Do Americans overestimate what we spend on "foreign aid," or do they just have a different definition of "foreign aid"?

From 2018:

You’ve probably heard the statistic: “On average, Americans think 28 percent of the federal budget is spent on foreign aid, when it is about one percent.”

Reporters repeat versions of this “foreign aid” factoid all the time, sometimes with a certain anti-populist glee. As Ezra Klein notes, the foreign aid budget estimate is the “example budget wonks turn to when they want to underscore the public’s ignorance.” [Washington Post link.] ... A 2012 opinion piece in USA Today cited the foreign aid statistic to make the case that “not everyone should” vote.

In other words, the public’s foreign aid budget estimate underwrites an awful lot of doubt about the capacity of Americans to judge public policy.

The problem is, that statistic is quite misleading.... Americans commonly think of foreign aid as including military spending—and no surprise, given America’s enormous military budget, this inflates their estimates of the foreign aid budget....

When leaders use the language of humanitarianism to describe military endeavors, it is no wonder many Americans see defense department expenditures as a kind of foreign aid, and assume our foreign aid budget is enormous.

Also, people like to say foreign aid is only about 1% of the whole federal budget, but Wikipedia says it's about 8% of the federal deficit. That's significant. And we’ll be paying that back with interest in the future.

Trump on the Kurds: "They didn't help us in the second World War"

President Donald Trump said that yesterday, even though more than 10,000 Kurds have died helping us fight ISIS.

It used to be that presidents and presidential candidates would argue for their policies by pointing out that "the Cold War is over" (for instance, George W. Bush and Obama have both said those exact words). Now, Trump doesn't want to admit that World War II is over.

Why the terrorists hate us

Within the last couple years, ISIS or people associated with it have apparently attacked a pop concert in Manchester, England, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and a rock concert in Paris, France.

These are not the kinds of attacks you'd carry out if your goal were to protest US foreign policy. This is what you'd do if you hated great Western countries for our freedom. There is no way to appease the mass murderers' demands without giving up our whole culture.

25 years ago today: "Kuwait is liberated."

On February 27, 1991, President George H.W. Bush announced the end of the Gulf War.

"If elected, Clinton will be another 'war president' at a time when America desperately needs peace."

So says the Nation, endorsing Bernie Sanders — only the third presidential endorsement the magazine has made in 150 years. Excerpt:

Hillary Clinton is a candidate who combines unmatched experience with intelligence, grit, and strength. She has responded to the populist temper of the times: questioning the sort of free-trade deals that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have championed; calling for reforms on Wall Street and tax increases on the wealthy; courageously defending Planned Parenthood; challenging the National Rifle Association; and supporting trade unions. If nominated, she would be far more preferable to any of the extremists running for the GOP nomination (and so would former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley). We understand that keeping the presidency out of the hands of right-wing Republicans is crucial, especially when the next president will reshape the Supreme Court. And there is no denying that if she were elected, Clinton would shatter the thickest glass ceiling and champion women’s rights in a way that no other president has.

But the limits of a Clinton presidency are clear. Her talk of seeking common ground with Republicans and making deals to “get things done” in Washington will not bring the change that is so desperately needed. Clinton is open to raising the Social Security retirement age, and her plan falls short of increasing benefits for all. She rejects single-payer healthcare and refuses to consider breaking up the big banks. We also fear that she might accept a budgetary “grand bargain” with the Republicans that would lock in austerity for decades to come.

On foreign policy, Clinton is certainly seasoned, but her experience hasn’t prevented her from getting things wrong. Clinton now says that her 2002 vote to authorize George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq was a mistake, but she apparently learned little from it. Clinton was a leading advocate for overthrowing Moammar El-Gadhafi in Libya, leaving behind a failed state that provides ISIS with an alternative base. She supported calls for the United States to help oust Bashar al-Assad in Syria, an approach that has added fuel to a horrific civil war. She now advocates a confrontation with Russia in Syria by calling for a no-fly zone. Her support for President Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran was marred by an explicit rejection of better relations with that country and bellicose pledges to provide Israel with more arms. If elected, Clinton will be another “war president” at a time when America desperately needs peace.

Sanders’s approach is different and better. The senator hasn’t talked as much as we would like about global challenges and opportunities, and we urge him to focus more on foreign policy. But what he has said (and done) inspires confidence. An opponent of the Iraq War from the start, he criticizes the notion of “regime change” and the presumption that America alone must police the world. He rejects a new Cold War with Russia. He supports the nuclear-weapons agreement with Iran, and he would devote new energy to dismantling nuclear arsenals and pursuing nonproliferation. He has long been an advocate for normalizing relations with Cuba and for reviving a good-neighbor policy in the hemisphere. Sanders’s foreign policy would also create conditions for rebuilding a broadly shared prosperity at home. He would lead an international effort to end the crippling austerity that threatens to create another global recession, and he would champion a green New Deal to combat climate change. And as a leader of the opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, he would undo the corporate-defined trade regime that has devastated America’s middle class.

Critics of Bernie Sanders dismiss him as an idealist (he is!) on a quixotic crusade. Meanwhile, the corporate media has paid shamefully little attention to his campaign’s achievements, instead lavishing attention on the latest outrageous pronouncements by Donald Trump and the Republican candidates struggling to compete with him. Nonetheless, polls show that Sanders—even as he still introduces himself to many voters—is well poised to take on the eventual GOP nominee, frequently doing better than Clinton in these matchups. Moreover, in contrast to the modest audiences at Clinton’s campaign stops, the huge crowds at Sanders’s grassroots rallies indicate that he’ll be able to boost turnout in November.

