Chart of the Day

Obamacare bends the cost curve...up. Completely predictable given all the mandates on insurers. The WSJ explains: (H/T:  Hotair)

Regardless of the health law, national health spending has been rising in recent years and economists expect that to continue. In February, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services projected that overall national health spending would increase an average of 6.1% a year over the next decade.

The center's economists recalculated the numbers in light of the health bill and now project that the increase will average 6.3% a year, according to a report in the journal Health Affairs. Total U.S. health spending will reach $4.6 trillion by 2019, accounting for nearly one of every five U.S. dollars spent, the report says.

"The overall net impact is moderate," said lead author Andrea Sisko, an economist at the Medicare agency. "The underlying impacts on coverage and financing are more pronounced."

The Role of Religion in Democracy

Christopher Hitchens has an illuminating column in Slate protesting the "untrammeled" free exercise of religion. As a Christian, I don't share his hostility to organized religion, but he is in a sense correct in pointing out that religious freedom cannot be used to justify intolerance or radically different cultural practices that subvert one's allegiance to the Constitution beneath that of their church.  He takes on many  denominations: Jews, Christians, the Catholic Church, Mormons, Scientology. He saves Islam for last as he mocks the ridiculous comparison some Muslims draw between folks who protest the ground zero mosque, and those of bigoted anti-Semites:

Now to Islam. It is, first, a religion that makes very large claims for itself, purporting to be the last and final word of God and expressing an ambition to become the world's only religion. Some of its adherents follow or advocate the practice of plural marriage, forced marriage, female circumcision, compulsory veiling of women, and censorship of non-Muslim magazines and media. Islam's teachings generally exhibit suspicion of the very idea of church-state separation. Other teachings, depending on context, can be held to exhibit a very strong dislike of other religions, as well as of heretical forms of Islam. Muslims in America, including members of the armed forces, have already been found willing to respond to orders issued by foreign terrorist organizations. Most disturbingly, no authority within the faith appears to have the power to rule decisively that such practices, or such teachings, or such actions, are definitely and utterly in conflict with the precepts of the religion itself. 

Reactions from even "moderate" Muslims to criticism are not uniformly reassuring. "Some of what people are saying in this mosque controversy is very similar to what German media was saying about Jews in the 1920s and 1930s," Imam Abdullah Antepli, Muslim chaplain at Duke University, told the New York Times. Yes, we all recall the Jewish suicide bombers of that period, as we recall the Jewish yells for holy war, the Jewish demands for the veiling of women and the stoning of homosexuals, and the Jewish burning of newspapers that published cartoons they did not like. What is needed from the supporters of this very confident faith is more self-criticism and less self-pity and self-righteousness.

Those who wish that there would be no mosques in America have already lost the argument: Globalization, no less than the promise of American liberty, mandates that the United States will have a Muslim population of some size. The only question, then, is what kind, or rather kinds, of Islam it will follow. There's an excellent chance of a healthy pluralist outcome, but it's very unlikely that this can happen unless, as with their predecessors on these shores, Muslims are compelled to abandon certain presumptions that are exclusive to themselves. The taming and domestication of religion is one of the unceasing chores of civilization. Those who pretend that we can skip this stage in the present case are deluding themselves and asking for trouble not just in the future but in the immediate present.

This is why multiculturalists are deluding themselves in believing many cultures can wholly retain their autonomy yet still peacefully co-exist in a democratic society. One only needs to look at the angry  nativism rising in Europe, a frustrated response to the the carving out of separate Islamic sectors in society, to see how such a policy has balkanized those countries.  Different cultures have thrived in America only because they assimilated themselves to the enduring values of America being founded on a civic ideal; of a nation-state not built on race, ethnicity, or religion, but instead, on dedication to a limited government where individuals participate in self-governance, and respect the rule of law which applies equally to all.  Immigrants to America retain some of their culture; they speak their own languages, create their own communities, and practice some of their customs in both the private and public sphere. But as Hitchens notes, just as we demanded that the Mormons in Utah give up polygamy before joining the union, we must also ask Muslims to do the same to be part of western society.  So in a sense, we do ask they give up some of their culture to be part of the ideal of America.  

Was Iraq Worth It?

As Operation New Dawn unfolds in Iraq, Anne Applebaum asks the pivotal question. Like Applebaum, I supported the Iraq war, the surge, and believe it became an integral part to the war on terror.  However, she rightfully captures our actions came at some high costs to include:

America's reputation for effectiveness. The victory was swift, but the occupation was chaotic. The insurgency appeared to take Washington by surprise, and no wonder: The Pentagon was squabbling with the State Department, the soldiers had no instructions and didn't speak the language. The overall impression, in Iraq and everywhere else, was of American incompetence—and, after Abu Ghraib, of stupidity and cruelty as well. Two years ago, a poll showed that vast numbers of our closest friends felt that the "mismanagement" of Iraq—not the "invasion" of Iraq—was the biggest stumbling block for allies of the United States.

No wonder, then, that America's ability to organize a coalition has also suffered. Participation in the Iraq war cost Tony Blair his reputation and the Spanish government an election. After an initial surge of support, the Iraqi occupation proved unpopular even in countries where America is popular, such as Italy and Poland. Almost no country that participated in the conflict derived any economic or diplomatic benefits from doing so. None received special U.S. favors—not even Georgia, which sent 2,000 soldiers and received precisely zero U.S. support during its military conflict with Russia.
It will be a lot harder to get any of the "coalition of the willing" to fight with us again. Indeed, "Iraq" is part of the reason why there is so little enthusiasm for Afghanistan and why it is so difficult to put organized pressure on Iran.

Another victim of the conflict was America's ability to influence the Middle East. Admittedly, we were never as good at this as we would like to be, but the chaos in Iraq has clearly strengthened Iran. It has had no positive impact on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By helping raise the price of oil for a few years—this was supposed to be a "war for oil"; remember that?—it has also strengthened Saudi Arabia, the regime that produced 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers.

Of course, the high oil price also strengthened Russia and Venezuela—not that anyone has much noticed—because another casualty of the Iraq war has been America's ability to think like a global power. Even if we eventually pull out of Iraq altogether, we will have been bogged down in that country for the decade that also saw China's rise to real world-power status, Latin America's drift to the far left, and Russia's successful use of pipeline politics to divide Europe—all trends that commanded hardly any attention from the Bush administration and so far even less from Obama.

In the end, the jury is still out on this.  We cannot leave Iraq anytime soon if we have any hopes of containing Iran. Already, the Iraqi Defense Minister is making statements that the US needs to maintain a presence in Iraq until at least 2016. It's still unclear whether Turkey, the one regional power that can counter Iran, would be willing to do so, with the Islamists gaining political power. Despite the grand bargain wishful thinking of the Obama administration, the Iranians have little reason to enter into comprehensive diplomatic negotiation with us, that is, unless they truly believe we will strike them. And not just their nuclear facilities--but take away their ability to project offensive power in the region, and cripple their hegemonic ambitions. But I simply don't believe it's in the President's DNA to launch a new war.  An if they assess that as well, they just have to wait for our withdrawal out of both Iraq and Afghanistan.

If our diplomacy is adept enough though, a stable Iraq that is not betrothed to Iran, or permanently Lebanon-ized in sectarian factions, will be a remarkable force for political and cultural reform in the Middle East for decades. If the earlier outcomes prevail though, the whole project will have to be deemed a failure. Time will only tell.