I don’t agree with everything that Carlos Roa has to say in his piece at The National Interest but there is one passage I wanted to share:

The United States, traditionally Israel’s staunch ally, is also in a precarious situation. That Washington also didn’t see this attack coming speaks ill of its intelligence capabilities, especially in signals intelligence. The Biden administration will find itself under fire. Only mere days ago, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan argued that “The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades now.” On the same day, Semafor revealed that Iran built a significant influence network that reached deep into the U.S. foreign policy apparatus. Finally, the administration’s decision to release $6 billion to Iran in exchange for five American hostages hostage will only face harsher criticism in the coming days; it is not unlikely that some of that money funded or otherwise supported Hamas’ current operation. Pressure to support Israel will be immense, complicating an already delicate situation with a public already tired of supporting conflicts abroad.

He refers to the conflict as the “Simchat Tora War”, in reference to the holiday on which the initial strikes fell and to the Yom Kippur War of fifty years ago.

Much has been said of Israel’s intelligence failure and I think that seeing a U. S. intelligence failure as well is a bit of a stretch. Just how responsible are we? It would be nice to think that our intelligence apparatus is tracking intelligence all over the world but I privately think that our Middle East intelligence in particular is awful and we are highly dependent on the Israelis there. Said another way if they didn’t know it, we wouldn’t know it.

Whether that should be the case is a different subject but I think it has been the case for a very long time.

Anyway, I think there will be a lot of fault-finding about this conflict. People will blame the Israelis, the Palestinians, the Iranians, and us (under the “no sparrow falls” theory). They will blame the Biden Administration and the Trump Administration and, probably, every U. S. administration of the post-war period.

Although I think we should support Israel in its struggle against Hamas and, I guess now, Hezbollah, I think we should do so in lofty, general terms. Israel is quite capable of defending itself. The more noise we make, the more we send unneeded and unrequested munitions or air and naval support, the more likely it becomes that the United States will be drawn into the conflict. We should avoid that.

The editors of the New York Times call for immigration reform:

It is difficult to find an issue that more exemplifies the dysfunction of American government today than immigration.

In the past year, more than a million people have entered the United States through the southern border, overflowing shelters and straining public services. Most of the newcomers claim asylum, a status that allows them to be in the country legally but leaves them in limbo. They often must wait years for their cases to be heard, and it can be a lengthy process to obtain legal permission to work.

This nation has long drawn strength from immigration, and providing asylum is an important expression of America’s national values. But Congress has failed to provide the necessary resources to welcome those who are eligible and to turn away those who are not. Instead, overwhelmed immigration officials allow nearly everyone to stay temporarily, imposing enormous short-term costs on states and cities that the federal government hasn’t done enough to mitigate.

concluding:

President Biden announced on Sept. 20 that his administration will extend temporary work permits to nearly half a million Venezuelans, a concession to intense pressure from Mr. Adams and other state and city leaders from his own party who find their communities overwhelmed.

That will help some businesses that are desperate for more workers. But Mr. Biden’s reluctance is understandable; expanding work authorization without addressing America’s broken immigration system will do little to deter people from trying to cross the U.S. border unlawfully or to seek asylum, and it gives Congress a pass.

Some Republican leaders have stepped up to offer help. Gov. Spencer Cox of Utah and Gov. Eric Holcomb of Indiana wrote an essay in The Washington Post in February offering to sponsor immigrants, citing more than 300,000 job vacancies between the two states. “In meaningful ways, every U.S. state shares a border with the rest of the world, and all of them need investment, markets and workers from abroad,” they wrote. “That border can remain an embarrassment, or it can become a big asset to us once again.”

For that to happen, leaders in Congress will have to do their part. It’s been a decade since Congress has seriously considered immigration reform. Both parties have missed opportunities to do so, the Democrats most recently at the end of 2022. The party had a narrow majority in Congress but failed to pursue a compromise bill that would have increased funding for border security as well as expanding capacity to hear and decide asylum claims quickly. The future of DACA, a program for those who were brought to the United States as children, is also in doubt, despite its broad public support.

The White House is limited in the actions it can take; Mr. Biden may have exhausted what he can do through his executive authority. Until Congress decides to take meaningful action, America will continue to pay a price.

I agree that Congress has been remiss in not acting. I attribute part of the problem to Congress’s attachment to omnibus bills that address multiple issues in one piece of legislation, many of which may have nothing to do with solving the problems the legislation is intended to address.

