Although the choice of topics has more often than not been serious as a heart attack, I've had an absolute blast writing this blog for the past several months. Many thanks to all who have read, and all who have responded with comments, in particular those who haven't seen eye to eye with me. I look forward to an even more invigorating time in 2010.
For the record, some things I wish I had spent more time on this year are state and local politics (notably the 2009 VA governor's election), the role the Catholic Church is playing in American politics (on abortion and health care in particular), and the general topic of global religious freedom (specifically, that vote in Switzerland to ban minarets raised my hackles a bit - I think a review of the W&M Wren Cross controversy may be in order). I expect my primary focus next year will continue to be accountability and transparency in matters of war and peace, but I do hope to broaden the palette a little bit as well. Of course, there's also the final season of LOST to discuss, plus my upcoming monthly series, titled From a Certain Point of View, a sprawling exposition and defense of the Star Wars prequel trilogy as high moral theater. (No, not kidding.)
My final words for 2009: The belief that all men are created equal, and the command to treat our neighbors as we ourselves would be treated, are inseparable. American government relies on the faith that if every citizen gets the same dignity, liberty and basic opportunity, the whole prospers. Forfeit the former, and risk losing the latter. So trust in, and demand, the truth from those to whom we give the authority to tax us, arrest us, and make war on our behalf. The illusion of impenetrability in matters of security, high finance, or the machinations of government, is just that - an illusion. Let's take it to the streets.
God bless America, and Happy New Year. Peace and good will to you and yours.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Reflections on Christmas and Health Care
The Man said that it’s harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. It’s not because God hates money, which is fortunate for me, since as it happens I myself love money, all evil’s root though such love may be. Rather, it’s because being rich creates choices, and choices are opportunities to fall short of expectations. For better or worse, He doesn’t keep score in a way we can keep track of on earth – who can say for sure whether in any given year we have too much or give too little, or even who’s rich and who’s poor for that matter. The safe bet, though, is that however much we’ve done, we haven’t really done enough.
I’ve been thinking lately about what this means for a rich nation, such as ours. We have choices in public life – and I’ve been wondering whether it’s coherent to imagine a personal political philosophy that is fundamentally detached from individual morality. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not. While nations themselves don’t enter heaven per se, citizens of rich nations do, and they thus face the same challenges and choices in public life as they do in private life. (As St. Francis said, "Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.") If the divine mandate is not to be codified in the law of the land, permitting our social contract to deviate from what we know to be our right and good instructions is nevertheless a failure of principle, and of conscience. So I’m supporting the health care bill that Obama is likely to sign next month, and the reasoning couldn’t be simpler.
No matter what happens to aggregate medical costs over time, there will never emerge a good reason for a private insurance company to take on or retain a customer with a better than average chance of incurring high medical expenses. And there will never emerge a good reason for a private insurance company to abolish caps on company payouts. Increasing competition across state lines, tort reform, these are all excellent ideas – but they don’t solve the coverage problem because insurance companies are all about playing the averages. It isn’t because they’re evil or don’t care about people – on the contrary, ignoring those practices would be a betrayal of the company’s shareholders , and ultimately they’d go out of business. And thus, by no one’s design, the sick and the poor and increasingly underserved in the greatest nation on earth; a nation that continually, fumblingly claims to strive for a Christian character. That’s what’s fundamentally unacceptable with the current system, and everything else, including rising aggregate costs, is secondary by comparison.
Once we agree on the moral imperative that something must be done, we then turn to the means. To my mind, the simplest way to address the limitations in the private insurance market would be to tell those companies not to worry about it, keep whatever rules they want to stay profitable, and the federal government will manage an insurance plan for the balance of the population, so that everyone had an option. This solution, however, has already been dismissed as deeply un-American, in that it’s grossly unfair to the poor beleaguered insurance companies, who would then have to compete with a heavily subsidized player who could never go out of business. I’m not certain exactly why as Americans we’re supposed to care more about those companies having a tougher road to hoe than we are about the sick and the poor, but so be it. Instead the Democratic party has decided that the better solution (or at least the one that keeps campaign contributions coming to that same Democratic party) is to heavily regulate the insurance industry to abolish the practices that underserve the sick and the poor, and in exchange flood them with new healthy customers via an individual mandate to buy insurance. With the mandate come federal subsidies for people who can’t afford the premiums, and the healthy customers pay for the sick ones. That’s it; that’s the bill. It’s not perfect, but it’s absolutely 100% better than nothing, and if this is our choice as a rich nation, to provide incremental care or not provide incremental care to citizens who need it but aren’t getting it, one imagines that a rich nation would need a really, really good reason to choose no.
So, there’s increased taxes, the deficit, and the debt, that’s one reason. But looked at in context, you have to say that a $2 trillion bank bailout that didn’t unlock or secure the financial system, and a $600B annual defense budget with no end in sight when our biggest threats are essentially crime families living in caves, are reasonable expenses, but expanding medical care to 95% of all Americans at a cost of about $100B per year is not. I’m not convinced.
There’s the notion of government bureaucracy intruding into medical innovation and consumer privacy, that’s another reason. But then you’d be forced into saying that you prefer the insurance bureaucracy, motivated entirely (and understandably) by profit, to a combination of private insurance and government, presumably motivated by profit and politics, respectively. A morass, maybe, but not a good reason to just sit tight and hope for the best. Besides, every single provision in the bill that could be criticized on this rationale is borne out of a good faith effort to control cost. If you don’t like them, so be it, but then see objection 1.
Then there’s the specter of emerging tyranny, and the end of the American experiment in a cataclysm of arbitrary regulation. Okay. There’s no fighting ideology in the space of a single blog post – but in a decade where the American government has eroded our traditional notions of privacy, accountability, transparency, adherence to the rule of law, and protections against torture, in unprecedented fashion , hopefully you’ll forgive me for being skeptical that reform of the health insurance system is going to be what makes the sky fall down on us. Not good enough to say no.
