…we suggest a distinctive tactic for breaking up the hard core of extremists who supply conspiracy theories: cognitive infiltration of extremist groups, whereby government agents or their allies … will undermine the crippled epistemology of those who subscribe to such theories. They do so by planting doubts about the theories and stylized facts that circulate within such groups, thereby introducing beneficial cognitive diversity.

That’s right. Obama’s Regulation Czar is so concerned about citizens thinking the wrong way that he proposed sending government agents to “infiltrate” these groups and manipulate them. This reads like an Onion article: Powerful government official proposes to combat paranoid conspiracy groups that believe the government is out to get them…by proving that they really are out to get them. Did nothing of what Sunstein was writing strike him as…I don’t know…crazy? “Cognitive infiltration” of extremist groups by government agents? “Stylized facts”? Was “truthiness” too pedantic?

Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald explains why you should be disturbed by this:

This was written 18 months ago, at a time when the ascendancy of Sunstein’s close friend to the Presidency looked likely, in exactly the area he now oversees. Additionally, the government-controlled messaging that Sunstein desires has been a prominent feature of U.S. Government actions over the last decade, including in some recently revealed practices of the current administration, and the mindset in which it is grounded explains a great deal about our political class.

… What is most odious and revealing about Sunstein’s worldview is his condescending, self-loving belief that “false conspiracy theories” are largely the province of fringe, ignorant Internet masses and the Muslim world.

It’s certainly true that one can easily find irrational conspiracy theories in those venues, but some of the most destructive “false conspiracy theories” have emanated from the very entity Sunstein wants to endow with covert propaganda power: namely, the U.S. Government itself, along with its elite media defenders. Moreover, “crazy conspiracy theorist” has long been the favorite epithet of those same parties to discredit people trying to expose elite wrongdoing and corruption.

It is this history of government deceit and wrongdoing that renders Sunstein’s desire to use covert propaganda to “undermine” anti-government speech so repugnant. The reason conspiracy theories resonate so much is precisely that people have learned — rationally — to distrust government actions and statements. Sunstein’s proposed covert propaganda scheme is a perfect illustration of why that is. In other words, people don’t trust the Government and “conspiracy theories” are so pervasive precisely because government is typically filled with people like Cass Sunstein, who think that systematic deceit and government-sponsored manipulation are justified by their own Goodness and Superior Wisdom.

“Niki, I’m dying. Don’t have much to leave you. Just three envelopes. Open them, one at a time, when you get into big trouble.”

A few years later, first crisis. Khrushchev opens envelope 1: “Blame everything on me. Uncle Joe.”

A few years later, a really big crisis. Opens envelope 2: “Blame everything on me. Again. Good luck, Uncle Joe.”

Third crisis. Opens envelope 3: “Prepare three envelopes.”

In the Barack Obama version, there are 50 or so such blame-Bush free passes before the gig is up. By my calculation, Obama has already burned through a good 49. Is there anything he hasn’t blamed George W. Bush for? The economy, global warming, the credit crisis, Middle East stalemate, the deficit, anti-Americanism abroad — everything but swine flu.

It’s as if Obama’s presidency hasn’t really started. He’s still taking inventory of the Bush years. Just this Monday, he referred to “long years of drift” in Afghanistan in order to, I suppose, explain away his own, well, yearlong drift on Afghanistan.

This compulsion to attack his predecessor is as stale as it is unseemly. Obama was elected a year ago. He became commander in chief two months later. He then solemnly announced his own “comprehensive new strategy” for Afghanistan seven months ago. And it was not an off-the-cuff decision. “My administration has heard from our military commanders, as well as our diplomats,” the president assured us. “We’ve consulted with the Afghan and Pakistani governments, with our partners and our NATO allies, and with other donors and international organizations” and “with members of Congress.”

Obama is obviously unhappy with the path he himself chose in March. Fine. He has every right — indeed duty — to reconsider. But what Obama is reacting to is the failure of his own strategy.

There is nothing new here. The history of both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars is a considered readjustment of policies that have failed. In each war, quick initial low-casualty campaigns toppled enemy governments. In the subsequent occupation stage, two policy choices presented themselves: the light or heavy “footprint.”

In both Iraq and Afghanistan, we initially chose the light footprint. For obvious reasons: less risk and fewer losses for our troops, while reducing the intrusiveness of the occupation and thus the chances of creating an anti-foreigner backlash that would fan an insurgency.

