Hank Kalet

We wrote this week’s editorial encouraging participation in Neighborhood Watch programs before hearing about these arrests. Check out this part of the story:

The pair were parked in the neighborhood for a while and would approach homes, often knocking on doors, South Brunswick police spokesman Detective James Ryan said. He said that if someone answered the door, the suspects would tell them it was the wrong home or that they were looking for “Mr. Smith.”

Mr. Smith? I’m thinking Timber Ponds needs a Neighborhood Watch.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

NJ Transit and the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission are considering options for a Bus Rapid Transit System along Route 1 between South Brunswick and Lawrence that they hope will reduce traffic and congestion on the roadway.

It is a plan that, on the surface, would seem to make sense. The idea is to create mass-transit opportunities along the Route 1 Corridor without having to pony up the kind of cash that a series of rail stations might require.

I’d like to support something like this — the devil is in the details, so we will wait for real substantive discussion — but I’m a bit skeptical that it will draw the kind of ridership that would be necessary to a.) make it self-sustaining and b.) have a real impact on traffic.

My sense of local commuters — based on years of informal observation — is that they value their independence and freedom and that getting them out of their cars will take a major effort. I think it is probably a worthy effort, but we will need to do more than provide a BRT or rail or expanded parking (commuters to New York are different and generally willing to give up their cars to catch a nap on the bus or let someone else do the driving).

I think NJ Transit needs to be prepared, should it move ahead with some version of this plan, to invest some cash in a major advertising campaign and cross its fingers.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

Chuck Hagel, the Republican senator from Nebraska, may have offered the most cogent analysis of the situation in Iraq (I missed it Sunday, but was alerted through John Nichols’ blog on The Nation Web site. Some quotations:

The time for more U.S. troops in Iraq has passed. We do not have more troops to send and, even if we did, they would not bring a resolution to Iraq. Militaries are built to fight and win wars, not bind together failing nations. We are once again learning a very hard lesson in foreign affairs: America cannot impose a democracy on any nation — regardless of our noble purpose.

And:

America finds itself in a dangerous and isolated position in the world. We are perceived as a nation at war with Muslims. Unfortunately, that perception is gaining credibility in the Muslim world and for many years will complicate America’s global credibility, purpose and leadership. This debilitating and dangerous perception must be reversed as the world seeks a new geopolitical, trade and economic center that will accommodate the interests of billions of people over the next 25 years. The world will continue to require realistic, clear-headed American leadership — not an American divine mission.

And then this:

The United States must begin planning for a phased troop withdrawal from Iraq. The cost of combat in Iraq in terms of American lives, dollars and world standing has been devastating. We’ve already spent more than $300 billion there to prosecute an almost four-year-old war and are still spending $8 billion per month. The United States has spent more than $500 billion on our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And our effort in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate, partly because we took our focus off the real terrorist threat, which was there, and not in Iraq.

We are destroying our force structure, which took 30 years to build. We’ve been funding this war dishonestly, mainly through supplemental appropriations, which minimizes responsible congressional oversight and allows the administration to duck tough questions in defending its policies. Congress has abdicated its oversight responsibility in the past four years.

It is not too late. The United States can still extricate itself honorably from an impending disaster in Iraq. The Baker-Hamilton commission gives the president a new opportunity to form a bipartisan consensus to get out of Iraq. If the president fails to build a bipartisan foundation for an exit strategy, America will pay a high price for this blunder — one that we will have difficulty recovering from in the years ahead.

To squander this moment would be to squander future possibilities for the Middle East and the world. That is what is at stake over the next few months.

Just go and read the whole thing.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

Gov. Jon Corzine, based on two days in Iraq under the direct supervision of the military establishment, now views the situation there as too unstable to bring home American troops.

“The need for additional forces, particularly Iraq forces, is pretty obvious,” Corzine said in a conference call from Kuwait. “I came here believing we were in a better position than we are.”

Gov. Corzine expressed concern yesterday about a “growing and very transparent intervention of the Iranians” who he said were “certainly trying to destabilize things and pre-position if the U.S. created a vacuum.”

Trying to destabilize things? TRYING? Things are mess there and we are as responsible as anyone. Admittedly, leaving won’t necessarily make things better, but staying will only make things worse. Keep in mind that this is a civil war we are witnessing and that, as U.S. Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.) has been saying for months, U.S. troops have become a catalyst, with Iraqis on all sides viewing us as an occupying force.

Our presence is turning even those Iraqis who at one time might have welcomed our presence into enemies.

The so-called Baker Commission is expected to recommend a phased pull-out and there has been noise made about bringing the neighboring powers — Syria and Iran — to the table to help settle this mess.

We should now turn this over to the United Nations, provide significant monetary assistance to cover the cost of the peacekeeping mission and pay for reconstruction (consider it reparations for the damage we helped create — and we can get the money by going after the profiteers like Halliburton). At the same time, we need to bring the various factions to the table, with help from the Iranians, Syrians and the United Nations, and hopefully get a ceasefire in place.

This is not a solution that should make anyone happy — but we are well beyond simple answers or simple rhetoric about “cutting and running” or leaving when our job is done. Unless we change our approach, our job will never be done.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

I was about to comment on George Will’s pissy column on the George Bush-Jim Webb tet a tet, but Pauline Kael at Talking Points Memo beat me to the punch:

In his edited version, the President asked Webb “a civil and caring question,” only to be met with “calculated rudeness.”

But I’ll give it a whirl anyway.

Here is Will’s partial transcript:

Wednesday’s Post reported that at a White House reception for newly elected members of Congress, Webb “tried to avoid President Bush,” refusing to pass through the reception line or have his picture taken with the president. When Bush asked Webb, whose son is a Marine in Iraq, “How’s your boy?” Webb replied, “I’d like to get them [sic] out of Iraq.” When the president again asked “How’s your boy?” Webb replied, “That’s between me and my boy.”

Sen.-elect Webb wasn’t exactly playing nice, but then he had just spent the last year of his life taking the president to task and suddenly playing nice and standing on ceremony would make him look a bit hypocritical.

But there was far more to the exchange than Mr. Will was willing to let on. Here is what the news section reported on Wednesday:

At a recent White House reception for freshman members of Congress, Virginia’s newest senator tried to avoid President Bush. Democrat James Webb declined to stand in a presidential receiving line or to have his picture taken with the man he had often criticized on the stump this fall. But it wasn’t long before Bush found him.

“How’s your boy?” Bush asked, referring to Webb’s son, a Marine serving in Iraq.

“I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President,” Webb responded, echoing a campaign theme.

“That’s not what I asked you,” Bush said. “How’s your boy?”

“That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President,” Webb said coldly, ending the conversation on the State Floor of the East Wing of the White House.

Will takes Webb’s explanation — his unwillingness to be a happy backslapper and his understanding that making nice with the president would have sent the wrong message to voters who elected him to stand up to President Bush — as an example of him being a loose cannon.

But this is what he said:

“I’m not particularly interested in having a picture of me and George W. Bush on my wall,” Webb said in an interview yesterday in which he confirmed the exchange between him and Bush. “No offense to the institution of the presidency, and I’m certainly looking forward to working with him and his administration. [But] leaders do some symbolic things to try to convey who they are and what the message is.”

Hard to argue with his reasoning.

Perhaps it’s time for the Post to impose term limits on Mr. Will — who I find to be one of the most unreadable columnists working, a man who relies on expansive blathering and big words to hide his rather vacuous take on the world — and let someone who is not so connected to the Washington power structure take a shot.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick