Holder the destroyer: prepared to “dismantle” the Ferguson police force

The New Neo Posted on by

The Department of Justice has released its report on the police force of Ferguson, triggered by its investigation of possible charges against Darren Wilson. The charges were dropped because all the credible evidence pointed to his innocence, but the report found the department guilty (without benefit of trial).

I’ve read many discussions (on both sides) of the DOJ report, the findings of which basically charge the Ferguson police with systemic racism against the black population of Ferguson. I’ve read most but not all of the report itself; it’s over 100 pages of dense reading, a great deal of it resting on something that resembles a sociological research study.

I’ve been mulling over what I will write about it, because it’s the sort of thing that would literally take a book to explain, and I don’t have time to write a book on it.

This post is not that book. It’s not even the post (or series of posts) I would like to write on the subject, because even that is so long and technical I don’t know quite how to tackle it. But I’ll just say here that one of my main problems with the report is the shoddiness of the research itself. Social science research (a field in which I have quite a bit of training and some experience, as well) is notorious for how difficult it is to do correctly and especially to deal with the problem of uncontrolled variables in the real world. Therefore there is always a pressing need to attach multiple caveats to much of what’s said. None of this was accomplished in the DOJ report; I don’t think it was even attempted.

Whether or not the Ferguson police department was or is generally racist—and it’s certainly possible that it was/is—has not been proven by this report, although that’s what the DOJ wants you to believe, and what most people will take away from it.

I hope I get around to offering you more details soon about how I reached my conclusion. I plan to read the study in more depth, but I’ve given you my preliminary impression.

Which brings us to Eric Holder, head of the DOJ, who expressed the following:

Despite a Justice Department report clearing police officer Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown, Attorney General Eric Holder says he will do everything he can to change the law enforcement culture in Ferguson, Mo. If he feels the need to, Holder says he will seek to dismantle the Ferguson Police Department. “We are prepared to use all the powers that we have, all the power that we have, to ensure that the situation changes there,” Holder told reporters on Friday according to the White House pool report. “That means everything from working with them to coming up with an entirely new structure.”

Hey, you know what? I bet he’s prepared to use all the powers that they don’t have.

Moreover, the feds have got a lot of feelings about it:

He warned police departments across the country to heed his words, lest he go after them next. “I hope they’re listening to these comments, and understand the intensity with which the feelings are felt at the federal government level to ensure that we use all the tools that we can to make sure that what happened in Ferguson is uncovered and simply does not happen in any other part of the country,” Holder said. “But I also want to make people understand, there are 18,000 police departments in this country, and I think what we saw in Ferguson was an anomaly.”

Actually, many of the Ferguson statistics are fairly typical of police departments all over the country, including in liberal states and municipalities, and in police departments with large percentages of black officers—as I discovered from my own internet surfing on the subject. I am pretty sure Holder—or whoever wrote the study—knows that, too, because they’ve already investigated plenty of those cities and found them racist. Consider yourself warned.

[NOTE: Here’s an article that goes into some of the critiques of the DOJ report and its research methods, especially regarding the doctrine of “disparate impact.”]

The tolerance of intolerance: Netherlands chapter

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, we must respect all points of view and all that jazz, right?

From the Hague:

A number of Dutch schools refrain from teaching about the Holocaust because of resistance from Muslim pupils, teachers told lawmakers.

The centrist Christian Union party held a roundtable discussion about Holocaust education with teachers…

“Holocaust survivor Bloeme Evers does not dare give guest lessons in some schools,” Arie Slob, the party’s parliamentary leader and a former history teacher…

Among the teachers in attendance was Wissam Feriani, a social studies teacher who works at a vocational high school in Amsterdam where approximately half of the students are Muslim.

“The teacher says Jews, the pupils say Gaza,” said Feriani, who is Muslim. “The teacher says Holocaust, the pupils say it’s all bullshit.” In class, he adds, “It’s always the Jews’ fault. Some pupils say they [Jews] don’t belong. It’s difficult.”

And I predict it will be getting even more difficult, and more widespread.