Live-blogging the first main Republican debate since terrorist attacks in Paris and California

I'll be live-blogging the debate here — while trying to make risotto! Keep reloading this post for more updates.

There's more live-blogging going on by National Review, TPM, Althouse (my mom), and Alex Knepper.

8:49 — Rand Paul gives an opening statement strongly bearing down on his unorthodox views on foreign policy and terrorism.

8:50 — John Kasich says his daughter doesn't like politics because it's too darn loud.

8:53 — Carly Fiorina says, "It's time to take our country back" — but "insults won't take our country back." She describes how she's been repeatedly tested, including being "called every B word in the book."

8:54 — Jeb Bush's theme (in his attempt to salvage his campaign) is that these are "serious times," so we need a serious leader like him.

8:56 — Marco Rubio reminisces about his grandfather telling him they're in the greatest country in the history of the world — in contrast with President Obama, who wants America to be more like the rest of the world.

8:58 — Ben Carson begins his opening statement with a moment of silence for the victims of the attack on San Bernardino.

9:01 — Moderator Wolf Blitzer asks Donald Trump if "the way to make America great again is to isolate ourselves from the world."

9:03 — When Bush is asked about Trump's proposal to bar non-American Muslims from entering the country, Bush hits Trump hard, calling him "unhinged" and unfit to be commander-in-chief. "He is a chaos candidate, and he would be a chaos president." [VIDEO.]

9:06 — Cruz is asked about Trump's proposal, and doesn't take the bait to attack Trump. He briefly says he "understand[s]" why Trump proposed it, and quickly pivots to attacking Obama.

9:09 — Fiorina focuses on technology, noting that social media as we know it didn't exist when the Patriot Act was enacted.

9:13 — Kasich emphasizes the need to work with our Arab and European allies.

9:14 — Cruz stands by his vote for a law to reform our "bulk collection of metadata of law-abiding citizens." Rubio disagrees: "We are now at a time when we need more tools, not less tools." Cruz retorts by calling Rubio a liar, saying he "knows that what he is saying is not true."

9:17 — Paul agrees with Cruz's vote but takes a much stronger position, saying the metadata collection made us "less safe." Paul adds that Rubio is "the weakest of all the candidates on immigration" since he's for "an open border." "Rubio has more of an allegiance to Chuck Schumer and the liberals than to conservative policy." [VIDEO.]

9:20 — Christie slams all three of the Senators who were talking about metadata — Cruz, Rubio, and Paul — suggesting that they've "never had to make a consequential decision." Christie declares that the viewers "don't care" about "which bill these guys like more."

9:22 — Bush on surveillance by the FBI and NSA: "We shouldn't even be talking about it!"

9:26 — Fiorina points out that Obama should have consulted with "the private sector" while creating the infamous healthcare.gov.

9:33 — Alex Knepper observes:

The right whines about 'political correctness' so often that it is starting to truly degrade the power of the term, much like 'racist' doesn't have the impact it used to due to overuse by the left.

9:36 — Another dust-up between Rubio and Cruz on fighting terrorism.

9:37 — Trump is asked why he supports killing terrorists' families. Trump says: "That will make [terrorists] think, because they may not care much about their lives, but they do, believe it or not, care about their families." Bush says that's "crazy." Trump retorts that Bush is "very nice," but "we need toughness." They then descend into crosstalk, aggressively interrupting each other. Trump: "I know you're trying to build up your energy, Jeb, but it's not working!"

9:43 — Paul says Trump's proposal on the internet would require getting rid of the First Amendment, and his position on terrorists' families would require us to withdraw from the Geneva Convention. Trump responds incredulously: "So they can kill us, but we can't kill them?!" When Trump clarifies his position on the internet, the audience boos, and Trump directly tells the audience he can't understand why they're booing: "These are people who want to kill us!"

9:48 — Rubio sounds impressive with his knowledge of Syria, but Paul interjects: "That's factually incorrect."

9:50 — Fiorina, who explicitly refused to play the gender card in the first main debate that included her (see 10:55 here), quotes Margaret Thatcher: "If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman." [Ian Tuttle of National Review objects: "Conservatives are respecters of individuals, and of reasoned arguments over mating calls, and should act and speak accordingly."]

9:54 — As CNN cuts to a commercial and the camera backs away from the stage, we see some revealing body language: Cruz shakes Trump's hand, and Trump pats Cruz on the back, while Trump, with a serious look on his face, appears to say just a couple words to Cruz.

9:58 — Cruz maintains that the focus should be on killing terrorists rather than promoting democracy.

9:59 — Cruz mocks Obama for seeking to work with "moderate rebels." "It's like a purple unicorn — they never exist!" [VIDEO.]

10:01 — Trump pauses for a few seconds while a protester yells during his time. Then Trump says we should have taken the $4 or 5 trillion we spent on "nation building," which we got "nothing" out of, and instead spent it on infrastructure in the United States. Fiorina: "That's exactly what Obama said!"

10:04 — In response to a series of questions about whether to try to spread democracy in the Middle East, Carson points out that on airplanes, the announcement says that in case of an emergency, you should put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others. "We need oxygen now."

10:07 — Cruz obnoxiously keeps speaking while Blitzer tries to cue Hugh Hewitt to ask Trump a question, and the audience boos Cruz.

10:11 — My mind was starting to wander amid all this foreign policy talk, but then Kasich grabbed my attention by saying: "It's time that we punched the Russians in the nose."

10:14 — Christie calls Obama a "feckless weakling." Christie says he'd shoot down Russian planes in a no-fly zone over Syria, even if this would risk war with Russia. "It's called a no-fly zone. Maybe it's because I'm from New Jersey — I just have this plain-language hang-up." Paul responds, while pointing to Christie: "If you're in favor of World War III, you have your candidate!"