This was the considered judgment of our commanders at the time, most especially Centcom commander (2003-2007) Gen. John Abizaid. And Abizaid was no stranger to the territory. He speaks Arabic and is a scholar of the region. The overriding idea was that the light footprint would minimize local opposition.

It was a perfectly reasonable assumption, but it proved wrong. The strategy failed. Not just because the enemy proved highly resilient but because the allegiance of the population turned out to hinge far less on resentment of foreign intrusiveness (in fact the locals came to hate the insurgents — al-Qaida in Iraq, the Taliban in Afghanistan — far more than us) than on physical insecurity, which made them side with the insurgents out of sheer fear.

What they needed, argued Gen. David Petraeus against much Pentagon brass opposition, was population protection, i.e., a heavy footprint.

In Iraq, the heavy footprint — also known as the surge — dramatically reversed the fortunes of war. In Afghanistan, where it took longer for the Taliban to regroup, the failure of the light footprint did not become evident until more recently when an uneasy stalemate began to deteriorate into steady Taliban advances.

That’s where we are now in Afghanistan. The logic of a true counterinsurgency strategy there is that whatever resentment a troop surge might occasion pales in comparison with the continued demoralization of any potential anti-Taliban elements unless they receive serious and immediate protection from U.S.-NATO forces.

In other words, Obama is facing the same decision on Afghanistan that Bush faced in late 2006 in deciding to surge in Iraq.

In both places, the deterioration of the military situation was not the result of “drift,” but of considered policies that seemed reasonable, cautious and culturally sensitive at the time, but ultimately turned out to be wrong.

Which is evidently what Obama now thinks of the policy choice he made March 27.

He is to be commended for reconsidering. But it is time he acted like a president and decided. Afghanistan is his. He’s used up his envelopes.

Gosh, it’s been so long ago … what “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy” did Obama make in the first 12 days?

The most popular headline at the Real Clear Politics Web site the other day was: “Is Obama Becoming A Joke?” With brilliant comedic timing, the very next morning the Norwegians gave him the Nobel Peace Prize. Up next: His stunning victory in this year’s Miss World contest. Dec. 12, Johannesburg. You read it here first.

For what, exactly, did he win the Nobel? As the president himself put it:

“When you look at my record, it’s very clear what I have done so far. And that is nothing. Almost one year and nothing to show for it. You don’t believe me? You think I’m making it up? Take a look at this checklist.”

And up popped his record of accomplishment, reassuringly blank.

Oh, no, wait. That wasn’t the real President Barack Obama. That was a comedian playing President Obama on “Saturday Night Live.” And, for impressionable types who find it hard to tell the difference, CNN – in a broadcast first that should surely have its own category at the Emmys – performed an in-depth “reality check” of the SNL sketch. That’s right: They fact-checked the jokes. Seriously. “How much truth is behind all the laughs? Stand by for our reality check,” promised Wolf Blitzer, introducing his in-depth report with all the plonking earnestness so cherished by those hapless Americans stuck at Gate 73 for four hours with nothing to watch but the CNN airport channel. Given the network’s ever more exhaustive absence of viewers among the non-flight-delayed demographic, perhaps Wolf could make it a regular series:

Who was that lady I saw you with last night?

That was no lady, that was my wife.

“In fact, our sources confirm, his wife is, biologically speaking, a lady. Joining us now is our Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Sanjay, we all like a joke, but how much truth is behind the laughs?”

Fortunately, the Nobel Committee understands that President Obama’s accomplishments are no laughing matter. So they gave him the Peace Prize for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” I assumed this was a reference to his rip-roaring success in winning the Olympic Games for Rio, but as it turns out the deadline for Nobel nominations was way back on Feb. 1.

Obama took office on Jan. 20. Gosh, it’s so long ago now. What “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy” did he make in those first 12 days? Bowing to the Saudi king? Giving the British prime minister the Walmart discount box of “Twenty Classic Movies You’ve Seen A Thousand Times”? “Er, Barack, I’ve already seen these.” “That’s OK. They won’t work in your DVD player anyway.”

For these and other “extraordinary efforts” in “cooperation between peoples”, President Obama is now the fastest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in history. Alas, the extraordinary efforts of those first 12 days are already ancient history. Reflecting the new harmony of U.S.-world relations since the administration hit the “reset” button, The Times of London declared the award “preposterous,” and Svenska Freds (the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society) called it “shameful.” There’s something almost quaintly vieux chapeau about the Nobel decision, as if the hopeychangey bumper stickers were shipped surface mail to Oslo and only arrived last week. Everywhere else, they’re peeling off: The venerable lefties at Britain’s New Statesman currently have a cover story on “Barack W. Bush”.