On the light side

The New Neo Posted on by

Spring forward tonight.

I am so psyched!

Daylight Saving Time begins this evening—technically, tomorrow morning—at 2 AM. So set those clocks forward and enjoy the extra hour of daylight at the end of the day.

snowSunset

What a guy: notes from Ayatollah Khomeini

The New Neo Posted on by

Now that Iran has been so much in the news lately, I though it might of interest to revisit the words of the regime’s founder, Ayatollah Khomeini, who is still much revered in that country.

First, we have his supple flexibility:

Khomeini once protested the shah’s enfranchisement of women, and then encouraged women to participate in his revolution and vote for his government when he needed their numbers. He once promised that clerics would hold only temporary positions in government and then allowed them to hold the most senior positions…He once said that the fact that “I have said something does not mean that I should be bound by my word.”

Next, we have his attitude towards good times:

One of his first orders [on returning to Iran in 1979] was to censor pictures of himself smiling, on the ground that this made him look frivolous. Mr. Khomeini later explained: “An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam.”

And lastly (although there’s lots more, of course) we have his strategy. The following was written by Daniel Pipes in 1986, long before a certain other politician emerged in our own country who was fond of employing a similar technique of deceptiveness about his own plans:

But all those years on the far fringe [before taking power] taught Mr. Khomeini lessons that he applied brilliantly to chart his path to power from 1977 to 1979. In a perceptive passage, Mr. Taheri explains the “lead from behind” strategy that Mr. Khomeini adopted. To keep his agents – mostly mullahs – from falling into police hands, Mr. Khomeini instructed his supporters to pretend to back secular opposition leaders. Delighted with this unexpected attention, these leaders were carried away by their own importance, and quickly found themselves in jail. Meanwhile, Mr. Khomeini’s followers remained free.

Leading from behind had another critical advantage. The majority of Iranians, who did not agree with Mr. Khomeini’s goal of an Islamic Republic, were fooled into thinking that he and the mullahs were mere figureheads who would return to their mosques after the shah’s fall. It took several years for Iranians to realize fully that the mullahs in power were determined to implement Mr. Khomeini’s radical vision.

I’ve written a great deal more about Khomeini. For background, see this, this, and this.

Holder says to proceed with corruption charges against Sen. Menendez

The New Neo Posted on by

Democratic Senator Robert Menendez has been the focus of corruption charges several times in the last decade. One was spearheaded by Republicans in 2006 (it was closed in 2011 with no charges filed). Another involved an accusation from the right that he dealt with underage prostitutes in the Dominican Republic, charges that were never substantiated. The present charges first emerged in a federal court in 2013:

It was reported on March 14, 2013, that a federal grand jury in Miami is investigating Menendez regarding his role in advocating for the business interests of ophthalmologist Salomon Melgen. Menendez’s efforts to push U.S. government officials to enforce a lucrative port security contract would benefit one of his major donors, Dr. Salomon E. Melgen, as well as Pedro Pablo Permuy, a former national security adviser and senior legislative aide to Mr. Menendez.

More about that original investigation here.

This case has been smoldering for quite some time. So the timing of the following announcement could be just a coincidence. But it’s certainly “interesting” that it has come right after the Iran deal controversy in which Menendez featured so prominently as a leading Democrat who joined with Republicans to vociferously criticize Obama:

The Justice Department reportedly plans to charge Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey with corruption for doing political favors for a donor and friend. “People briefed on the case say Attorney General Eric Holder has signed off on prosectors’ request to proceed with charges,” CNN reports. The FBI has been investigating Menendez’s relationship with Florida ophthalmologist Salomon Melgen, on whose plane the senator flew to the Dominican Republic in 2010. In 2013, Menendez paid back Melgen $58,000 after not disclosing the flight. Menendez has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. Menendez, a Democrat, was reelected in 2012 and is considered a leading hawk on Iran and Russia in the Senate.