10:16 — Bush's explanation for why he'd be better than Trump at dealing with Russian President Vladimir Putin: "I know what I don't know. I will seek out the advice." Knepper says:

Jeb "Socrates" Bush knows what he doesn't know! (But can he be as wise as Rumsfeld and consider what he doesn't know he doesn't know?)

10:18 — Trump scolds the moderators for starting so many of their questions, especially in the earlier debate (with the lower-tier candidates) with asking about what "Mr. Trump" has said. Trump says it's "in order to get ratings," and it's "very unprofessional." Bush suggests that if Trump thinks this debate is "tough," he isn't ready to be president. Trump sarcastically responds, "Oh yeah, you're a tough guy, Jeb!" [VIDEO.]

10:21 — Carson says just because he's quiet and not "boisterous" doesn't mean he wouldn't be a strong leader. "I don't do a lot of talking. I do a lot of doing." (So there, Carly Fiorina!)

10:25 — CNN gets Cruz and Rubio to go after each other for a third time, this time over immigration. CNN has used a split screen of the two every time this happens, clearly trying to play up the rivalry between the two 44-year-old first-term Senators. Yet again, Cruz accuses Rubio of lying about Cruz's record: "It's like saying the firefighter and the arsonist have the same record because they're both at the scene of the fire." [VIDEO.] [Added later: Politico says this was the #1 "takeaway" from the debate:]

Rubio is the Barack Obama of 2008: He rises to big moments, lives up to the hype, and is a gifted communicator and performer. There’s a reason Hillary Clinton allies fear Rubio, and are suddenly publicly pushing the idea that the GOP nominee will be Cruz, an opponent they would much prefer.

Rubio is better than Obama was at this point in ’08, and way more consistent. Tangling with Cruz, Rubio was much more detailed and convincing.

10:29 — Trump calls himself "very hard-line" on immigration. "You just need to speak to the people of Israel — walls work, if they're properly constructed. I know how to build."

10:34 — Paul is asked whether he'd send home the 2,000 Syrian refugees who have already been admitted to the US. He says he "hasn't taken a position" on that, but he wouldn't allow any new ones.

10:35 — A college student, asking a question by video, suggests that taking in Syrian refugees is biblically mandated. Christie responds directly to the student, saying his top priority as president would be to keep her and her family safe. (I wish he had added that the role of government is not to carry out biblical mandates.)

10:45 — I've found Carson dull throughout this debate. He tries to show off his knowledge by listing the antiquated weapons in our arsenal. I've been mostly tuning out this latter part of the debate — it's hard to pay attention to two hours of fast talk about foreign policy in the evening.

10:51 — Trump and Cruz are both asked about their willingness or unwillingness to attack each other in public. Trump pats Cruz on the back and says he's gotten to know Cruz better just in the last 3 or 4 days. At the beginning of Cruz's answer, Trump interjects: "You better not attack!" They both decline the invitation to attack each other.

10:54 — Trump is asked if he can assure us that he'll "run as a Republican and abide by the decision of the Republicans." "I really am. . . . I'm totally committed to the Republican Party. . . . I'll do everything in my power to beat Hillary Clinton." [VIDEO.]

11:03 — Bush stumbles through his closing statement. You can sense that he knows he's not doing enough in this debate.

11:06 — In Trump's closing statement (the last one of the night), he seems to be exhausted, running out of steam — as if he's one of those dolls who says a few recorded statements when you pull a string on its back, but the batteries are running low: "We aren't winning anymore . . . If I am president, we will win again. We will have a great, great country — greater than ever before."

"Do not write about this trade."

“Don’t you dare.”

How did Europe come to dominate the world by 1914?

In two words, war and taxes:

Between 1492 and 1914, Europeans conquered 84 percent of the globe, establishing colonies and spreading their influence across every inhabited continent. This was not inevitable. In fact, for decades, historians, social scientists, and biologists have wondered: Why and how did Europe rise to the top, even when societies in Asia and the Middle East were far more advanced?

So far, satisfactory answers have been elusive. But this question is of the utmost importance given that Europe’s power determined everything from who ran the slave trade to who grew rich or remained mired in poverty. . . .

Mostly, it derived from the incentives that political leaders faced in Europe—incentives that drove them not just to make war, but also to spend huge sums on it. Yes, the European monarchs built palaces, but even the huge Chateau at Versailles cost King Louis XIV less than two percent of his tax revenue. The rest went to fighting wars. He and the other kings in Europe had been raised since childhood to pursue glory on the battlefield, yet they bore none of the costs involved—not even the risk of losing their thrones after a defeat. Leaders elsewhere faced radically different incentives, which kept many of them militarily weak. In China, for example, emperors were encouraged to keep taxes low and to attend to people’s livelihoods rather than to pursue the sort of military glory that obsessed European kings.

For this and a variety of other reasons, leaders outside of Europe could not match Europe’s innovations in warfare innovation. The huge sums of money showered on fighting in Europe gave military leaders the flexibility to buy new weapons and battleships and try out new tactics, fortifications, and methods of supply. In the process, they learned from their mistakes and improved their technologies. And because European countries were small and geographically close, they could easily learn from their rivals’ errors and copy their improvements. . . .

Europe’s ability to tax was no small achievement. China could not raise equivalent tax revenues, even in the nineteenth century. And countries in sub-Saharan Africa today still lack the basic capacity to tax, which keeps them from providing security and other basic public goods to their citizens.