The editors are playing fast and loose with the facts, however. The number of people who have crossed our southern border since the beginning of 2023 is nearly 1.5 million according to U. S. Customs and Border Protection. The percentage of those who have been admitted has grown in recent year.

This

In July there were more than two million open positions, for example, in construction, hospitality and retail, and the current system keeps out many engineers, computer programmers and scientists.

is misleading. I would submit that the proportion of “engineers, computer programmers and scientists” coming across our southern border is minuscule. Most have, at most, the equivalent of a high school education if that. Furthermore, I would assert that the very large number of phony asylum applications is inhibiting the acceptance of legitimate asylum-seekers.

I think that the Congress should enact several distinct bills in, probably, this order:

• Legislation to deal with the crisis at our southern border
• Legislation to address the plight of those who’ve been called “dreamers”, e.g. individuals brought to the United States illegally as children
• Legislation to regulate individuals working in the United States illegally

The easiest probably being the second. It is my understanding that such legislation has been blocked in the interest of omnibus legislation to address immigration.

I also believe that all of the unaccompanied minors encountered at our southern border should be returned to their countries of origin. What we’re doing now amounts to kidnapping them.

The costs of what we are doing now are substantial, billions of dollars a year, much of which is falling on local governments that are not prepared to shoulder them. Beyond that there are the costs that millions of new workers impose on the previous cohort of immigrants and native born Americans trying to enter the workforce. Econ 101 demonstrates pretty conclusively that the present supply exceeds the demand.

I am quoting with permission a comment made at James’s first post on Israel’s war against Hamas (and Hezbollah?):

This is really bad. There are videos of Hamas militants going through houses and executing civilians, and pulling people out of cars and slitting their throats, then taking women and children hostage. It’s got the vibes of Bucha.

I don’t know when the last time something similar happened – when enemy forces were rampaging unchecked in Israeli towns – the last time something similar happened could be as far back as 1948.

This was a massive intelligence failure by the Israelis, and that will likely have domestic political implications. This is especially the case since Israel’s long-standing policy of dividing Palestinian politics is partly responsible for Hamas having a stranglehold on Gaza.

The scale, timing, and execution of the invasion suggest it took months of planning and preparation, all with a high degree of secrecy. Combined with the fact that it just happens to take place on the 50th anniversary of the 1973 war, it’s clear this wasn’t – as some suggest – some quickly cobbled together response to recent events at Al Aqsa.

I suspect that whatever limitations Israel had on the use of force will now be rolled back. It seems likely that Hamas is taking hostages to use as bargaining chips and human shields.

As a political matter, I doubt Israel will settle for anything less than the destruction of Hamas after this. The public will demand it. That means an Israeli invasion and the implications of that are likely to be very bad, not only for the civilians in Gaza, but also for the region generally. The chances of escalation to also have a war along the Lebanese border are not trivial IMO.

The commenter is a regular commenter here and formerly worked in U. S. military intelligence. As you can see the comment was prophetic in that the war already appears to be expanding to the Lebanese border.

I agree materially with his comment. I don’t think we can predict what the intelligence failure portends for Israel internally. I have read claims that the Israeli intelligence services have been organizing opposition to Netanyahu. That could add fuel to the fire. Questions abound:

• Will the conflict spread to the West Bank?
• To Egypt or Syria?
• Will it spread here?

As predicted Israel’s war with Hamas is expanding, now to Hezbollah. From Reuters:

Oct 8 (Reuters) – Israel and Lebanon’s powerful armed group Hezbollah exchanged artillery and rocket fire on Sunday following the deadliest attack in years by Palestinian gunmen on Israel.

There were no immediate reports of casualties in either Lebanon or Israel from Sunday’s exchanges of fire.

On Saturday, a multi-pronged attack by Palestinian gunmen on Israeli towns left at least 250 Israelis dead, with more than 300 Palestinians killed in Israel’s retaliatory bombardment.

Hezbollah, an armed party backed by Iran, said on Sunday it had launched guided rockets and artillery onto three posts in the Shebaa Farms “in solidarity” with the Palestinian people.

The Israeli military said on Sunday it fired artillery into an area of Lebanon where cross-border fire was launched. “IDF (Israel Defense Forces) artillery is currently striking the area in Lebanon from where a shooting was carried out,” it said.

I doubt this is the extent of the expansion. I wouldn’t be surprised if Syria, Egypt, or both entered the conflict.

