. A man who would impose his will on the American people. A man whose apparent embrace of unitary executive theory makes George Bush look like James Madison.

All hail Benito Giuliani.

Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns is making some very interesting claims:

NATO has intercepted Iranian weapons shipments to Afghanistan’s Taliban insurgents, providing evidence Iran is violating international law to aid a group it once considered a bitter enemy, a senior U.S. diplomat said Wednesday.

“There’s irrefutable evidence the Iranians are now doing this,” Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said on CNN. “It’s certainly coming from the government of Iran. It’s coming from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard corps command, which is a basic unit of the Iranian government.”

I’ve written a lot about Afghanistan at Reload, and I just want to quickly explain why we should be very skeptical of what Burns is saying. This post will be short on links because I’m on my lunch break, and I don’t have time to look up everything I’ve cited in the past on this.

Long story short, Afghanistan, as we all know, is the major opium producing country in the world – by far. The heroin that’s produced in hidden labs throughout Afghanistan is smuggled out in several different directions, most of which ends up in Europe, but a growing percentage stays in the countries along the smuggling routes (India, Pakistan, Russia, and Iran). Iran actually has one of the worst heroin problems in the world, and this is very clearly something that the theocratic Iranian leadership is not happy about.

The attempts by NATO forces and the Karzai government to destroy the opium production from within Afghanistan is beyond futile. The industry is roughly one half of the entire country’s GDP. You can’t just wipe that out militarily. Even with the unanimous support from outside the country to eliminate the trade, drug smugglers still dominate large areas of Afghanistan – especially in the south. But because the trade is still illegal, and coalition forces still have a mandate to assist the Karzai government in destroying the opium fields, the Taliban have been able to set up a protection racket, where they can collect ‘fees’ from the drug smugglers in exchange for making sure that their fields are spared when the eradication teams come through.

The Taliban doesn’t get paid in stacks of bills, though. Instead, they get paid in something that’s more valuable to them – weapons that they can use to fight the coalition forces. That’s where the Iranians come in. Seeing the massive increase in drug smuggling coming across the Iran-Afghanistan border, the Iranian government began to more heavily patrol the area. The intention was never to arm the Taliban, but that was the inevitable result. The Iranian government is notoriously unable to enforce its own strict laws, and high-ranking Iranian officials were bound to find ways to get in on the massive profits to be made by helping all that heroin make its way to London. This is why Iranian arms have ended up in the arms of the Taliban.

Obviously, these accusations aren’t coming out of nowhere. We’ve got a fleet of warships off the southern Iranian coast and we continue to have dimwitted Congressmen making severe threats against the regime. There’s a strong movement among a small subset of Americans to start a war with Iran, a move that would end in disaster. Those of us who still have our common sense intact need to keep dealing with the facts.