Happily, there are still a few Americans willing to stand by Mister Saturday Night. “I am shocked at the mean-spirited comments,” wrote Judi Romaine to The Times in protest at all the naysaying. “I’m afraid I’ve registered into a very conversative [sic], fear-based world here but I’d like to suggest the incredible notion we all create our worlds in our conversations. What are you building by maligning rather than creating discourses for workability? Bravo to Obama and others working for people, however it appears to cynics.”

If that’s the language you have to speak when you’re “working for people,” I’d rather work for a cranky mongoose. Yet to persons who can use phrases like “creating discourses for workability” with a straight face, Obama remains an heroic figure. Like Judi Romaine, he works hard to “create our worlds in our conversations.” Why, only the other day, very conversationally, the administration floated the trial balloon that it could live with the Taliban returning to government in Afghanistan. A lot of Afghans won’t be living with it, but that’s their lookout.

This is – how to put this delicately? – something of a recalibration of Obama’s previous position. From about a year after the fall of Baghdad, Democrats adopted the line that Bush’s war in Iraq was an unnecessary distraction from the real war, the good war, the one in Afghanistan that everyone – Dems, Europeans, all the nice people – were right behind, 100 percent. No one butched up for the Khyber Pass more enthusiastically than Barack Obama: “As President, I will make the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban the top priority.” (July 15, 2008)

But that was then, and this is now. As the historian Robert Dallek told Obama recently, “War kills off great reform movements.” As the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne reminded the president, his supporters voted for him not to win a war but to win a victory on health care and other domestic issues. Obama’s priorities lie not in the Hindu Kush but in America: Why squander your presidency on trying to turn an economically moribund feudal backwater into a functioning nation state when you can turn a functioning nation state into an economically moribund feudal backwater?

Gosh, given their many assertions that Afghanistan is “a war we have to win” (Obama to the VFW, August 2008), you might almost think, pace Judi Romaine, that it’s the president and water-bearers like Gunga Dionne who are the “cynics.” In a recent speech to the Manhattan Institute, Charles Krauthammer pointed out that, in diminishing American power abroad to advance statism at home, Obama and the American people will be choosing decline. There are legitimate questions about our war aims in Afghanistan, and about the strategy necessary to achieve them. But, eight years after being toppled, the Taliban will see their return to power as a great victory over the Great Satan, and so will the angry young men from Toronto to Yorkshire to Chechnya to Indonesia who graduated from Afghanistan’s Camp Jihad during the 1990s. And so will the rest of the world: They will understand that the modern era’s ordnungsmacht(the “order maker”) has chosen decline.

Barack Obama will have history’s most crowded trophy room, but his presidency is shaping up as a tragedy – for America and the world.

“President Obama, I support the Americans’ outstretched hand. But what did the international community gain from these offers of dialogue? Nothing.”

– French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Sept. 24

When France chides you for appeasement, you know you’re scraping bottom. Just how low we’ve sunk was demonstrated by the Obama administration’s satisfaction when Russia’s president said of Iran, after meeting President Obama at the United Nations, that “sanctions are seldom productive, but they are sometimes inevitable.”

You see? The Obama magic. Engagement works. Russia is on board. Except that, as The Post inconveniently pointed out, President Dmitry Medvedev said the same thing a week earlier, and the real power in Russia, Vladimir Putin, had changed not at all in his opposition to additional sanctions. And just to make things clear, when Iran then brazenly test-fired offensive missiles, Russia reacted by declaring that this newest provocation did not warrant the imposition of tougher sanctions.

Do the tally. In return for selling out Poland and the Czech Republic by unilaterally abrogating a missile-defense security arrangement that Russia had demanded be abrogated, we get from Russia . . . what? An oblique hint, of possible support, for unspecified sanctions, grudgingly offered and of dubious authority — and, in any case, leading nowhere because the Chinese have remained resolute against any Security Council sanctions.

Confusing ends and means, the Obama administration strives mightily for shows of allied unity, good feeling and pious concern about Iran’s nuclear program — whereas the real objective is stopping that program. This feel-good posturing is worse than useless, because all the time spent achieving gestures is precious time granted Iran to finish its race to acquire the bomb.