This is politics – it’s messy and it’s not perfect. But it’s the only expression of our national will that we have, and the Senate bill meets the fundamental requirement that we support those less fortunate than ourselves. Everything else, including the outcry from the left over the loss of the public option, is noise. Most of us will never be faced with a debilitating medical expense, whether because of our employment, education, or other support structure. Ignoring or deferring the plight of those who do, because we’re afraid of how much money it could cost, or whatever else we might be forced to give up, or because we think we might get something better later, just doesn’t work. I cannot summon any fear that the United States can’t be safe, and free, and prosperous, and generous, all at the same time. This is the right choice for a rich nation, and as a Christian and as an American, I’ll celebrate when President Obama signs it, warts and all. Merry Christmas, good friends.
I’ve been thinking lately about what this means for a rich nation, such as ours. We have choices in public life – and I’ve been wondering whether it’s coherent to imagine a personal political philosophy that is fundamentally detached from individual morality. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not. While nations themselves don’t enter heaven per se, citizens of rich nations do, and they thus face the same challenges and choices in public life as they do in private life. (As St. Francis said, "Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.") If the divine mandate is not to be codified in the law of the land, permitting our social contract to deviate from what we know to be our right and good instructions is nevertheless a failure of principle, and of conscience. So I’m supporting the health care bill that Obama is likely to sign next month, and the reasoning couldn’t be simpler.
No matter what happens to aggregate medical costs over time, there will never emerge a good reason for a private insurance company to take on or retain a customer with a better than average chance of incurring high medical expenses. And there will never emerge a good reason for a private insurance company to abolish caps on company payouts. Increasing competition across state lines, tort reform, these are all excellent ideas – but they don’t solve the coverage problem because insurance companies are all about playing the averages. It isn’t because they’re evil or don’t care about people – on the contrary, ignoring those practices would be a betrayal of the company’s shareholders , and ultimately they’d go out of business. And thus, by no one’s design, the sick and the poor and increasingly underserved in the greatest nation on earth; a nation that continually, fumblingly claims to strive for a Christian character. That’s what’s fundamentally unacceptable with the current system, and everything else, including rising aggregate costs, is secondary by comparison.
Once we agree on the moral imperative that something must be done, we then turn to the means. To my mind, the simplest way to address the limitations in the private insurance market would be to tell those companies not to worry about it, keep whatever rules they want to stay profitable, and the federal government will manage an insurance plan for the balance of the population, so that everyone had an option. This solution, however, has already been dismissed as deeply un-American, in that it’s grossly unfair to the poor beleaguered insurance companies, who would then have to compete with a heavily subsidized player who could never go out of business. I’m not certain exactly why as Americans we’re supposed to care more about those companies having a tougher road to hoe than we are about the sick and the poor, but so be it. Instead the Democratic party has decided that the better solution (or at least the one that keeps campaign contributions coming to that same Democratic party) is to heavily regulate the insurance industry to abolish the practices that underserve the sick and the poor, and in exchange flood them with new healthy customers via an individual mandate to buy insurance. With the mandate come federal subsidies for people who can’t afford the premiums, and the healthy customers pay for the sick ones. That’s it; that’s the bill. It’s not perfect, but it’s absolutely 100% better than nothing, and if this is our choice as a rich nation, to provide incremental care or not provide incremental care to citizens who need it but aren’t getting it, one imagines that a rich nation would need a really, really good reason to choose no.
So, there’s increased taxes, the deficit, and the debt, that’s one reason. But looked at in context, you have to say that a $2 trillion bank bailout that didn’t unlock or secure the financial system, and a $600B annual defense budget with no end in sight when our biggest threats are essentially crime families living in caves, are reasonable expenses, but expanding medical care to 95% of all Americans at a cost of about $100B per year is not. I’m not convinced.
There’s the notion of government bureaucracy intruding into medical innovation and consumer privacy, that’s another reason. But then you’d be forced into saying that you prefer the insurance bureaucracy, motivated entirely (and understandably) by profit, to a combination of private insurance and government, presumably motivated by profit and politics, respectively. A morass, maybe, but not a good reason to just sit tight and hope for the best. Besides, every single provision in the bill that could be criticized on this rationale is borne out of a good faith effort to control cost. If you don’t like them, so be it, but then see objection 1.
Then there’s the specter of emerging tyranny, and the end of the American experiment in a cataclysm of arbitrary regulation. Okay. There’s no fighting ideology in the space of a single blog post – but in a decade where the American government has eroded our traditional notions of privacy, accountability, transparency, adherence to the rule of law, and protections against torture, in unprecedented fashion , hopefully you’ll forgive me for being skeptical that reform of the health insurance system is going to be what makes the sky fall down on us. Not good enough to say no.
This is politics – it’s messy and it’s not perfect. But it’s the only expression of our national will that we have, and the Senate bill meets the fundamental requirement that we support those less fortunate than ourselves. Everything else, including the outcry from the left over the loss of the public option, is noise. Most of us will never be faced with a debilitating medical expense, whether because of our employment, education, or other support structure. Ignoring or deferring the plight of those who do, because we’re afraid of how much money it could cost, or whatever else we might be forced to give up, or because we think we might get something better later, just doesn’t work. I cannot summon any fear that the United States can’t be safe, and free, and prosperous, and generous, all at the same time. This is the right choice for a rich nation, and as a Christian and as an American, I’ll celebrate when President Obama signs it, warts and all. Merry Christmas, good friends.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Obama's Nobel Acceptance: Even lovely talk is cheap
When Barack Obama makes a speech, particularly one that forces him to reconcile two or more conflicting principles, he has a way of reminding me in technicolor why I preferred him over Hillary Clinton. I really am a sucker for the way his mind works, and I envy his ability to articulate positions of seemingly intractable complexity, where a poorly chosen word can topple the whole rhetorical house of cards. Accepting a Nobel Peace Prize in the same fortnight as escalating a foreign war is a tightrope worthy of Obama's talents, for certain, and he didn't disappoint.
