Nation-Building

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noreply@blogger.com (Aziz P.) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 20:56:00 +0000

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Afghanistan's trillion dollar curse: lithium

noreply@blogger.com (Aziz P.) — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 04:01:00 +0000

The New York Times reports that a small team of American geologists and military personnel have discovered vast reserves of precious metals and minerals in Afghanistan, which profoundly transforms the destiny of this battered nation overnight:

The previously unknown deposits - including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium - are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the "Saudi Arabia of lithium," a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and Blackberries.

(...) The value of the newly discovered mineral deposits dwarfs the size of Afghanistan's existing war-bedraggled economy, which is based largely on opium production and narcotics trafficking as well as aid from the United States and other industrialized countries. Afghanistan's gross domestic product is only about $12 billion.

The value of the reserves just discovered is already estimated at about a trillion dollars - and there's probably more where that came from.

What does this portend for Afghanistan, and the war? That's the, ahem, trillion dollar question.

The geopolitics of this are predictable: Afghanistan will be courted aggressively by the United States and China, in competition to secure the mining rights and obtain strategic control over these essential materials. Note that China already has supply dominance over most rare-earth metals, with 95% of the world's supply, and has been far more successful in Africa by virtue of being more aggressive and unconcerned with human rights niceties.

That competition probably means an end to any hope of reform of Hamid Karzai's government or meaningful pressure from the United States on the human rights front. The relationship between Washington and Kabul was strained to begin with, but the prospect of China is enough to utterly negate any leverage the US has by our troop presence. The conventional wisdom is already settling in that this means Obama will not wind down our troop presence in Afghanistan as a result, but to be honest I can see Karzai being emboldened to demand that the US withdraw all the more sooner now.

The Taliban's reaction to this will be particularly interesting. They have always been pragmatic, willing to ignore Islamic injunctions against addictive narcotics when it suited them financially to support the opium trade. But opium is something that mere farmers can grow, with a classic protection racket to bring in the cash. Minerals on the other hand require heavy industry, multinational companies, and political "stability" (usually in the form of a police state - case in point, the coltan industry in the Congo). The Taliban will probably seek to position themselves as the better alternative to Karzai's cronyism - recall that prior to 9-11, they presented a civilized face to the West while being courted by western oil companies for rights to oil pipelines - even sending a delegation to Texas to talk logistics.

The dynamics within Afghanistan are probably going to be too complex to predict. For example, the central government and the provincial and tribal leaders will be at odds, and the Taliban will try to exacerbate those conflicts. The NYT article delves into more detail:

The corruption that is already rampant in the Karzai government could also be amplified by the new wealth, particularly if a handful of well-connected oligarchs, some with personal ties to the president, gain control of the resources. Just last year, Afghanistan's minister of mines was accused by American officials of accepting a $30 million bribe to award China the rights to develop its copper mine. The minister has since been replaced.

Endless fights could erupt between the central government in Kabul and provincial and tribal leaders in mineral-rich districts. Afghanistan has a national mining law, written with the help of advisers from the World Bank, but it has never faced a serious challenge.

"No one has tested that law; no one knows how it will stand up in a fight between the central government and the provinces," observed Paul A. Brinkley, undersecretary of defense and leader of the Pentagon team that discovered the deposits.

In stable, mature governments, laws are a roadmap for resolving conflict; witness the orderly progression of power in the US 2000 election for a case study. In corrupt, third-world, post-colonial, war-ravaed nation states, however, laws are blunt instruments wielded at will when convenient and cast aside when no longer so. It stands to reason that the tribes, the probincial governments, the central government in Kabul, and the Taliban are not going to abide by the rulings of hypothetical (but surely illusionary) impartial judiciaries. This will be fought in a literal sense.

The words, "resource curse" have never been more stark or inescapable. In fact, this discovery portends total disaster for any hope of a liberal, stable Afghanistan, human rights, or economic relief. What wealth will be derived from the soil of Afghanistan will flow to butchers and tyrants and powerful global corporations - not the desperate poor and uneducated people of Afghanistan, the true sovereigns of their nation. That is the lesson of history.