The grand jury investigation began in March of 2013, but Holder just signed off on proceeding with actual charges. Again, perhaps a coincidence. But it’s also interesting that by March of 2013 Menendez had been opposing President Obama’s policies on Iran and Russia for several years. I have no idea whether he was the only Democrat to do so, but he was certainly the most influential in terms of foreign policy, having risen to the post of chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2013, replacing Kerry when the latter became SOS. Menendez in turn was replaced in January of 2015 after the Senate was taken over by Republicans in the 2014 election. He’s been vigorously going after Obama on Iran ever since.

Getting rid of Menendez would have its down side for Obama, since Christie would get to appoint his replacement. But since Menendez seems to oppose Obama on foreign policy anyway, and since even with one more Republican in the Senate it still will be plenty hard to override any of the vetoes Obama has planned, Menendez’s loss probably doesn’t really present that much of a problem for Obama. Silencing and/or discrediting his voice is probably much more important. Nor could one more Republican in the Senate do much about Obama’s busy phone and pen.

[Hat tip: Ace.]

[ADDENDUM: Commenter “expat” calls my attention to this article, which offers a theory about timing that links the timing of the Clinton email revelations with the timing of the Menendez prosecution sign-off. The idea is that they both offer timely warnings to any Democrat who would dare oppose Obama on Iran:

The answer is that the two are related: This week’s tarring of Hillary Clinton is part of the White House’s political campaign to shut off debate about its hoped-for deal. It’s not hard to see why they’re anxious. With Netanyahu’s speech forcing lawmakers and editorial writers to face up to the proposed agreement’s manifest problems, the administration fears the prospect of Democrats jumping ship and signing on to Kirk-Menendez sanctions legislation that also would give Congress oversight on the deal. So far, the White House has managed to keep Democratic lawmakers in line, no matter how much they seem to question the wisdom of the proposed deal. Hillary Clinton, gearing up for a 2016 run in which she is likely to put some distance between herself and Obama’s dubious Middle East policies, is the one major national Democratic figure who can give Democrats in Congress cover.

Makes sense to me.]

The Clinton emails: another case of “if only Obama knew”

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m sure there’s some germ of truth in this story, but I can’t figure out exactly where. I’m assuming that the lede is true:

The White House, State Department and Hillary Clinton’s personal office knew in August that House Republicans had received information showing that the former secretary of state conducted official government business through her private email account…

Were Republicans waiting for a more propitious time—say, after Hillary’s nomination—to spill the beans, and Clinton or the White House decided to finesse the GOP by releasing it now, and that’s why the Times decided to publish it? (That’s my speculation, not the article’s.)

The piece goes on to say that the White House had deferred to Hillary’s aides back in August, and that the latter made the decision to keep quiet about it. That seems implausible to me; the White House had no opinion on the matter? And the “aides believed the former secretary’s email practices broke no rules and were no cause for concern?” Yeah, right.

But this is my favorite part [emphases and sarcastic additions in brackets mine]:

As the scandal has grown, White House aides have worked to put distance between the president and the mess [including this article, which has that goal as its primary purpose]. Although Clinton aides have been in touch with the White House about the response in recent days [ya think?], the situation has put the White House in the uncomfortable position of having to defend the expected presidential candidate because her own staff [not us—her!!] has left a public vacuum””setting up a potentially precarious dynamic between staffers for Clinton, who have traditionally been reluctant to engage with reporters and aides, and aides to President Barack Obama [who are always open and transparent with the press and the public]. Between the two camps, animosity buried [in a very shallow grave] after their 2008 primary campaign occasionally flares up [only once in a blue moon, I’m sure].

White House press secretary Josh Earnest took care to point out that Obama himself was unaware of any issues with Clinton’s email. “The expectation of the president is that everybody throughout his administration is acting in compliance with the Federal Records Act,” Earnest said on Wednesday [even though they’d (probably) been getting emails from her private account for the entire time she was Secretary of State].

The White House does not have Clinton’s full email record, and was only made aware of the situation with her account after receiving the standard notification that a congressional committee had asked for, and received, documents from any agency, he said [if only Obama knew! I guess he read about it in the Times, where he appears to get most of his information].