Many commentators, in particular the writers over at Slate, appear impressed that the President acknowledged the complexities of war and peace at all (my, how our standards have waned). Above all, it was a far more satisfying embrace of realism that one imagines ever having heard from George W. - but to say that his vision for the world is markedly different from that of the neocons would be a tough case to make. In addition, Obama's insistence that America only ever engages in war with the greatest of reluctance, only in the darkest of hours, and in full recognition of the resulting misery, frankly stretches the imagination.
As I've fumblingly tried to articulate over the past week or so, it's not the 30,000 troop increase. Or rather, it's not just the troop increase. What a transformative figure like Barack Obama could be doing is breaking the status quo that makes "war as a way to keep the peace" seem so much less absurd than it actually is. To wit: the American government exported $154B worth of weaponry during the Bush administration, over half of which goes to developing nations without sustainable economies. When that weaponry is turned around and used to suppress dissent within the recipients' own countries, just what does it mean for the Barack Obama to say that human rights and free expression are of paramount concern to the United States? And when those very same countries have a tendency to produce terrorists that turn around and target America, just what does it mean to talk about our military might being the key to global security in an age of new threats? A kindergartener could figure out the flaws in this logic - but in any event you're crazy if you think that big business is merely an incidental ingredient in the whole morass. Obama could have taken the Nobel opportunity to acknowledge this and try to walk it back an inch - or at least correct the momentum of the last eight years - but he's not. Instead, he's just spreading strawberry jam on the same big pile of shit, and hoping to get through the week.
The President also made a big point of saying that the manner in which wars are fought is critical to maintaining moral authority. That's why, he said, he prohibited torture by American personnel. God damn it - even the Constitutional lawyer misses the point, after all this time. THERE ARE LAWS AGAINST TORTURE - HE DIDN'T NEED TO PROHIBIT IT, IT WAS ALREADY PROHIBITED. On torture, President Obama has actually made things worse. By not prosecuting crimes of torture from the last eight years, by suppressing the evidence of wrongdoing by claiming state secret authority, and overall by continuing to position the whole issue as a question of executive policy rather than law, he has reinforced the notion that on matters of security, what's right is right because the President says it's right, not because it's right. It's a classic Euthypro cop-out, written in fine print for the most powerful nation on earth - what matters isn't what the law says, only whether the President judges that following the law is appropriate on any given day. This continues to be a disgrace, and makes the Nobel an even starker irony than does the troop escalation itself.
What saddens me most about this, ironically, is how good Obama really is at catering to the sensibilities of progressives and idealists, or at least making them feel catered to. In his hands, the same old crap really does sound better than it used to, and people who wouldn't have accepted Bush or Cheney's assertions of "best of all bad options" are all too eager to give the new guy a break, since it seems like he's trying so darn hard. But nothing's really changed. Greenwald, as usual, puts it heartwrenchingly well:
This is why health care always mattered less to me, although I'm happy to see some small progress made on that front, tainted by corporate sell-out it may be. What's scarier to me is what the two major parties agree on - absurd corporate welfare, continually decreasing levels of transparency and oversight, and, it seems, endless and intractable war.
Many commentators, in particular the writers over at Slate, appear impressed that the President acknowledged the complexities of war and peace at all (my, how our standards have waned). Above all, it was a far more satisfying embrace of realism that one imagines ever having heard from George W. - but to say that his vision for the world is markedly different from that of the neocons would be a tough case to make. In addition, Obama's insistence that America only ever engages in war with the greatest of reluctance, only in the darkest of hours, and in full recognition of the resulting misery, frankly stretches the imagination.
As I've fumblingly tried to articulate over the past week or so, it's not the 30,000 troop increase. Or rather, it's not just the troop increase. What a transformative figure like Barack Obama could be doing is breaking the status quo that makes "war as a way to keep the peace" seem so much less absurd than it actually is. To wit: the American government exported $154B worth of weaponry during the Bush administration, over half of which goes to developing nations without sustainable economies. When that weaponry is turned around and used to suppress dissent within the recipients' own countries, just what does it mean for the Barack Obama to say that human rights and free expression are of paramount concern to the United States? And when those very same countries have a tendency to produce terrorists that turn around and target America, just what does it mean to talk about our military might being the key to global security in an age of new threats? A kindergartener could figure out the flaws in this logic - but in any event you're crazy if you think that big business is merely an incidental ingredient in the whole morass. Obama could have taken the Nobel opportunity to acknowledge this and try to walk it back an inch - or at least correct the momentum of the last eight years - but he's not. Instead, he's just spreading strawberry jam on the same big pile of shit, and hoping to get through the week.
The President also made a big point of saying that the manner in which wars are fought is critical to maintaining moral authority. That's why, he said, he prohibited torture by American personnel. God damn it - even the Constitutional lawyer misses the point, after all this time. THERE ARE LAWS AGAINST TORTURE - HE DIDN'T NEED TO PROHIBIT IT, IT WAS ALREADY PROHIBITED. On torture, President Obama has actually made things worse. By not prosecuting crimes of torture from the last eight years, by suppressing the evidence of wrongdoing by claiming state secret authority, and overall by continuing to position the whole issue as a question of executive policy rather than law, he has reinforced the notion that on matters of security, what's right is right because the President says it's right, not because it's right. It's a classic Euthypro cop-out, written in fine print for the most powerful nation on earth - what matters isn't what the law says, only whether the President judges that following the law is appropriate on any given day. This continues to be a disgrace, and makes the Nobel an even starker irony than does the troop escalation itself.
What saddens me most about this, ironically, is how good Obama really is at catering to the sensibilities of progressives and idealists, or at least making them feel catered to. In his hands, the same old crap really does sound better than it used to, and people who wouldn't have accepted Bush or Cheney's assertions of "best of all bad options" are all too eager to give the new guy a break, since it seems like he's trying so darn hard. But nothing's really changed. Greenwald, as usual, puts it heartwrenchingly well:
To red state Republicans, war and its accompanying instruments (secrecy, executive power, indefinite detention) felt so good and right when justified by swaggering, unapologetic toughness and divinely-mandated purpose; to blue state Democrats, all of that feels just as good when justified by academic meditations on "just war" doctrine and when accompanied by poetic expressions of sorrow and reluctance. When you combine the two rhetorical approaches, what you get is what you saw yesterday: a bipartisan embrace of the same policies and ideologies among people with supposedly irreconcilable views of the world.
This is why health care always mattered less to me, although I'm happy to see some small progress made on that front, tainted by corporate sell-out it may be. What's scarier to me is what the two major parties agree on - absurd corporate welfare, continually decreasing levels of transparency and oversight, and, it seems, endless and intractable war.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Tales from another war
I swear, from time to time I wonder whether I overdo it on this page, that maybe I'm losing my penchant for balance. But then I come across something like this, and it makes me want to beat the ever living piss out of someone all over again. According to testimony offered this week in the UK pursuant to a public inquiry into how the Brits found themselves at war in Iraq (God save the Brits for actually having the balls to do this by the way), it was revealed that:
Greenwald does a nice job detailing the extent to which this particular claim was amplified and repeated, both in the UK and in the US, in aid of drumming up support for the invasion.
For a long time, I just operated under the presumption that the intelligence leading up to the war, about Iraq's capabilities and Saddam's threat to us, was just mistaken. It wasn't - what the Brits are showing us now, in the clearest possible terms, is that the guys on the ground told us everything they knew, and by and large they had it right. It was our country's leadership that deliberately distorted, amplified, and manufactured whatever they could get their hands on, in order to justify a course of action on which they had already decided.
Tens of thousands dead. Hundreds of thousands wounded. Trillions spent. And while Saddam may be gone, the Shia government that replaced him shows signs of being just as bad as he was (which is saying something, for sure). They can't guarantee fair elections, or protect the populace from terrorists. They're certainly not an example for their Arab neighbors to follow. What in the name of all that is holy did we do this for? And how can we look ourselves in the mirror every single day as Americans and in the full light of day chalk it all up to reasonable policy differences, and flawed attempts to find the best of all bad options? What will we ever have the balls to call criminal, ever again?
So no - readers of this page will have to look elsewhere for a balanced approach to death and destruction. And to anyone outraged at the Bush administration given the rearview look on Iraq, but who still insists on giving Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt as he prosecutes his war in Afghanistan, don't look here for comfort. I'm not accusing the President of grossly fudging the case for a troop surge in Afghanistan, or deliberately misleading anyone for that matter - he doesn't need to be as bad as Bush for me to make my case. What I am saying is that claiming to pursue virtuous ends with bombs and bullets is the hallmark of fools and tyrants, no matter whether you're from Crawford or Chicago. And even more important that that, what I'm saying is Don't. Trust. Anyone.
An Iraqi taxi driver may have been the source of the discredited claim that Saddam Hussein could unleash weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes, a Tory MP claimed today.
...
In the report he wrote: "Under pressure from Downing Street to find anything to back up the WMD case, British intelligence was squeezing their agents in Iraq for information. One agent did come up with something: the '45 minutes' or something about missiles allegedly discussed in a high level Iraqi political meeting.
"But the provenance of this information was never questioned in detail until after the Iraq invasion, when it became apparent that something was wrong. In the end it turned out that the information was not credible, it had originated from an émigré taxi driver on the Iraqi-Jordanian border, who had remembered an overheard a conversation in the back of his cab a full two years earlier.
"Indeed, in the intelligence analyst's footnote to the report, it was flagged up that part of the report probably describing some missiles that the Iraqi government allegedly possessed was demonstrably untrue. They verifiably did not exist.
Greenwald does a nice job detailing the extent to which this particular claim was amplified and repeated, both in the UK and in the US, in aid of drumming up support for the invasion.
For a long time, I just operated under the presumption that the intelligence leading up to the war, about Iraq's capabilities and Saddam's threat to us, was just mistaken. It wasn't - what the Brits are showing us now, in the clearest possible terms, is that the guys on the ground told us everything they knew, and by and large they had it right. It was our country's leadership that deliberately distorted, amplified, and manufactured whatever they could get their hands on, in order to justify a course of action on which they had already decided.
Tens of thousands dead. Hundreds of thousands wounded. Trillions spent. And while Saddam may be gone, the Shia government that replaced him shows signs of being just as bad as he was (which is saying something, for sure). They can't guarantee fair elections, or protect the populace from terrorists. They're certainly not an example for their Arab neighbors to follow. What in the name of all that is holy did we do this for? And how can we look ourselves in the mirror every single day as Americans and in the full light of day chalk it all up to reasonable policy differences, and flawed attempts to find the best of all bad options? What will we ever have the balls to call criminal, ever again?
So no - readers of this page will have to look elsewhere for a balanced approach to death and destruction. And to anyone outraged at the Bush administration given the rearview look on Iraq, but who still insists on giving Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt as he prosecutes his war in Afghanistan, don't look here for comfort. I'm not accusing the President of grossly fudging the case for a troop surge in Afghanistan, or deliberately misleading anyone for that matter - he doesn't need to be as bad as Bush for me to make my case. What I am saying is that claiming to pursue virtuous ends with bombs and bullets is the hallmark of fools and tyrants, no matter whether you're from Crawford or Chicago. And even more important that that, what I'm saying is Don't. Trust. Anyone.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Afghanistan musings, part III
I'm still doing my level best to divine a coherent theory of President Obama's plans in Afghanistan. This graphic most certainly does not help, but it is useful if you want a visceral appreciation of just how complex an endeavor we're talking about (hat-tip: Weinberger). All in all, we've got to be aware - this is not a straightforward mission. Success entirely depends not on military prowess, which we naturally have in abundance, but rather that we know the terrain, the people, the alliances, the economy - pretty much everything - better than the people who live there. And yet, here's General McChrystal, testifying on the Hill today:
The two worst kept secrets about all this are that a) the July 2011 timetable for withdrawal is 110% meaningless (there's no other way to interpret "dependent upon conditions on the ground"), and b) the lynchpin of stability isn't removing al Qaeda's influence in Afghanistan, it's mitigating the Taliban's influence in Pakistan. This week, reports have emerged that the CIA is stepping up drone attacks in Pakistani tribal areas, and the Obama administration is increasing pressure on the Pakistanis to pick up more of the fight on the border against the Islamist militias. Trouble is, the Pakistanis aren't unambiguously opposed to those militias...but supposedly that balance can be tipped in our direction. Here's a passage from Steve Coll:
Now, India wasn't mentioned at all in the President's speech last week...one can see whym if Pakistan was also considered part of the audience. But once again this all begs the question of what's the endgame. Do we expect tensions between India and Pakistan, which underpin much of the Pakistani support for Islamists both within Pakistan and in Afghanistan, to somehow wane in the next 18 months? Or do we plan on filling that "asymmetrical" gap ourselves, providing a peace-keeping buffer between these two nuclear nations, while suppressing Taliban-like efforts to destroy all three nations, in perpetuity? And notice how far away any of this reasoning is from our stated intentions of eliminating direct terrorists threats against the homeland. Can any of this be done without enflaming anti-American sentiment amongst the people with the misfortune to live within and around the theater of war? Is there any historical precedent for success here that I'm not thinking of?