I have mixed feelings about Fareed Zakaria’s proposal in his latest Washington Post column for a national sales tax. Here’s his explanation:

The top 10 percent of earners in the United States contribute a staggering 74 percent of federal income tax revenue — even though they generate just about 50 percent of all income, according to the Tax Foundation. In Denmark and Sweden, the top 10 percent pay about 25 percent of income taxes; the average for rich countries is 32 percent. In the United States, the top 1 percent — 1.3 million households in a country of over 330 million people — generate 22 percent of the income but pay almost twice that, 42 percent of federal taxes. And the code has become substantially more progressive over the past decades. The net contribution of the top 20 percent of income earners in the United States has risen by more than 200 percent since the 1980s.

When you add state and local taxes, America’s top earners’ tax rate often tops out at more than 50 percent of their marginal income. If one of them moved from New York or California or Illinois to London, Berlin or Singapore, they would get a big tax cut — particularly in Singapore, where the top tax rate is 24 percent. (And in all those cases, by the way, they would get universal health care and high-quality public education from kindergarten to universities.) In New York City, as Mayor Eric Adams has pointed out, the top 2 percent of residents pay half the city’s income taxes.

It has become a bipartisan article of faith in the United States that most of the federal budget cannot be cut and that the taxes of 98 percent of income earners cannot be raised. This is why we are on an unsustainable path. We need to both cut some spending and raise some taxes, and future tax increases cannot come from the one source from which most new revenue has come in the past few decades — high-income earners.

I’ve advocated something similar myself. The reasons for my mixed feeling are:

• Sales taxes are regressive. I advocate a sales tax that is progressive, made so by an income-adjusted prebate.
• State and local governments are highly dependent on sales taxes for revenue—typically around 25% of revenues. The math says that a federal sales tax would reduce state and local revenue even as the demands on state and local purses are increasing.
• I think that the federal government’s problem is too much spending and there are lots of areas in which spending can be reduced.
• I already pay very nearly the highest sales tax in the country.

Watch out! It’s an idea that’s likely to catch on.

In the wake of a military attack by “Hamas militants” against Israelis on an unprecedented scale, Israel has declared war on Hamas. James Joyner summarized the situation reasonably well:

I’ve disliked Netanyahu, thinking him a thug and a bully, going back to his first stint as prime minister in the 1990s. His illegal and immoral occupation policies have certainly contributed to this crisis.

That said, this attack by Palestinian militants was stupid. Attacking Israeli civilians was obviously going to result in a massively disproportional response. And, while there are no good guys here, I don’t see how the United States could have done other than side with an ally whose territory has been attacked.

The horror of the situation is not merely in the indiscriminate nature of the attacks, killing mostly civilians but in the considerable possibility that the conflict may expand. Israel only has a limited number of alternatives:

• Make a token response
• Create a larger buffer between Gaza and Israel. Since Gaza is only 25 miles long, that wouldn’t leave a lot. Israel might just eject (or destroy) the whole population. Unpopular as the Palestinians are, that could result in some level of involvement by other Arab countries or Iran.
• The weapons Hamas is using are coming through Egypt. Attempting to cut that off might involve Egypt.

While I agree with James that we have little choice but to side with Israel, I think that it should be observed that circumstances are considerably different now than they were in the Yom Kippur War 50 years ago. Then a substantial proportion of the Arabs in the United States were Maronite Christians; now they are predominantly Muslims. Then there was an order of magnitude more Jewish-Americans than Arab-Americans; now they’re roughly equal in number. Then nearly all Jewish Americans supported Israel; now Israel’s support among American Jews has decreased somewhat—many Reform Jews don’t support Israel at all. Israel’s government and the Israelis themselves have become much more conservative. Then support for the Palestinians among Americans was rare; among young Americans now support for Israel and the Palestinians is about the same.

I honestly don’t think I’ve read an article recently that was as unmoored from reality as this one at Modern Diplomacy by Arne Tulner, Here’s his proposal for ending the war in Ukraine:

The fundamental cause of the conflict in Ukraine lies in the geopolitical division of Europe between NATO and Russia, which has persisted after the Cold War. After Germany in the past, Ukraine now threatens to be torn apart between the two superpowers.

To restore peace in Ukraine, this geopolitical division must first come to an end. Therefore Russia’s pretense as a superpower must be tempered, something that US President Obama already advocated in 2014.[1] Not to humiliate Russia, but to integrate it safely into Europe.