Or is it?

In fact, there is one power that can act as a dampener on the forces of corruption, tribalism, profiteering, and exploitation. A superpower, in fact: the United States. The very presence of our troops in Afghanistan is an immediate and unmovable barrier to the various forces that will seek to position themselves around the mineral wealth. The United States has leverage by virtue of its presence - and we can use that leverage to try and ameliorate the worst of what is to come.

One immediate step that we can take is to promise an extension of our troops protecting Kabul from the Taliban - but make that contingent on a citizen dividend to any mineral wealth, analogous to the Alaskan oil dividend. This should be an unbreakable condition of our continued support to any government in Kabul - and use the threat of the Taliban to our advantage.

And, distasteful as it may seem, it is time for President Obama to follow in the footsteps of another Democratic president and define the Obama Doctrine as the successor to the Carter Doctrine in 1980. Put simply, President Carter made it clear in his 1980 State of the Union Address that the United States would use military force as it saw fit to defend its interests in the Persian Gulf.

The key sentence of the Carter Doctrine read,

Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.

and deliberately evokes the Truman Doctrine and a similar declaration in 1903 by the British. Arguably, if not for the Carter Doctrine, the Soviet Union might still be in existence today (something that Reagan partisans would do well to acknowledge).

This might well be the start of a Cold War between ourselves and China. We have no choice. The free trade and movement of these critical - and increasingly scarce - materials has grave implications for the technology and scientific industries, the backbone of world civilization itself. No country, or government, can be permitted to attain a monopoly on them.

I do not advocate an American Empire, but I do think that the Saudi Arabian example, however distasteful, is the best possible outcome. Will Afghanistan ever be a healthy and democratic soceity, free of corruption and strife? I remain an optimist, so I believe the answer is inevitably yes. But maybe thats a story for the 22nd century.

A fair solution to Jerusalem

noreply@blogger.com (Aziz P.) — Wed, 12 May 2010 04:41:00 +0000

I remember reading one of the books by Tom Clancy in which Jack Ryan was credited with coming up with a solution for Middle East peace which was pointedly never actually detailed in the novel. It was just a way to give his character some foreign policy cred, but ended up like that mysterious suitcase in Pulp Fiction.

I couldn't help but be reminded of that, though, when I read former New York mayor Ed Koch's innovative solution to resolving the status of Jerusalem.

Instead of putting the hot-button issue of Jerusalem last on the agenda, the issue should be addressed first. If the Jerusalem question is solved, everything else should fall into place more easily.

I believe there is a way to keep Jerusalem unified. I am talking not only of the old walled city, which is a very small part of the city of Jerusalem, but the whole city, east, west, north and south.

[...]

My suggestion is to situate the new Palestinian capital in that part of East Jerusalem that is occupied overwhelmingly by Palestinians, allow the inhabitants of East Jerusalem -- Jews, Christians, Muslims and those living elsewhere in the city -- to pick the state to which to pledge their allegiance and to cast two votes - one in municipal elections for one mayor to govern the entire city of Jerusalem, and a separate vote in national elections related to the Jewish and Palestinian states living peacefully side by side.

Jerusalem is now roughly two-thirds Jewish and one-third Muslim. The Christian population is about 2 percent. All under the proposal would be voting for a single city council and one mayor. Based on the current population, the mayor would be Jewish. If the demographics changed over the years in favor of the Muslims, a Muslim mayor could be elected.

New York City with its model of five borough presidents is a good model to emulate with Muslim and Jewish areas electing borough presidents to respond to the local needs of the inhabitants. If I could live and govern when I was mayor with Andy Stein as borough president of Manhattan, the mayor of Jerusalem can live and govern with a borough president elected in the Palestinian part of East Jerusalem.