Still looking for some kind of comfort level here...but I'm not feeling any better about it than I did last week.
"There is much in Afghanistan that I do not understand."
The two worst kept secrets about all this are that a) the July 2011 timetable for withdrawal is 110% meaningless (there's no other way to interpret "dependent upon conditions on the ground"), and b) the lynchpin of stability isn't removing al Qaeda's influence in Afghanistan, it's mitigating the Taliban's influence in Pakistan. This week, reports have emerged that the CIA is stepping up drone attacks in Pakistani tribal areas, and the Obama administration is increasing pressure on the Pakistanis to pick up more of the fight on the border against the Islamist militias. Trouble is, the Pakistanis aren't unambiguously opposed to those militias...but supposedly that balance can be tipped in our direction. Here's a passage from Steve Coll:
The Pakistan Army has historically supported groups like the Taliban because it sees them as essential, along with a nuclear deterrent, to an asymmetrical defense against much larger India, which Pakistan regards as determined to weaken or destroy Pakistan. Now sections of the Pakistani elites, faced with their own revolutionary Taliban, are questioning whether the benefits of allies like the Taliban are outstripped by the costs. Here the governments of Pakistan, Afghanistan, the United States and India actually have a common interest--to persuade Pakistan to abandon its support for these groups and pursue its legitimate security goals by other means. American failure in Afghanistan would almost guarantee failure of this project in Pakistan.
Now, India wasn't mentioned at all in the President's speech last week...one can see whym if Pakistan was also considered part of the audience. But once again this all begs the question of what's the endgame. Do we expect tensions between India and Pakistan, which underpin much of the Pakistani support for Islamists both within Pakistan and in Afghanistan, to somehow wane in the next 18 months? Or do we plan on filling that "asymmetrical" gap ourselves, providing a peace-keeping buffer between these two nuclear nations, while suppressing Taliban-like efforts to destroy all three nations, in perpetuity? And notice how far away any of this reasoning is from our stated intentions of eliminating direct terrorists threats against the homeland. Can any of this be done without enflaming anti-American sentiment amongst the people with the misfortune to live within and around the theater of war? Is there any historical precedent for success here that I'm not thinking of?
Still looking for some kind of comfort level here...but I'm not feeling any better about it than I did last week.
Hunting and Zinn
In 1998, I read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States based on (Good) Will Hunting's assessment that it would "knock you on your ass." According to this article at the Daily Beast, it turns out that Matt Damon and Zinn are actually old friends, and that's how that line got in the movie. I don't know why, but I find that trippy. Also within that link, Aragorn's take on Sarah Palin - priceless.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Additional thoughts and links on Afghanistan
As a follow-up to my Afghanistan post prior to President Obama's speech, I don't mind saying I was wrong about a few things, although what I was wrong about doesn't make me feel any better about the situation. One, I was wrong when I said that the President wouldn't use the specter of imminent attack to justify the escalation. Not precisely correct - he spent the first section of the speech recounting the events of 9/11 and the initiation of the Afghan conflict, repeatedly saying that our primary mission now is just what it was then - disrupting and dismantling al Qaeda so they can't launch more attacks against us. He didn't say exactly how he was going to keep al Qaeda from centralizing in Somalia or Yemen after they were routed, but then he also relied heavily for his case on the conflation between al Qaeda jihadists, who could be anywhere, and Taliban nationalists, who are really the ones right at home in the mountains of Afghanistan. So he wasn't really going for a real precise articulation of the mission. Obama also did not mention the capture or death of Osama bin Laden as either a missed opportunity or a current goal of his administration. But he did say that not succeeding in Afghanistan would leave America less safe.
Second, I also said that the President would remind us of our historic commitment to the welfare of the Afghan people. Greenwald, in a curious and measured bit of praise, points out that Obama kept his case clearly within the bounds of American national interest:
While Greenwald is happy about the bit of refreshing honesty, I'm extraordinarily bothered by the fact that Obama is abandoning even the pretense of helping average Afghans to realize a better future for themselves. What it shows is that Obama's interest is consistent with a situation that is identical or worse for Afghan citizens, even than it is now. We know how bad Karzai is on women's rights, and we know that in general the whole Afghan government is near-hopelessly corrupt, and can't be trusted to take care of its people. But Obama's explicitly not trying to solve that problem - he's trying to create stability and eliminate a nominal threat to American security. Nice, limited goals - here's the problem though. We already have client states in the Muslim world that are capable of cracking down on internal dissidents and that claim to share America's global interests. Saudi Arabia and Egypt come to mind, and the best we can probably hope for Iraq is that it soon joins that club. (That whole wellspring of democracy idea? Not so much.) Saudi Arabia is among the most oppressive governments in the entire world, by any standard of measurement. If Obama wants the same for Afghanistan in exchange for stability, he ought to remember that while the al Qaeda leadership had safe haven there prior to 2001, that country didn't actually produce the terrorists of 9/11. By and large, Saudi Arabia did - our supposed ally, propped up by our military support. So this is the plan then? America will side with Karzai over the Taliban, and try to summon some pride that, as Obama put it, "while the election was marred by fraud, it produced a government that was consistent with the Afghan constitution and laws." Whoopee. That government, if we're lucky, will crush its opposition (with our help), so we can go home. And then we'll have created another effective dictatorship who only knows how to survive by oppressing its own people. This is going to make us safer? Please.