So the article is alleging that until August, the White House was unaware of Clinton’s email habits, and that at any rate no one thought there was that much of a problem even after they were alerted to it, and that even then no one informed the president.

As usual.

[ADDENDUM: Valerie Jarrett adds that she never received any email from Hillary, and that she has no idea whether the White House ever did.]

[ADDENDUM II: Allahpundit offers a plausible theory as to why the report has come out now (somewhat similar to my initial theory that it’s a way for them to get ahead of a story that was probably going to come out anyway):

Not until three weeks ago did State finally hand over the files to Trey Gowdy’s Benghazi committee.

That last bit and not the Iran deal explains why this broke when it did, I think: State knew that if they didn’t get in front of this and leak it to the Times, Gowdy would notice Hillary’s private e-mail account(s) and break the news himself. That would have been a huge coup for his committee (it is a huge coup even though he didn’t get to announce it) and it would have made State look institutionally corrupt in having failed to release the news about Hillary’s e-mail account itself. So that’s what they did. They came clean ”” after six years, and only because the dreaded GOP was about to show just how shady they and their former boss are. To the extent that Iran figures into all this, I’d guess that it matters only insofar as Bibi Netanyahu’s speech affected the precise timing of the leak. The White House and State wanted to beat Gowdy to the punch as he closed in, but they also wanted to try to bury this news as much as possible by releasing it when it might be overwhelmed by bigger news. The obvious moment was the night before Netanyahu delivered his big speech to Congress.

Makes sense, doesn’t it?]

Obama as Spock

The New Neo Posted on by

Matthew Continetti demonstrates his Trekkie creds with an in-depth comparison. It’s tongue-in-cheek, but it kinda works:

Not only do Spock’s peacenik inclinations routinely land the Enterprise and the Federation into trouble, his “logic” and “level head” mask an arrogant emotional basket case. Unlike the superhuman android Data, a loyal officer whose deepest longing is to be human, Spock spends most of his life as a freelancing diplomat eager to negotiate with the worst enemies of Starfleet. He’s the opposite of a role model: a cautionary tale.

The significance of the Clinton email problem

The New Neo Posted on by

Many Democrats are circling the wagons, as is their wont.

But so far the flap over Hillary Clinton’s use of private instead of government email for official business while she was Secretary of State has raised two important issues that could make Hillary vulnerable—actually, should make her vulnerable, but that depends on whether the MSM is on her side or not, and how many people care about stuff like the following:

(1) It may have compromised national security

(2) The intent may have been to thwart FOIA requests. In fact, there’s little question that it did thwart FOIA requests.

Found: remains of oldest human lineage

The New Neo Posted on by

Sometimes I toy with the idea of dropping politics entirely from the blog or at least having some politics-free days more often.

I don’t really foresee doing the former, and I doubt I’ll be doing the latter either. I seem to be hooked on watching the sun slowly (or maybe quickly) setting on the republic and commenting about what a very fascinating sunset it is.

Which is all just an intro to the present post, which features an old interest of mine: the fossil record of the human lineage. I was an anthropology minor in college, and physical anthropology was hugely engaged in trying to sort all of this out. Well, they still have a lot of sorting to do, and part of it is this exciting find:

The new fossil, found at a site called Ledi-Geraru, has a handful of primitive features in common with an ancient forerunner of modern humans called Australopithecus afarensis. The most well-known specimen, the 3m-year-old Lucy, was unearthed in 1974 in Hadar, only 40 miles from the Ledi-Geraru site. But the latest fossil has more modern traits too. Some are seen only on the Homo lineage, such as a shallower chin bone.

The picture that emerges from the fossil record is that 3m years ago, the ape-like Australopithecus afarensis died out and was superseded by two very different human forms. One, called Paranthropus, had a small brain, large teeth and strong jaw muscles for chewing its food. The other was the Homo lineage, which found itself with much larger brains, a solution that turned out to be more successful.

“By finding this jaw bone we’ve figured out where that trajectory started,” said Villamoare [of the University of Nevada]. “This is the first Homo. It marks in all likelihood a major adaptive transition.”