Europe had yet another advantage as well: its entrepreneurs were free to use gunpowder technology to mount expeditions of conquest, colonization, and militarized trade. Although they usually needed official permission to launch a voyage, entrepreneurs were often encouraged by authorities eager to find riches abroad. And they had no trouble acquiring weapons or finding battle-hardened veterans to train military novices who joined their undertakings. By the seventeenth century, such private expeditions had spawned gigantic enterprises that raised huge sums on Europe’s burgeoning capital markets to finance ventures abroad, enterprises such as the Dutch East India Company, which was not only a private arm of Dutch foreign policy, but also the first business to issue tradable shares of stock.

A final difference between Europe and the rest of the world lies in political history. From 221 B.C. onward, China, more often than not, was unified in a large empire. The Chinese empire soon developed a centralized bureaucracy that drew local elites into government service and gave them a stake in the empire’s survival. The rewards of government service helped hold the empire together, and as long as the empire was strong and unified, other East Asian powers hesitated to attack it. This meant that China had little incentive to seek out new enemies or opportunities.

Western Europe, by contrast, experienced no such lasting unification after the collapse of the Roman Empire. What it endured instead were centuries of warfare by bands of warriors whose leaders resembled modern-day warlords. The incessant fighting groomed leaders who were victorious in war. The conflict also generated enduring enmities between leaders and their followers, enmities that eventually hardened into lasting political borders. It was such ill will—and not Europe’s physical geography—that kept any single leader from ever uniting Western Europe in the sort of durable empire that prevailed for centuries in China. In the long run, the winners in Western Europe were the military leaders who learned how to impose heavy taxes to fund their fighting, and as a result, Europe ended up with kings who spent pharaonic sums on warfare and who had, in the words of Machiavelli, “no object, thought, or profession but war.”

Without a single-minded focus on war and the extraordinary ability to tax, there may never have been any European empires. The wars and the taxes lavished on them gave the Europeans an enormous lead in military technology. This enabled their conquests, and allowed them to keep native populations under control without stationing large numbers of European troops abroad. Without such advantages, the Europeans might have grown rich anyway—and perhaps even industrialized early—but they would not have dominated the world in 1914.

Happy Columbus Day!

Trump's tax plan

I keep hearing that Donald Trump isn't a serious candidate, that he's a joke, that he's too egotistical and bombastic, etc.

I'm not a fan of Trump, and I don't plan to vote for him. But I don't think he's a joke, and I think the tax plan he announced today deserves serious consideration.

Oh, I'm not convinced by his statements that his plan won't increase the debt — I'm always unimpressed by politicians who argue, essentially, that their policies are so brilliant that they'll lead to so much economic growth that we won't have to worry about fiscal responsibility. That strikes me as wishful thinking.

However, I commend Trump for breaking with the Republican orthodoxy that there must be no tax increases: Trump has admitted that some rich people's taxes will go up, including his, while most people's taxes will go down.

I'm also glad to see that he's not cowed by Republican attacks on those who don't pay any net federal taxes as freeloaders or moochers; he calls for eliminating income taxes for single people earning $25,000 or less and married couples jointly earning $50,000 or less.

And here's something else I'd like to know, especially if you're someone who writes off Trump as unserious or crazy or a joke: Why isn't Trump exactly right in what he says shortly after 12:30 in this video — that we've been losing a ridiculous amount of money by maintaining bases in other countries like Germany and Saudi Arabia, and it's time to renegotiate those deals? How does it make sense for us to provide security to a variety of countries around the world without getting paid back? Why isn't the status quo crazy? Why isn't the status quo a joke?

Live-blogging the foreign policy debate

9:22 - President Obama says that every time Mitt Romney has taken a position on foreign policy, he's been wrong. Then he praises Romney for supporting Obama's war in Libya.

9:38 - Obama criticizes Romney for cutting education spending as Governor of Massachusetts. I thought this was supposed to be a foreign policy debate. Also, I hate the debate tactic of pointing out that someone has cut spending. That's not very informative, and it's not inherently bad to cut spending on something important. How efficiently were those dollars spent?

9:41 - Romney: "Our Air Force is older and smaller than it's been since 1947." Well, of course it's older than it's ever been before! Everything is always older than ever before.

9:44 - Obama to Romney: "Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets. . . . It's not a game of counting battleships." Good point, but Obama made the same fallacy on education spending. [Update: Actually, the point about bayonets wasn't so great.]

9:46 - Obama says our sanctions against Iran are "crippling its economy." He adds: "Their economy is in shambles." Bragging about destroying a whole nation's economy seems rather callous.

9:59 - Romney has said the word "tumult" several times tonight.

10:01 - Romney describes Obama's foreign policy with words like "tumult," "turmoil," "tension." Obama says Romney has been "all over the map," whereas Obama's decisions aren't "poll-tested." If this debate has any purpose, it's for the candidates to seem presidential while repeating these kinds of buzzwords to frame the other side. I find it hard to believe that many voters are going to make their decision based on any substantive differences on foreign policy the candidates are airing tonight.

10:04 - Obama points out that many people in his administration, including his own vice president, were opposed to his decision to kill Osama bin Laden.

10:08 - Obama is beating Romney in the contest to mention as many regular citizens as possible.

10:11 - Romney is asked what he thinks about Obama's drone war. We don't get much in the way of details about what the drone war is actually doing, either from the moderator's question or Romney's answer: "I support that entirely." When it's Obama's turn to respond, he doesn't even mention his drone attacks, but talks vaguely about feel-good concepts like government reform in nations we're "engaging with," women's rights, etc.

10:15 - A Facebook friend says the moderator, Bob Schieffer, referred to "Obama bin Laden," but I didn't notice it.