Here's an op-ed by a courageous Afghan woman who points out that things are as bad as they've ever been for the Afghan people, and that they're poised to get a lot worse with Obama's escalation. I remain exasperated and very, very sad.
Second, I also said that the President would remind us of our historic commitment to the welfare of the Afghan people. Greenwald, in a curious and measured bit of praise, points out that Obama kept his case clearly within the bounds of American national interest:
There were no grandiose claims that the justness of the war derives from our desire to defeat evil, tyrannical extremists and replace them with more humane and democratic leaders. To the contrary, he was commendably blunt that our true goal is not to improve the lives of Afghan citizens but rather: "Our overarching goal remains the same: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda." There were no promises to guarantee freedom and human rights to the Afghan people. To the contrary, he explicitly rejected a mission of broad nation-building "because it sets goals that are beyond what can be achieved at a reasonable cost and what we need to achieve to secure our interests"
While Greenwald is happy about the bit of refreshing honesty, I'm extraordinarily bothered by the fact that Obama is abandoning even the pretense of helping average Afghans to realize a better future for themselves. What it shows is that Obama's interest is consistent with a situation that is identical or worse for Afghan citizens, even than it is now. We know how bad Karzai is on women's rights, and we know that in general the whole Afghan government is near-hopelessly corrupt, and can't be trusted to take care of its people. But Obama's explicitly not trying to solve that problem - he's trying to create stability and eliminate a nominal threat to American security. Nice, limited goals - here's the problem though. We already have client states in the Muslim world that are capable of cracking down on internal dissidents and that claim to share America's global interests. Saudi Arabia and Egypt come to mind, and the best we can probably hope for Iraq is that it soon joins that club. (That whole wellspring of democracy idea? Not so much.) Saudi Arabia is among the most oppressive governments in the entire world, by any standard of measurement. If Obama wants the same for Afghanistan in exchange for stability, he ought to remember that while the al Qaeda leadership had safe haven there prior to 2001, that country didn't actually produce the terrorists of 9/11. By and large, Saudi Arabia did - our supposed ally, propped up by our military support. So this is the plan then? America will side with Karzai over the Taliban, and try to summon some pride that, as Obama put it, "while the election was marred by fraud, it produced a government that was consistent with the Afghan constitution and laws." Whoopee. That government, if we're lucky, will crush its opposition (with our help), so we can go home. And then we'll have created another effective dictatorship who only knows how to survive by oppressing its own people. This is going to make us safer? Please.
Here's an op-ed by a courageous Afghan woman who points out that things are as bad as they've ever been for the Afghan people, and that they're poised to get a lot worse with Obama's escalation. I remain exasperated and very, very sad.
More Americans favor torture, and it's Barack Obama's fault
According to the latest Pew survey, a full 53% of Americans currently believe that torture of suspected terrorists is either "often" or "sometimes" justified. We're down to only 1 out of 4 of us who believe that torture is never justified. Those who say torture is often (often!) justified is up from 15% in April to 19% last month.
Couple points on the language here - first, we're talking about torture. Not "interrogation methods that some critics of the Bush administration call torture," but torture. Pick your technique, no matter how heinous - rape, cutting, electric shocks, beatings - and that's what we're referring to, without limits. Second, note that the poll refers not to terrorists, but suspected terrorists. You can become a suspected terrorist with no due process at all, and as followers of this blog know, there are numerous examples from the last decade where government suspicions were unfounded, and where torture proceeded nonetheless. I guess it was worth it.
Here's what may be the worst part, though. According to the survey, in February 2008, 38% of Democrats thought it was often or sometimes necessary to torture suspected terrorists. In February of 2009, that number dropped to 29%. In November of 2009, a mere 9 months later, it's up to a whopping 47%.
Consider how the Democrat number drops 10 points during 2008, during the last Presidential campaign, when Barack Obama was on the campaign trail doubling down on every difference between him and George W. Bush. He won the election in part by claiming the high road, reminding the American people of our moral obligation as a leader among nations to behave better than we had been. But look at what's happened since the election, where support for torture has leapt 20 points in less than a year. During that time, the President has repeatedly suppressed evidence of US torture in the courts and in the release of incriminating photographs, insisted on "looking forward" rather than addressing past acts of criminality, and asserted the US's right to indefinite military detention and extraordinary rendition. Looks like Obama's moral outrage, and that of the voters who put him in office, served the moment of his election nicely but not much else.
When Bush was in office, at least there was a vociferous opposition party eager to check his worst impulses. Now, the party out of power, exemplified by the former vice president, spends most of its time complaining that the president isn't brutal enough when it comes to the nation's enemies. Maybe something to keep in mind while we're busy moralizing about all those crazy Muslims and their lack of respect for basic human dignity.
Couple points on the language here - first, we're talking about torture. Not "interrogation methods that some critics of the Bush administration call torture," but torture. Pick your technique, no matter how heinous - rape, cutting, electric shocks, beatings - and that's what we're referring to, without limits. Second, note that the poll refers not to terrorists, but suspected terrorists. You can become a suspected terrorist with no due process at all, and as followers of this blog know, there are numerous examples from the last decade where government suspicions were unfounded, and where torture proceeded nonetheless. I guess it was worth it.
Here's what may be the worst part, though. According to the survey, in February 2008, 38% of Democrats thought it was often or sometimes necessary to torture suspected terrorists. In February of 2009, that number dropped to 29%. In November of 2009, a mere 9 months later, it's up to a whopping 47%.