It’s amazing, too, how much information can be gleaned from such a small item:

jaw

And what an exhilarating moment it must have been when the find was made:

The human jaw was discovered in January 2013 by Chalachew Seyoum, an Ethiopian national on the team, and a student at Arizona State University. He was part of a group that had set off from camp that morning to look for fossils on a hill that was later found to be brimming with ancient bones.

Villamoare, who was on the expedition, recalled the moment of discovery. “I heard people yelling Brian! Brian! And I went round the corner and there was Chalachew. He recognised it, and said: ”˜We’ve got a human.’ It had eroded out of the stratigraphy. It was in two pieces and was missing some of the teeth, but it was clearly of the genus Homo.”

Note this little piece of information, too:

What drove Australopithethus to extinction and led to the rise of Homo is a mystery, but researchers suspect a dramatic change in the environment transformed the landscape of eastern Africa. “It could be that there was some sort of ecological shift and humans had to evolve or go extinct,” said Villmoare.

I doubt it was their carbon footprint and all that coal they were burning.

Why I will not make predictions on King v. Burwell based on the SCOTUS hearings

The New Neo Posted on by

I have learned that’s like reading tea leaves—reading tea leaves in a steamy room where you can’t even see the leaves or the tea.

If previous examples serve, nobody knows. Nobody has much of a clue whether any question each justice asks has any meaning whatsoever in terms of prognostication, or whether it’s just the justices getting their jollies and messing with your (or the plaintiffs’, or the defendents’, or their lawyers’) minds.

But I’ll stick to my previous prediction, based on my general hunches about such things. I was right about the way the previous Obamacare decision (mandate) would go, although I failed to predict the details of Roberts’ reasoning. I make essentially the same prediction now that I made then, for a related reason: the Court’s reluctance to change things and fear of the major consequences of doing so. In the previous case, the issues were constitutional, and it would have been easier to rule against the Obamacare mandate because for the most part the law hadn’t yet gone into effect. In the present case, the issues are statutory, but the law has been in operation for over a year and a significant number of people have come to rely on it.

Should that matter? Isn’t the law the law? And wouldn’t that be all the more reason to stop it now, anyway, before it becomes more and more irrevocable? Well, that’s not the way people—even SCOTUS justices—usually think. If a ruling has enormous potential consequences that seem negative to the justices, it enters into their decision-making process and increases the burden on those who would argue for that change to occur. If in this case the justices fail to overturn the state subsidies as I am predicting they will, it will most likely be based on emotional/political reasoning on their part regarding consequences for real people in the real world, although they will most assuredly find legal cover for it by coming up with other reasons to justify the decision.

That is one reason I’ve been thinking that the Republicans should have come up with a very clear alternative many months ago, one on which they were united, and one they publicized highly so that the SCOTUS justices could see that the consequences of invalidating the state subsidies would not be chaos.

Scott Johnson of Powerline agrees that the outcome of King v. Burwell will be a ruling for the defense, and cites a case with legal precedent to illustrate the general manner in which he thinks it will be accomplished. In Weber, a 1979 SCOTUS case challenging exclusionary racial quotas for whites of a type that had been expressly forbidden by the 1964 Civil Rights Act, this is how a similar statutory dilemma was resolved:

Professor Kull recalls the result, recapitulating the decision more concisely than the Court speaking for itself:

Justice William J. Brennan, writing for a five-to-two majority, could not and did not controvert Justice William H. Rehnquist’s demonstration that Congress in 1964 had intended, by this and other language in Title VII, to prohibit the quota that excluded Brian Weber. His central contention was rather that the color-blind means chosen at the time did not serve the underlying congressional objective, which he identified as the desire to improve the economic position of black workers. It followed that the statute’s true purpose would be served by refusing its enforcement.

Brennan piously intoned the proposition: “It is a familiar rule, that a thing may be within the letter of the statute and yet not within the statute, because not within its spirit, nor within the intention of its makers.” Brennan was the keeper of the “spirit,” which was a pure triumph of the leftist will, 1979 edition. In tune with the times, the Supreme Court, I am afraid, stands poised to give us the 2015 edition supporting the gospel according to Barry.