10:19 - Romney accuses China of "artificially holding down the value of their currency." In other words, China is making our dollar stronger, and Romney would like our dollar to be weaker.

10:24 - Romney criticizes the US policy of "writing checks" to bail out the car industry — which, he points out, started with President Bush.

10:25 - Romney says he's in favor of public investing in "basic research," not "investing in companies." Actually, that's a surprisingly euphemistic way for him to refer to Obama's policy of transferring taxpayers' money to corporations.

10:28 - Romney finally catches up with his references to ordinary people in swing states. This is now the second debate where Appleton, Wisconsin (population 78,000) has been mentioned.

10:35 - The debates are over. Do you think the campaigns made an agreement that the candidates would have the exact same interaction at the beginning and end of each debate? They always pat each other on the side of the arm while laughing, as if one of them had said something funny in the previous split-second.

My mom, Ann Althouse, sums up the debate:

By adopting a strategy of only modestly challenging Obama and mostly seeming the same as Obama on foreign policy, Romney neutralized foreign policy as an issue and kept the election focus on the economy. He even refocused the discussion on the economy whenever he could over the course of the evening. The election is about the economy, and nothing either candidate said tonight will change that. The only way Obama really could have won is if Romney had tumbled into some kind of exploitable gaffe. That didn't happen.

Mitt Romney on what President Obama isn't allowed to say about foreign policy

"Shorter Romney: Obama has to stop apologizing for America and stop taking credit for defending America" — Bill Scher (on Twitter)

Live-blogging tonight's Republican presidential debate on foreign policy

[Here's the transcript.]

Keep reloading this page for updates!

8:11 - Wolf Blitzer gives an example of an introduction, saying: "I'm Wolf Blitzer, and yes, that is my real name." Mitt Romney says that "Mitt" is also his real first name. Not according to Wikipedia! [UPDATE: TalkingPointsMemo, which makes a lot of money by posting attack ads against Romney, is running this headline:]

Mitt Romney Flip Flops On His Own Name

8:15 - For the first time, Newt Gingrich goes first. He says he wouldn't "change" the Patriot Act, but would "look at strengthening it."

8:17 - Ron Paul mentions Timothy McVeigh as an example of a terrorist who was dealt with in the criminal justice system. Gingrich says, as if this were a knock-down argument against Ron Paul, "But Timothy McVeigh succeeded!" Is Gingrich suggesting that McVeigh shouldn't have been criminally prosecuted?

8:20 - Jon Huntsman says that Tom Ridge was a "great Secretary of Homeland Security." I don't remember many people saying this at the time.

8:22 - Rick Perry says he would criminalize TSA pat-downs and privatize the TSA.

8:23 - Rick Santorum agrees with Perry. "We should be trying to find bombers, not bombs."

(As always, I'm writing down these quotes on the fly, not using a transcript, so they might not be verbatim.)

8:24 - The moderator asks Santorum what kind of profiling he'd support. Santorum says you should look for "Muslims," as well as "younger males." Ron Paul says: "What about Timothy McVeigh?" That sounds like an example of the kinds of people Santorum wanted to focus on! He was a young man.

8:27 - Herman Cain calls Wolf Blitzer "Blitz." A little later he makes fun of himself for the slip, saying he meant "Wolf." Wolf Blitzer says: "Thank you, Cain!"

8:31 - Michele Bachmann hones her answer from the last foreign-policy debate about why she supports continuing to give aid to Pakistan. She points out that we need to maintain our relationship with Pakistan because they give us intelligence information about terrorism. Perry disagrees, without explaining what he thinks is wrong with Bachmann's reasoning. After Perry says he wouldn't give any financial aid to Pakistan, Bachmann's says that's "highly naive."

8:36 - Romney supports spending hundreds of billions of dollars in Afghanistan for years to come. "We need to bring them into the 21st century — or the 20th century, for that matter." Huntsman "strongly disagree[s]." There's a very long back-and-forth between Romney and Huntsman, which might be a first in all the debates. Romney emphasizes listening to the generals, whereas Huntsman says you still need to make your own decision as commander-in-chief.

8:41 - Gingrich: "We were told that killing bin Laden in Pakistan brought our relations with Pakistan to a new low. Well, it should have!"

8:48 - There's a bizarrely long lull while they wait for someone in the audience to ask a question.

8:50 - Paul: "Why does Israel need our help? They need us to get out of the way."

8:51 - Paul reveals Israel's open secret, saying they have "200, 300 nuclear missiles."

8:53 - Perry says he would "sanction the Iranian central bank." Doesn't "sanction" as a verb have the opposite meaning from "sanction" as a noun?

8:56 - In response to a question by former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Santorum strongly supports humanitarian assistance to Africa in fighting AIDS. He rebukes the candidates who oppose foreign aid (Perry, Gingrich, and Paul).

9:05 - Blitzer asks Gingrich if he would bomb Iran. He says only as a last resort, and only to change the regime.

9:06 - Huntsman is asked if he would support cuts to the defense budget. He says we can't have any "sacred cows" in reducing the debt. "Everything's gotta be on the table. The Defense Department has gotta be on the table." If we can't find any cuts there, "we're not looking hard enough."

9:21 - Adam Sorensen of Time Magazine points out that Cain is "still giving the 'I'll wing it' answer on every question."

9:27 - Paul: "The federal war on drugs has been a failure." Blitzer asks if this means we should legalize all drugs. Paul says he would at least legalize medical marijuana. He adds that prescription drugs are more dangerous than illegal drugs. "And believe me, the kids can still get the drugs."