The Hague Peace Proposal is aimed at compensating Russia for this loss of power with Western security guarantees. Not as a ‘privileged’ partner within the current NATO-Russia Council (NRC), as this has proven to be too non-binding. Only if Russia is fully integrated into a European security structure, the security of both Russia and the rest of Europe can be guaranteed.

Due to Russia’s enormous power potential, this can only be achieved safely by committing Russia to transatlantic cooperation, as it takes place within NATO. Russian dominance can be neutralized by American counterbalancing. To resolve the war in Ukraine, it will therefore be necessary that Russia joins NATO.

If Russia commits to the NATO treaty, it will indeed be geopolitically downgraded to the level of France or the United Kingdom. But as a regional partner it will benefit from European strategic, political and economic cooperation. This changes Russia from pariah to partner.

NATO will also lose its superpower status if Russia joins in. However, it can thus evolve into a fully-fledged European security structure that guarantees peace and justice for the entire continent. Dutch professor Rob de Wijk previously spoke out in favor of such a NATO as an ‘armed branch’ of the European security organization (OSCE).[2] This keeps NATO relevant, even in times of peace.

Moreover, as mentioned earlier, Russia’s membership of NATO requires American commitment to the Alliance and is therefore, paradoxically the best assurance for the United States to remain permanently involved in Europe.

Russia’s membership in NATO will make the alliance neutral, which will also allow Ukrainian NATO membership, as this gives Russia the best guarantee of Ukrainian neutrality. This will reduce Russian influence on Ukraine, leading to a full restoration of its sovereignty; and without Russian dominance, Ukraine will be able to give autonomy to its minorities. As a result Russia will have to return annexed territory. This sequence will ultimately lead to peace.

That was a perfectly reasonable plan 25 years ago. I’ve supported it myself. IMO the main impediment to it then was U. S. opposition. Now too much bad blood has been let, there are too many fresh grievances, and none of the old impediments are gone.

Additionally, Mr. Tulner seems to have forgotten that what makes Russia a superpower rather than just a regional one is nuclear weapons. I don’t see Russia giving up its nuclear arsenal.

I don’t think there is any practical, benign resolution to the war in Ukraine. At this point any resolution will require the deaths of tens of millions of people. Or more.

Philip Cunliffe predicts the collapse of the European Union in a piece at UnHerd:

In advance of the summit, France and Germany, the bloc’s two most powerful member-states, have staked out their vision for institutional reform of the EU with a report titled “Sailing on High Seas: Reforming and Enlarging the EU for the 21st Century”. And what has been overlooked in the extensive discussion of the report is that it effectively consigns the EU to the same slow oblivion as the Holy Roman Empire — to be corroded from within by centrifugal dissolution. This is quite different from the end of the EU that had been envisaged in recent years. For a brief period across 2015-2019, it seemed at least possible (if still unlikely) that the EU might have been blown apart by a series of populist explosions en-chaîne across its territory. But the Union survived this sequence of ballot box revolts, with its core structures long since insulated from any popular incursions.

Since that abortive period of uncertain and confused national revolt, and with the sole exception of Brexit Britain, national-populists around the continent have all surrendered to Brussels. This began with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s ignominious capitulation to the Troika, in 2015, in defiance of his own voters, and has continued to the present day with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s calm acceptance of the strictures of the eurozone. National-populist leaders continue to bleat about the threat of a federal Europe, but this is only to disguise how much sovereignty they themselves have already surrendered as member-states.

Nonetheless, despite the dismal failure of the populists, the Franco-German report makes clear that it is politically impossible for the Union to survive in its current form. If its recommendations are implemented, their logic will inevitably corrode the Union from within, allowing it to disperse itself into a more diffuse entity. It will gradually lose its coherence and purpose over time, and its eventual demise might well be an afterthought — akin to Francis II’s dissolution of the Reich in 1806.

I don’t know if the EU and, presumably, the euro will cease to exist and, honestly, I don’t care. We have greater interests in the countries of this hemisphere, in the countries of the Pacific Rim, and India than we do in the European Union. The EU is, was, and always has been a vehicle for protecting and subsidizing German manufacturing and French farming. I said more than 20 years ago I didn’t see how French agricultural subsidies could survive adding Romania to the EU let alone adding Ukraine. The euro is, was, and always has been an attack vehicle against the dollar as the global reserve currency. Why are we interested in protecting German manufacturing, preserving French farm subsidies, or the euro?