Note that Weber was decided in 1979. That’s a long time ago, reminding us (as if we needed reminders) that this slide towards saying that the law means whatever we want it to mean, and that we don’t need legislative methods to change legislature to suit our current will, had already taken hold by then.

[NOTE: If you want to read other prognostications based on the King v. Burwell hearings, see this.

I will add that I hate to be gloomy here, and I hope I’m wrong, but I have to be truthful about what I see at this point. In order to change things (and minus a black swan event), it would be necessary for conservatives to control House, Senate, and presidency, and to do so for long enough to nominate more SCOTUS justices of the conservative persuasion. That’s a tall order. And to consolidate those gains, conservatives have to mount their own Gramscian march through the institutions of education, press, and entertainment.]

[ADDENDUM: Hey, if I’ve gone this far with predictions, I’ll go even further in throwing caution to the winds and saying that it will either be 5-4 with Kennedy joining the liberals, or 6-3 with both Kennedy and Roberts doing so but for different reasons.]

I’ve got a question for President Obama

The New Neo Posted on by

And I wish someone would ask it of him. For real.

Please read my new essay in The Weekly Standard, and pass it on to anyone you know who could ask Obama or who knows someone who could ask him or who knows someone who—well, you get the idea.

Here’s an excerpt:

President Obama has repeatedly denied that terrorists have anything to do with the real Islam. But what would Obama say about the fatwa that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s leading political and religious authority from 1979 to 1989, issued condemning author Salman Rushdie to death for writing a book deemed blasphemous to Islam? Khomeini was about as “real Islam” as it gets…

The fatwa Khomeini issued makes chilling reading even today. Here’s a translation:

“I would like to inform all the intrepid Muslims in the world that the author of the book entitled ”˜Satanic Verses’. . . as well as those publishers who were aware of its contents, are hereby sentenced to death. I call on all zealous Moslems to execute them quickly, wherever they find them, so that no one will dare to insult Islamic sanctity. Whoever is killed doing this will be regarded as a martyr and will go directly to heaven.”

Nothing to do with Islam? I would remind Obama, as he ponders that question, that at the time of the Rushdie fatwa Khomeini had not only been “Supreme Leader” of Iran — a country that has the seventh-largest Muslim population in the world — for almost a decade, but he also had long been considered an expert in Islamic law and had written many books on the subject.

Khomeini was no fringe figure who did not understand the religion he’d spent most of his life studying. What’s more (as you will see if you read the entire essay), the present religious-day leaders of Iran fully support the Rushdie fatwa to this day, despite a common misconception that it has been withdrawn. Not only is it still in force, but current Supreme Leader Khamenei (Khomeini’s successor) reaffirmed the fatwa in 2005, and the bounty on Rushdie’s head was increased to 3.3 million in 2012.

So President Obama, what’s that about terrorism having nothing to do with Islam?

Bibi’s alternatives

The New Neo Posted on by

A lot of Democrats, led by Obama, are carping that Netanyahu’s speech didn’t offer a “viable alternative” to the disastrous, suicidal course Obama has chosen (no they didn’t use those adjectives). But Netanyahu certainly did provide one; it’s just not one that they like. And his assertion was that it’s Obama’s alternative that’s not viable.

Before I describe Netanyahu’s alternative, let me say add you don’t have to offer a detailed alternative to state that something is a dreadful idea. Saying Netanyahu offered no alternative and that therefore Obama’s deal should go ahead is like saying that you shouldn’t desist from jumping off a cliff unless the person trying to talk you out of it has offered you a good job.

But Netanyahu’s alternative (or rather, alternatives) was actually fairly clear. The first part went like this:

Israel’s neighbors — Iran’s neighbors know that Iran will become even more aggressive and sponsor even more terrorism when its economy is unshackled and it’s been given a clear path to the bomb.

And many of these neighbors say they’ll respond by racing to get nuclear weapons of their own. So this deal won’t change Iran for the better; it will only change the Middle East for the worse. A deal that’s supposed to prevent nuclear proliferation would instead spark a nuclear arms race in the most dangerous part of the planet.