9:31 - Is there some rule that every debate needs to bring up immigration, but only near the end? There seems to be some consensus that immigration is so important that it always needs to be debated, but it's unimportant enough to wait till the audience has stopped paying attention.

9:34 - Gingrich seems to be doing about half of the talking in this debate. Paul seems to be speaking more than Romney or Perry.

9:41 - Blitzer says we'll have "much more" after a commercial. The debate has been going on for over an hour and a half — I don't know if I can take "much more."

9:54 - Wolf Blitzer asks all the candidates to quickly answer a question about what national-security issue no one is talking about that they wish would be talked about. Santorum says South America. Paul says Afghanistan. Perry says China. Romney agrees with Santorum: South America. Cain: cyber-attacks. Gingrich agrees with Cain and adds: electromagnetic pulse attacks. Bachmann: Iraq. Huntsman: the United States economy.

Now that the debate is mercifully over after 2 whole hours, a couple non-live points:

Perry said that Hezbollah and Hamas have infiltrated Mexico to try to enter the United States:



Josh Marshall at TPM thinks the most important event of the night was Gingrich's comments on immigration. Marshall says:

Newt’s edging into the GOP danger zone here on immigration. He really did say he’d provide a path to legality, though not citizenship, to a substantial number of the current undocumented population. Bachmann called him on it. And he denied he said it. But Bachmann, I think, was right. He did say it.

Now, [that's] an immensely logical thing for Newt to say — that you’re not going to be uprooting and separating families who’ve been here for a quarter century.

But this is toxic in GOP primary politics. It helped sink Rick Perry.

The New York Times seems to agree that that's the big story. The NYT is currently reporting on its homepage:

Newt Gingrich suggests some illegal aliens should be allowed to stay in the United States.

Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review says on Twitter:

Someone should tell Gingrich that some of those immigrants will build mosques.

My mom, Ann Althouse, gives the transcript of the interchange between Gingrich and Bachmann on immigration, and concludes:

That one-on-one really highlighted Gingrich's superior intelligence and sophistication. Clearly, Gingrich has the ability to reach out to many Americans who feel empathy toward the people who are in the county illegally and to take a middle position that balances a large set of interests. I like that, but obviously the red-meat fans have something to complain about. He put some vegetables on their dish.

Live-blogging the Republican presidential debate on foreign policy

Keep reloading this post (or the homepage) for updates. You can also find live-blogging on TalkingPointsMemo.

CBS News starts out with a long clip show of some of the most intense lines from previous debates, including the spats between Mitt Romney and the Ricks (Perry/Santorum) about whether Romney would be allowed to finish speaking. So they're shamelessly admitting what everyone knows: that the networks thrive on getting the candidates to attack each other.

8:05 - The first question goes to Herman Cain: what would you do to keep Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons? This debate is going to be all foreign policy, in contrast with all the previous debates, which have been mostly about domestic policy. Cain is probably under the most pressure in this debate, since there are so many questions about whether he has any foreign policy competence. Cain is sounding very polished and confident. [UPDATE: As you'll see in some of the commentary I've quoted near the end of this post, my remarks here were not prescient. Overall, Cain's performance in debating foreign policy tonight seems to have been rated very poorly.]

8:06 - Romney says that Iran is President Obama's "greatest failing" in foreign policy.

8:07 - A moderator calls time on Romney in the middle of his sentence, and Romney forcefully says that he still has time left because he sees the yellow light. The moderator says: "I stand corrected." [ADDED: Josh Marshall at TalkingPointsMemo says:]

Mitt stands down [moderator] Scott Pelley as a meta-signal that he can stand down Iran.

8:09 - Newt Gingrich: "There are many ways to be smart on Iran, and relatively few ways to be dumb, and this administration skipped all the ways to be smart." Gingrich makes a point to praise Cain's and Romney's answers on Iran.

8:15 - Santorum, in his answer on Iran policy, pointedly contrasts his own record with President Bush, saying that Bush wasn't willing to spend the money to implement Santorum's policy. Most of the debates have rarely mentioned Bush, but clearly Santorum believes that criticizing Bush is a way to win over Republican voters.

8:18 - Jon Huntsman: "I don't want to be nation-building in Afghanistan, when this nation so desperately needs to be built." He deemphasizes foreign policy as a whole, saying the main issues are the economy and education.

8:24 - Perry says he'll start out by giving "zero" foreign aid to all countries. "Then we can have a conversation" about whether to give any foreign aid to anyone. He strongly opposes foreign aid to Pakistan.

8:25 - I'm pretty sure Romney, Perry, Cain, and Gingrich all got multiple questions before Michele Bachmann got one.

8:26 - Bachmann: "President Obama has been willing to stand with Occupy Wall Street, but he will not stand with Israel. Israel looks at President Obama and they do not see a friend."

8:27 - Gingrich passionately agrees with Perry's answer on foreign aid. He accuses Pakistan of hiding Osama bin Laden.

8:28 - Santorum disagrees with much of what the others have said about Pakistan: "Pakistan must be a friend. . . . We need to continue the aid relationship. The aid is all spent in the United States; it's not sent over there."

8:34 - A moderator asks Gingrich: "Would you care to address Gov. Romney's ability to think outside the box and challenge national-security perspectives?" Gingrich: "No." The moderator points out that he did just that in a recent radio interview. Gingrich: "That's because I was on a radio show. We're having a debate to see who should run against President Obama."

As always, I'm writing down these quotes on the fly and probably won't catch all of them verbatim.

8:39 - Moderator to Perry: "As you said in the last debate, you advocate the elimination of the Department of Energy—" Perry: "Glad you remembered it!" Moderator: "I've had some to think about it." Perry: "Me too!" This, of course, gets a huge laugh. The moderator asks him how we're going to deal with nuclear weapons if we abolish the Department of Energy. Perry doesn't answer the question.