Consider how the Democrat number drops 10 points during 2008, during the last Presidential campaign, when Barack Obama was on the campaign trail doubling down on every difference between him and George W. Bush. He won the election in part by claiming the high road, reminding the American people of our moral obligation as a leader among nations to behave better than we had been. But look at what's happened since the election, where support for torture has leapt 20 points in less than a year. During that time, the President has repeatedly suppressed evidence of US torture in the courts and in the release of incriminating photographs, insisted on "looking forward" rather than addressing past acts of criminality, and asserted the US's right to indefinite military detention and extraordinary rendition. Looks like Obama's moral outrage, and that of the voters who put him in office, served the moment of his election nicely but not much else.
When Bush was in office, at least there was a vociferous opposition party eager to check his worst impulses. Now, the party out of power, exemplified by the former vice president, spends most of its time complaining that the president isn't brutal enough when it comes to the nation's enemies. Maybe something to keep in mind while we're busy moralizing about all those crazy Muslims and their lack of respect for basic human dignity.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Reflections on Advent and Afghanistan
The season of Advent has just begun, and with it comes an expectation of not only a reverent patience, but also the summoning of a joyful hope, that the life God intended for us is indeed within mankind’s grasp. Most days I count myself an optimist on balance, but have to I confess that there are some times that I just get positively fatigued. At the moment, the culprit is my obsessive, week-long reflection on President Obama’s soon-to-be-announced escalation of the war in Afghanistan, to the tune of 34,000 additional American troops.
I think I have a good idea of what the President will say tonight, and what he won’t say. He won’t say that the increased deployment is necessary to protect America from imminent attack, not when 9/11 was planned in Florida and West Germany. He’ll probably touch on our commitment to the Afghan people, regardless of the fact that most of them don’t actually want us to be there anymore, and many consider us a threat or an “aggravating influence.” Odds are Obama will play up the notion of clear benchmarks for the Karzai government, upon which the United States will absolutely insist; but he won’t draw attention to the fact that similar benchmarks in Iraq have pretty much meant absolutely nothing to the Malaki government, which by the by is looking more and more like Saddam’s Iraq every day, so one still wonders what the point of the whole thing was unless we just wanted another Saudi Arabia to begin with. He’ll most certainly highlight the unquestioned expertise of the generals on the ground, and maybe even the success of the Iraq troop surge from a few years ago, without going into the messy details about how that surge was concurrent with an alliance with some of the Sunni insurgents in Iraq, for whom there is no Afghan substitute. The President’s biggest selling point for the troop increase looks to be America’s interest in a stable Pakistan, free from Taliban influence – but he won’t talk about how that country has been screwing us over on intelligence and operations for a decade, and he certainly won’t get into Pakistan’s preference for a long-term, indefinite American presence in Afghanistan over the specter of an Indian one. And the one thing President Obama most certainly will not mention, because it’s just too depressing to even contemplate, is that given how close health care is to either passage or collapse, he just can’t afford another political fight right now, and so the easiest course of action is simply to follow the generals’ advice.
I’m being uncharitable to the Commander in Chief, I know. Tell you what – I’ll concede for the sake of argument that no matter how fact-challenged and clichéd the case for more war may be, it’s at least within the realm of possibility that additional troops going into the mountains to fight and die is in the national interest. Who the hell knows. But that still leaves one unassailable fact that, to my mind, should break every heart in this country into pieces: the human race, after thousands of years of so-called forward progress and myriad examples from which to draw experience, has still not found a better way to conduct ourselves than to kill and maim each other over our differences. Cut through all the “they started it” and “best of all bad options” bullshit, and that’s what you’ve got. As valuable as abstractions can be, this is not a frakking game of Risk. In this real world we’ve made for ourselves, more of our volunteers, to say nothing of those poor souls unfortunate enough to be born into an American theater of war, are going to die violently and far from home, because we just can’t come up with any other plan. Even the United States of America, with more concentrated ingenuity and resources ever assembled in human history, just has no choice but to go over there and kill some more people, and lose some of our own to boot. So I’m ashamed, because I’m left with no other conclusion that we are poor stewards indeed of this Creation that has been entrusted to us. One imagines even the most patient and loving God imaginable regarding us with contempt and disbelief.
I don’t really know what’s to be done, and I’m aware how that eats away at any moral authority I may have to complain about the situation. But here are some things I do know, some things that certainly make things far more difficult to manage in the long term. The United States spends as much on defense as the next 15 countries combined – over $500 billion a year. On both a nominal and per capita basis, our investment into military might dwarfs that of our allies and enemies (especially our enemies) alike. Keep in mind I’m not even talking about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars themselves (which, helpfully, are evaluated under separate heading) or homeland security, veterans’ affairs, the debt on previous defense-related deficits, etc – all told it approaches about $1 trillion a year, or 7% of GDP. With that kind of money being spent compared to those who call us an enemy, it’s hard to believe that we face any real threat at all, from anyone…but let’s just focus on the $500 billion, which is spent before any troops are deployed, any ports are protected, any intelligence gathered, any veterans cared for. Most of that budget obviously doesn’t go directly to troops and military personnel – the big bulk of the money is paid out in contracts to private companies, who by their very nature are primarily motivated by profits for their shareholders, equally if not more so than the national interest. To wit, the various defense lobbies spend between $30 million and $40 million out of their clients’ considerable revenues on Congressional campaign contributions, which quite nicely ensure continued appropriations no matter what, and of course, the revolving door between public service and the private sector has been well documented. Weapons built and unused can’t normally be replaced at equal or greater cost, so little wonder in the end that most weapons get used, or get sold. And of course, the tendency for the American public to conflate military spending and ‘hard power’ with the national character, and the tendency for representatives of both political parties to encourage that conflation, have in tandem the indisputable side effect of making some people very, very rich, while also making some other people very, very dead. (Average pay for a CEO of a large defense contractor in the U.S.: $11M annually.) No wonder we’ve been at war for almost ten years and nothing has changed, and no wonder we’re set to double down for more.