Don’t take it from me. Take it from Sarkozy, who could not conceal his astonishment at Obama’s naivete. On Sept. 24, Obama ostentatiously presided over the Security Council. With 14 heads of state (or government) at the table, with an American president at the chair for the first time ever, with every news camera in the world trained on the meeting, it would garner unprecedented worldwide attention.

Unknown to the world, Obama had in his pocket explosive revelations about an illegal uranium enrichment facility that the Iranians had been hiding near Qom. The French and the British were urging him to use this most dramatic of settings to stun the world with the revelation and to call for immediate action.

Obama refused. Not only did he say nothing about it, but, reports the Wall Street Journal (citing Le Monde), Sarkozy was forced to scrap the Qom section of his speech. Obama held the news until a day later — in Pittsburgh. I’ve got nothing against Pittsburgh (site of the G-20 summit), but a stacked-with-world-leaders Security Council chamber it is not.

Why forgo the opportunity? Because Obama wanted the Security Council meeting to be about his own dream of a nuclear-free world. The president, reports the New York Times citing “White House officials,” did not want to “dilute” his disarmament resolution “by diverting to Iran.”

Diversion? It’s the most serious security issue in the world. A diversion from what? From a worthless U.N. disarmament resolution?

Yes. And from Obama’s star turn as planetary visionary: “The administration told the French,” reports the Wall Street Journal, “that it didn’t want to ‘spoil the image of success’ for Mr. Obama’s debut at the U.N.”

Image? Success? Sarkozy could hardly contain himself. At the council table, with Obama at the chair, he reminded Obama that “we live in a real world, not a virtual world.”

He explained: “President Obama has even said, ‘I dream of a world without [nuclear weapons].’ Yet before our very eyes, two countries are currently doing the exact opposite.”

Sarkozy’s unspoken words? “And yet, sacré bleu, he’s sitting on Qom!”

At the time, we had no idea what Sarkozy was fuming about. Now we do. Although he could hardly have been surprised by Obama’s fecklessness. After all, just a day earlier in addressing the General Assembly, Obama actually said, “No one nation can . . . dominate another nation.” That adolescent mindlessness was followed with the declaration that “alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War” in fact “make no sense in an interconnected world.” NATO, our alliances with Japan and South Korea, our umbrella over Taiwan, are senseless? What do our allies think when they hear such nonsense?

Bismarck is said to have said: “There is a providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children, and the United States of America.” Bismarck never saw Obama at the U.N. Sarkozy did.

While the specific policies to which the U.S. committed itself (reducing the deficit and strengthening regulatory oversight of financial institutions) are laudable in themselves, the process and the precedent are frightening. We are to subject our most basic national economic policies to the review of a group of nations that includes autocratic Russia, China and Saudi Arabia. Even though our GDP is three times bigger than the second largest economy (Japan) and equal to that of 13 of the G-20 nations combined, we are to sit politely by with our one vote and submit to the global consensus. Europe has five votes (U.K., France, Germany, Italy and the EU) while we have but one.

And the process will be administered by the IMF, whose counsel to less developed nations over the past two decades has consistently called for social pain and economic austerity. The IMF’s misguided policies have been responsible for more revolutions than Marx, Engels and Lenin combined. Its bureaucrats’ arrogance is legendary and their search for appropriate punishments to fit the crime of spending too much on the poor smacks of colonialism and imperialism. They are our new overseers.
This combination of the IMF and the G-20 will not only work to structure national economic policies but to limit executive compensation at financial institutions. The watchful, wise leaders of such nations as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia — among others — will monitor Wall Street to assure themselves that its compensation is not out of line. One particularly looks forward to the views of the Saudi monarchy on this question of excessive personal enrichment.

Perhaps as part of his public spasm of apology, President Obama also strove, successfully, to increase the voting strength of the debtor nations on the IMF from the current 43 percent to 48 percent. This is the economic equivalent of giving deadbeat debtors more votes on their bank’s governing board of directors.

Thus, the world’s most successful economy — ours — which is the only one that has produced reliable economic growth for three decades and has lifted real personal incomes almost every year, is going to subject itself to the burden of justifying its own economic policies in front of a global community of 20 nations, some of which do not even embrace free-market economies in the first place. Indeed, it is only through access to our markets that nations have been able to escape poverty. Japan, Germany, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, China and India have sequentially trod this path into prosperity.

Obviously, we live in a global economy. But the United States is 24 percent of it. We are entitled to more than one-twentieth of a voice, and it is the world that should be following our policies — not the other way around.