8:41 - Cain: "I do not agree with torture. Period." But he'll defer to the military's definition of torture. The moderator follows up to ask what he thinks about waterboarding. Cain: "I think it is an enhanced interrogation technique." He would bring back waterboarding.

8:42 - Bachmann also supports waterboarding. She says Obama seems to want (?) to lose the war on terror. Bachmann has clearly decided she needs to be as vociferously anti-Obama as possible.

8:42 - Ron Paul: "Torture is illegal . . . by our laws and international laws. Waterboarding is torture. It's illegal under our law and international law. It's also immoral. And it's also very impractical. There's no evidence that you get reliable evidence." [ADDED: Here's the video:]



8:45 - Romney agrees with Obama's policy of killing American citizens who are fighting with anti-American terrorists. The audience boos. Moderator to audience: "We will not have booing."

8:47 - Gingrich makes a powerful statement that the correct action in war is "to kill people who are trying to kill you," not about giving those people due process rights. He emphasizes that this is consistent with "the rule of law," because war is separate from the criminal justice system. His answer draws some vague heckling from the audience. [ADDED: Here's the video:]



8:50 - TPM posts a somewhat comical freeze-frame of Romney at the debate, supposedly watching Perry.

8:52 - After Romney gives his answer to a question on China, Huntsman makes an extremely wonky correction to Romney: "I don't think you can take China to the WTO on currency-related issues." Subtext: Romney is a former governor with no foreign-policy expertise; Huntsman was also a governor, but he's seasoned in foreign policy.

8:56 - Perry is asked whether his policy of bringing all foreign aid down to zero applies to Israel. Perry says yes. "In fact, we oughta do that with some of those agencies that I was trying to think the name of." (Yes, he did say "think the name of.")

9:03 - Josh Marshall writes:

I think we have to face the reality that with Rick Perry remaining lucid and not forgetting where he is, the entertainment value of these debates really goes off a cliff.

9:05 - Paul is asked whether we should invade Syria and try to overthrow the Assad dictatorship. Unsurprisingly, he says no. Moderator: "But what about the 3,500 people dead [in Syria]?" Paul points out that the Soviet Union and China killed "hundreds of millions of people," and we didn't see fit to invade them.

9:08 - Senator Lindsey Graham, who's in the audience, asks a softball question about whether the candidates would maintain Obama's policies about "enhanced interrogation techniques" and trying some of the inmates at Guantanamo Bay in civilian court. Can the candidates say anything other than that they'd reverse Obama's policies? That's exactly what Cain says.

9:13 - Bachmann makes a highly incendiary charge against Ron Paul: that he was against authorizing the military to kill bin Laden. Paul says he supported "going after bin Laden," and was only "upset that it took 10 years."

9:14 - Josh Marshall points out something about CBS News that I had also noticed: the online streaming debate after the one-hour mark has been "almost unwatchable." [ADDED: Here's someone on Twitter who also calls it "unwatchable." Nate Silver of the New York Times gave up on watching after the first hour.] It keeps stopping and starting — and you don't get to hear the part that was going on while it stopped, so you miss out on big chunks of the debate and only get to hear partial sentences. Marshall says that National Journal's feed is better, but I'm not able to play that feed at all. I'm using a MacBook Pro with almost no other applications running, and I'm sure Marshall, one of the most successful bloggers in the world, has a decent internet setup.

9:15 - Romney says we should return Medicaid to the states, which would save $100 billion a year. (I thought this was the foreign-policy debate.)

9:20 - Bachmann says we need to eliminate every program President Lyndon B. Johnson gave us as "the Great Society." "If you look at China, they don't have food stamps. They save for their own retirement." Of course, Social Security is us saving for our retirement. It's just a way to pool everyone's money for some of those savings.

9:26 - Huntsman: "I've negotiated with Pakistanis, both in government and in business." This might be Huntsman's strongest debate. I'm not hearing him give his usual delicate circumlocutions.

The debate is over. As the camera pans away, I notice that Gingrich was positioned closer to the center than Perry, indicating that Gingrich is rising and Perry is slipping. (I'm pretty sure the lesser candidates like Huntsman and Santorum have always been at or near the end, and Romney is always in the middle.)

Josh Marshall, a committed Democrat, praises Santorum's performance. Half an hour into the debate, he wrote:

I don't agree with much that Rick Santorum believes in foreign policy, though his answer on Pakistan was pretty reasonable. Yet it's clear that he's one of the few guys up there who thought about any of these issues before he realized that he'd have to answer questions about them in a foreign policy debate.

At the end, Marshall added:

Santorum is far and away the most lucid and knowledgable person on foreign policy.

The prominent conservative blogger Erick Erickson pans Cain on Twitter:

It is safe to say Herman Cain is the biggest loser tonight. What a damn shame. Just wow.

Similarly, Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic says:

Herman Cain seems much less confident, charismatic tonight. Equally uninformed as before.

Cain did often seem like a deer in the headlights (though it was hard to tell because of CBS News's spluttering feed). Someone on Twitter named Sean Agnew seems to agree:

I don't want Cain answering the 3am call. #sorry

Stephen Hayes, who works for The Weekly Standard and Fox News, responds to an answer by Cain that I either wasn't paying attention to or couldn't hear in full because CBS News doesn't know how to do a live online feed:

Really? President Cain would have supported both Hosni Mubarak in Egypt? And Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen? Sheesh.

Ben Smith at Politico says on Twitter:

Perry guy who sent a despairing 'sad' email after last debate now writes: "happy days here again! breaking out the bourbon!"