In other words, doing nothing—keeping the status quo—is a better alternative. Obama’s deal instead gives Iran concessions that will increase the danger to the world, not just to Israel.

Here’s the second part, and it involves setting conditions for easing restrictions on Iran. These conditions are of course nothing that Iran would agree to, but they are conditions that would be necessary before Obama’s concessions would begin to make any sense:

I’ve come here today to tell you we don’t have to bet the security of the world on the hope that Iran will change for the better. We don’t have to gamble with our future and with our children’s future.

We can insist that restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program not be lifted for as long as Iran continues its aggression in the region and in the world.

Before lifting those restrictions, the world should demand that Iran do three things. First, stop its aggression against its neighbors in the Middle East. Second…Second, stop supporting terrorism around the world. And third, stop threatening to annihilate my country, Israel, the one and only Jewish state.

The third part is a slight modification of the second part, and it has to do with the ten-year period after which all bets are off:

If the world powers are not prepared to insist that Iran change its behavior before a deal is signed, at the very least they should insist that Iran change its behavior before a deal expires. If Iran changes its behavior, the restrictions would be lifted. If Iran doesn’t change its behavior, the restrictions should not be lifted. If Iran wants to be treated like a normal country, let it act like a normal country.

The fourth part is an explanation of the practical reasons that Netanyahu’s proposal is likely to work better than Obama’s proposal—which boils down to the fact that Iran is hurting economically, and so this is a good time to continue the pressure rather than to lift it:

My friends, what about the argument that there’s no alternative to this deal, that Iran’s nuclear know-how cannot be erased, that its nuclear program is so advanced that the best we can do is delay the inevitable, which is essentially what the proposed deal seeks to do?

Well, nuclear know-how without nuclear infrastructure doesn’t get you very much. A racecar driver without a car can’t drive. A pilot without a plan can’t fly. Without thousands of centrifuges, tons of enriched uranium or heavy water facilities, Iran can’t make nuclear weapons. Iran’s nuclear program can be rolled back well-beyond the current proposal by insisting on a better deal and keeping up the pressure on a very vulnerable regime, especially given the recent collapse in the price of oil.

Now, if Iran threatens to walk away from the table — and this often happens in a Persian bazaar — call their bluff. They’ll be back, because they need the deal a lot more than you do.

The fifth part is a reiteration of how important keeping the pressure on Iran over time would be:

And by maintaining the pressure on Iran and on those who do business with Iran, you have the power to make them need it even more.

Most of the rest of Netanyahu’s speech is devoted to saying that choosing this path would lead to a better deal than Obama’s bad deal. There is really nothing obscure or difficult-to-understand about what Netanyahu is proposing, and it certainly seems a lot more viable than anything Obama has planned.

Paul Mirengoff of Powerline summarizes the alternatives very well:

The answer to Obama’s point is that the absence of a deal doesn’t mean the absence of a strategy for preventing Iran from obtaining nukes. In fact, the absence of a deal would facilitate two approaches that hold more promise of thwarting Iran than even a decent deal.

In theory, there are three scenarios under which Iran won’t get the bomb. First, military action might prevent it. Second, the right kind of regime change might prevent it. Third, a deal might prevent it.

The first and second scenarios are the most effective because the third depends on some level of cooperation and compliance by a notoriously hostile and unreliable regime.

The way—the only way—to ever get Iran to agree to any deal would be a remarkable amount of pressure. Even then, the agreement would probably be bogus. Obama has no appreciation of the nature of the Iranian regime (or he is actively colluding with it), and is pretending he has a “partner for peace,” just as the left has pretended the same about the Palestinians (for example, Arafat) vis a vis Israel.

[NOTE: I forgive Netanyahu for referring to Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” in his speech and getting the meaning of the poem somewhat wrong—as most people do. Netanyahu wasn’t there as a poetry critic (fortunately) when he summarized it as “the difficult path is usually the one less traveled, but it will make all the difference.” Look here for why that’s a common misunderstanding of the poem’s more complex message.]