Fr. John Courtney Murray writes in We Hold These Truths of a theory of just war that yearns achingly for its own obsolescence. We have to stop thinking of these wars as things being forced on us by the intransigence of strange, outsider fanatics and recognize that we, not them, have the power. Not the American government, but the American people. What’s done in our name is done by our hand, otherwise this whole self-government thing is a sham. Obama is planning now to further bleed the treasury and risk a higher death toll, with no end in sight, and to date there is absolutely no reason any of us can be sure that it’s worth it. What’s to be done? Demand better. Question everything. Recognize the conflicts of interest inherent in the system. And pray that we find a better way soon, so that someday we can look back and see the moment we put ourselves back on track. Tonight, alas, is not that moment, however much it could have been.
God bless America, especially those who fight and those who lead. God bless the memories of all who have died standing up for the ideals we claim to hold highest – and may Heaven forgive us if we let them down.
I think I have a good idea of what the President will say tonight, and what he won’t say. He won’t say that the increased deployment is necessary to protect America from imminent attack, not when 9/11 was planned in Florida and West Germany. He’ll probably touch on our commitment to the Afghan people, regardless of the fact that most of them don’t actually want us to be there anymore, and many consider us a threat or an “aggravating influence.” Odds are Obama will play up the notion of clear benchmarks for the Karzai government, upon which the United States will absolutely insist; but he won’t draw attention to the fact that similar benchmarks in Iraq have pretty much meant absolutely nothing to the Malaki government, which by the by is looking more and more like Saddam’s Iraq every day, so one still wonders what the point of the whole thing was unless we just wanted another Saudi Arabia to begin with. He’ll most certainly highlight the unquestioned expertise of the generals on the ground, and maybe even the success of the Iraq troop surge from a few years ago, without going into the messy details about how that surge was concurrent with an alliance with some of the Sunni insurgents in Iraq, for whom there is no Afghan substitute. The President’s biggest selling point for the troop increase looks to be America’s interest in a stable Pakistan, free from Taliban influence – but he won’t talk about how that country has been screwing us over on intelligence and operations for a decade, and he certainly won’t get into Pakistan’s preference for a long-term, indefinite American presence in Afghanistan over the specter of an Indian one. And the one thing President Obama most certainly will not mention, because it’s just too depressing to even contemplate, is that given how close health care is to either passage or collapse, he just can’t afford another political fight right now, and so the easiest course of action is simply to follow the generals’ advice.
I’m being uncharitable to the Commander in Chief, I know. Tell you what – I’ll concede for the sake of argument that no matter how fact-challenged and clichéd the case for more war may be, it’s at least within the realm of possibility that additional troops going into the mountains to fight and die is in the national interest. Who the hell knows. But that still leaves one unassailable fact that, to my mind, should break every heart in this country into pieces: the human race, after thousands of years of so-called forward progress and myriad examples from which to draw experience, has still not found a better way to conduct ourselves than to kill and maim each other over our differences. Cut through all the “they started it” and “best of all bad options” bullshit, and that’s what you’ve got. As valuable as abstractions can be, this is not a frakking game of Risk. In this real world we’ve made for ourselves, more of our volunteers, to say nothing of those poor souls unfortunate enough to be born into an American theater of war, are going to die violently and far from home, because we just can’t come up with any other plan. Even the United States of America, with more concentrated ingenuity and resources ever assembled in human history, just has no choice but to go over there and kill some more people, and lose some of our own to boot. So I’m ashamed, because I’m left with no other conclusion that we are poor stewards indeed of this Creation that has been entrusted to us. One imagines even the most patient and loving God imaginable regarding us with contempt and disbelief.
I don’t really know what’s to be done, and I’m aware how that eats away at any moral authority I may have to complain about the situation. But here are some things I do know, some things that certainly make things far more difficult to manage in the long term. The United States spends as much on defense as the next 15 countries combined – over $500 billion a year. On both a nominal and per capita basis, our investment into military might dwarfs that of our allies and enemies (especially our enemies) alike. Keep in mind I’m not even talking about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars themselves (which, helpfully, are evaluated under separate heading) or homeland security, veterans’ affairs, the debt on previous defense-related deficits, etc – all told it approaches about $1 trillion a year, or 7% of GDP. With that kind of money being spent compared to those who call us an enemy, it’s hard to believe that we face any real threat at all, from anyone…but let’s just focus on the $500 billion, which is spent before any troops are deployed, any ports are protected, any intelligence gathered, any veterans cared for. Most of that budget obviously doesn’t go directly to troops and military personnel – the big bulk of the money is paid out in contracts to private companies, who by their very nature are primarily motivated by profits for their shareholders, equally if not more so than the national interest. To wit, the various defense lobbies spend between $30 million and $40 million out of their clients’ considerable revenues on Congressional campaign contributions, which quite nicely ensure continued appropriations no matter what, and of course, the revolving door between public service and the private sector has been well documented. Weapons built and unused can’t normally be replaced at equal or greater cost, so little wonder in the end that most weapons get used, or get sold. And of course, the tendency for the American public to conflate military spending and ‘hard power’ with the national character, and the tendency for representatives of both political parties to encourage that conflation, have in tandem the indisputable side effect of making some people very, very rich, while also making some other people very, very dead. (Average pay for a CEO of a large defense contractor in the U.S.: $11M annually.) No wonder we’ve been at war for almost ten years and nothing has changed, and no wonder we’re set to double down for more.
Fr. John Courtney Murray writes in We Hold These Truths of a theory of just war that yearns achingly for its own obsolescence. We have to stop thinking of these wars as things being forced on us by the intransigence of strange, outsider fanatics and recognize that we, not them, have the power. Not the American government, but the American people. What’s done in our name is done by our hand, otherwise this whole self-government thing is a sham. Obama is planning now to further bleed the treasury and risk a higher death toll, with no end in sight, and to date there is absolutely no reason any of us can be sure that it’s worth it. What’s to be done? Demand better. Question everything. Recognize the conflicts of interest inherent in the system. And pray that we find a better way soon, so that someday we can look back and see the moment we put ourselves back on track. Tonight, alas, is not that moment, however much it could have been.
God bless America, especially those who fight and those who lead. God bless the memories of all who have died standing up for the ideals we claim to hold highest – and may Heaven forgive us if we let them down.
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