On Twitter, "Jason (the Commenter)" (who also regularly comments here) puts 4 of the candidates on a spectrum:

Hates torture to loves torture: Paul, Huntsman, Cain, Bachmann.

In the comments, Jason makes a very important point, which I had missed:

The biggest fail of the evening was Cain, who said that nine countries have nuclear weapons. You can only get that number if you include Israel, and they are adamant about neither confirming or denying that rumor. He threw them under the bus.

Another thing I didn't notice: many people on Twitter are saying Perry coined a new word tonight: "forewithal." Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker says:

Perry comeback? On the one hand, he made a great joke. On the other he called into question alliance with Israel and said forewithal.

Ronald Reagan on foreign policy

Was he a "dove"?

The killing of bin Laden will have major political consequences.

So argues Peter Beinart.

The whole article is worth reading (like most of what Beinart writes on foreign policy), but here's a sample:

[T]he view that Democrats won’t use force . . . was never true. Bill Clinton, after all, sent troops to Haiti, and bombed Bosnia and Kosovo. But barely anyone remembers those missions and because their rationale was humanitarian, they made the Democrats seem like armed social workers. The bin Laden operation, by contrast, was pure testosterone. Once U.S. intelligence tracked bin Laden to his compound, Obama chose the most aggressive option—a commando attack—rather than missile strikes, even though it risked U.S. deaths or hostages. In the mountains of Tora Bora, it’s worth remembering, George W. Bush made the opposite choice: deploying Afghan rather than American forces because he feared American casualties. And bin Laden got away. . . .

Second, the view that Democrats pray at the altar of international institutions and international law. Nonsense. . . . Obama has dramatically increased drone attacks, in Afpak and beyond, which shred international law. And this attack was so unilateral that we didn’t even consult with the “ally” on whose territory we carried it out. When Obama said he would strike in Pakistan without its permission during the campaign, few believed him; it didn’t play to type. Now it’s more likely they will.

"Isn't it a little alarming ... that fundamental constitutional principles can just fall by the wayside, and just nobody does anything about it ...?"

Robert Wright, who strongly opposed President Bush's invasion of Iraq, starts out by giving a hedged defense of President Obama's invasion of Libya (he sees it as "dicey" but justified and likely to succeed soon). However, he becomes disturbed once my mom, Ann Althouse, explains how constitutionally suspect Obama's actions have been. That's when he makes the statement I've put in the heading of this post:



The constitutional part of their discussion starts at 11:45.

(The Libyan city Wright at first can't remember the name of is Benghazi.)

An interactive timeline of the Middle East protests ...

... starting with a vegetable cart vendor. (via)

Wikileaks reveals the left's incoherence on U.S. foreign policy, secrecy, and diplomacy.

Good points:

By and large, the hard left in America and around the world would prefer to see the peaceful resolution of disputes rather than the use of military force. World peace, however, is a lot harder to achieve if the U.S. State Department is cut off at the knees. And that is exactly what this mass revelation of documents is going to do. The essential tool of State Department diplomacy is trust between American officials and their foreign counterparts. . . . Destroying confidentiality means destroying diplomacy. . . .

[T]hose on the hard left are usually the loudest critics of America imposing its own values, its own way of doing business, and its own culture on other countries. For better or worse, in many parts of the world there’s a big difference between what government officials are prepared to do publicly and what they’re prepared to say and do privately. We may wish it otherwise, but those are the realities faced by U.S. officials. The hard left, so quick to demand that America accept other countries’ political systems, now seems blind to the fact that other governments want to have the right to say one thing in public and a different thing in private. By respecting that difference, American diplomats are doing their job.

That whole TNR article is worth reading.

Short URL for this post: goo.gl/ToI41

"Comfortable Zionism has become a moral abdication."

Peter Beinart, who admits that he "was comfortable there too," explains why "the American Jewish establishment" has lost its former luster among a new generation of Jews. (Via.)

A sample:

[T]he message of the American Jewish establishment and its allies in the Netanyahu government is . . . : since Jews are history’s permanent victims, always on the knife-edge of extinction, moral responsibility is a luxury Israel does not have. Its only responsibility is to survive. As former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg writes in his remarkable 2008 book, The Holocaust Is Over; We Must Rise From Its Ashes, "Victimhood sets you free."

This obsession with victimhood lies at the heart of why Zionism is dying among America’s secular Jewish young. It simply bears no relationship to their lived experience, or what they have seen of Israel’s. Yes, Israel faces threats from Hezbollah and Hamas. Yes, Israelis understandably worry about a nuclear Iran. But the dilemmas you face when you possess dozens or hundreds of nuclear weapons, and your adversary, however despicable, may acquire one, are not the dilemmas of the Warsaw Ghetto. The year 2010 is not, as Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed, 1938. The drama of Jewish victimhood—a drama that feels natural to many Jews who lived through 1938, 1948, or even 1967—strikes most of today’s young American Jews as farce.

As John McWhorter has argued in a different context, the sense of victimhood, even if it begins as an entirely appropriate reaction to horrendous injustices against the victimized group, can gradually make a "transformation . . . from a problem to be solved into an identity in itself." (That's from page 2 of his 2000 book Losing the Race -- a brilliant page-turner that I give my highest recommendation.)

Previously on this blog: "How to think: Minimize your identity?"

How good has Obama's foreign policy been?

Pretty good, says Matthew Yglesias.

Pretty bad, says The New Republic.

I hate to say it, but TNR's argument sounds more convincing. But I haven't been following foreign policy very closely since January 2009, so I don't have a strong opinion. What do you think?