Much of the damage of the Obama administration can be undone at the next election. But such grants of sovereignty to autocratic, backward, bureaucratic and even communist nations will be hard to undo. The world is recovering from its leftist obsession — e.g., the Merkel victory in Germany. But by the time the voters discover how phony, failed and fraudulent these policies are, we may have given it all away already. Irrevocably.

War with Iran is now inevitable. The only question is: Will it happen sooner or later? Tehran’s recent missile tests and war games suggest that the apocalyptic mullahs have reached the same conclusion.

Iran is on the march. Their medium-range Shahab-3 and Sajjil missiles can reach Israel, the entire Middle East and parts of Europe. Tehran is slowing expanding its regional sphere of influence. It has backed insurgency groups in Iraq, which have killed U.S. soldiers. It sponsors Hamas and Hezbollah. It has transformed Syria into a political vassal. It has forged an alliance with Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. It has purchased key air defense systems from Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust-denier and virulent anti-Semite. He is a Persian Nazi strongman who vows to wipe Israel “off the map.” He is a revolutionary Shi’ite. He believes the Jews must be extinguished in order to usher the coming of the Shi’ite Messiah, the so-called “Hidden Imam.”

For years, the fascist theocracy has invested considerable resources into developing a clandestine nuclear weapons program. Mr. Ahmadinejad insists Tehran only wants atomic energy for “peaceful purposes.” Yet, he cannot answer one simple question: Why does a country with the world’s second-largest natural gas reserves and third-largest oil supply need domestic nuclear power?

Moreover, Mr. Ahmadinejad is a congenital liar. He repeatedly insists that Iran is a “democracy.” Rather, it is a brutal police state based on rigged elections and the torture and murder of dissidents. He claims that Iran has “no homosexuals” and that women are treated “fairly.” In fact, the Islamist regime routinely executes gays and subjugates women. He says Iran has “nothing to hide” about its nuclear program. The West, however, recently discovered a hidden, underground facility near the holy city of Qom capable of producing highly enriched uranium for weapons-grade nuclear material.

Since establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, Iran has been engaged in an ideological struggle against the West. Its two main enemies have been the United States (“the Great Satan”) and Israel (“the Little Satan”). From its inception, Tehran has sought to erect a world Muslim empire; to restore medieval Islamic civilization to its former dominance. The regime is reactionary and – in a twisted manner – even utopian. Nuclear weapons are about more than attaining great-power status. They are the means to achieve the final triumph of messianic Shi’ism.

Iran is on the verge of acquiring the bomb. The mullahs have reached the point of no return. Israel – the country that has to live in that dangerous part of the world – believes the mullahs are six to nine months away from getting it.

Hence, President Obama’s policy of diplomatic engagement combined with possible sanctions is doomed to fail. It is ineffective, naive and reckless. Direct talks, like those conducted in Geneva on Thursday, only give Iran more time. Mr. Obama is simply providing the mullahs with the cover they need to finish completing their nuclear arsenal.

Washington now has two choices: Sanction an American or Israeli military attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities or allow Tehran to go nuclear. Either option means war.

A devastating strike would likely trigger a fierce Iranian response, including waves of suicide bombers targeting Israeli civilians and U.S. troops in Iraq. Iranian missiles would pound Israeli and, maybe, European cities. Vital shipping lanes in the Persian Gulf would be disrupted, driving the price of oil to more than $300 a barrel – plunging the West into a possible depression. Hezbollah sleeper cells might be activated within the United States, unleashing deadly atrocities on American soil.

Yet, allowing a nuclear-armed Iran is likely to lead to an even worse regional war. Once the ruling clerics get their hands on nukes, a military showdown with Israel is inevitable. They will seek to destroy the Jewish state once and for all. Jerusalem will not stand by and commit existential suicide. It will retaliate. The result would be a nuclear holocaust in the Middle East.

The winds of war are blowing across the Persian Gulf. Following this summer’s crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, the Iranian regime is weak, desperate and fracturing. Washington should vigorously pursue a policy of internal regime change; otherwise, Tehran will drag the Middle East into a certain conflagration that could lead to the slaughter of millions.

Instead, Mr. Obama has ruled out “meddling in Iran’s internal affairs.” His peace-at-any-cost diplomacy guarantees military conflict. It is no longer a question of if this will happen, but when and on whose terms. Mr. Obama is sleepwalking into disaster. America and the Middle East will pay the price.