My only quibble is the purely gratuitous recounting of selective historical injustices, with which Koch actually undermines his own argument by providing a preview of the reasons the Israelis will use to reject the proposal out of hand. But the proposal itself is fair and realistic.

This came to my attention via MJ Rosenberg's excellent email newsletter. He comments further,

Koch's idea eliminates the possibility that Jerusalem would be divided. It would not be, except in the sense that New York City is divided into Manhattan, The Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island.

At the same time it enables East Jerusalem to be established as capital of the Palestinian state, while protecting the right of East Jerusalem's Jews to essentially ignore its status as Palestinian and remain full-fledged Israeli citizens. Naturally, Arabs and Jews would be able to live in any part of the city while retaining their status as both citizens of Jerusalem and of their respective Israeli or Palestinian state.

This is something that would be ideally incorporated into a peace plan by Obama presented to both sides, as honest broker. The key though is to make the issue a starting point, not part of "final status" negotiations. And frankly this idea of "proximity talks" is pretty pointless.

I am beginning to notice a disturbing pattern

noreply@blogger.com (Aziz P.) — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 13:12:00 +0000

There's something strange going on...

Recall that at the height of the health reform fight, after Senator Brown was elected in MA and the Democrats looked like they were on the verge of total failure. It looked like Obama's signature domestic policy achievement would indeed be his Waterloo... and then, Anthem Blue Cross raised rates by 40%.

On the verge of the financial reform fight, Goldman Sachs was sued by the FEC and grilled mercilessly by a bipartisan Senate committee for it's shenanigans of knowingly selling "sh$%ty" securities to customers and profiting from their failure.

The next big fight is immigration reform, and Arizona passes a draconian law essentially legalizing racial profiling of its Hispanic population - soon to be a majority. (It also revealed the Tea Party to be hypocrites when it comes to big government and Constitutional fidelity).

And of course, with the climate bill coming down the line, we have a gargantuan oil spill in the Gulf of mexico that is shaping up to be the worst environmental disaster since the Exxon Valdez.

Let's even throw in the observation that President Obama is about to select a new justice for the Supreme Court - mere months after the universally reviled Citizens United case opened the floodgates to infinite corporate money over our elections.

Notice any pattern?

If I were Glenn Beck, these dots would now duly be connected by a conspiracy theory line of outlandish proportion. But I think that it's really more likely that the convergence of reality with policy and reform is a "happy" coincidence - though of course these disasters all have real tragic consequences for ordinary people caught in the middle of them. It would be better if these tragic events could have been prevented, but by occurring, they demonstrate the lack of any preventative mechanism. And thus make the case for the reforms in President Obama's domestic agenda far more forcefully than any speech or campaign ad.

Let's just hope that the pattern doesn't hold when it's time to ratify the new START treaty.

Conservatism's shari'a, liberalism's ijtihad

noreply@blogger.com (Aziz P.) — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 18:04:00 +0000

An interesting meta-debate by intellectual conservatives over conservatism's future is playing out. It started with David Frum's Waterloo essay, which led to his political excommunication. Julian Sanchez observed that this represented an epistemic closing of the conservative mind, a thesis that was validated by the retribution visited upon Jim Manzi for daring to suggest that conservatives will achieve more persuasion by using honest, strong arguments instead of weak, emotional ones.

All of this has led John Quiggin at Crooked Timber to argue most wisely that as conservatism implodes, liberalism needs to find its own rationale that is more than just "not conservatism". Quiggin has a list of priorities for the liberal movement to address, and closes with the general plea,

...the left has to stand for something more than keeping the existing order afloat with incremental improvements. We need to offer the hope of a better world as an alternative to the angry tribalism that threatens to engulf us.

I'm sympathetic to this argument, because it was actually one of my own critiques of then-candidate Obama in the 2008 election. I consistently argued for "transformative" change because I genuinely thought such change was achievable. However, since Obama's election, and the realities of the limitations imposed by the legislative system and a staunchly obstructionist Republican minority, I've come around to the incrementalist approach. I think that Obama represents a step back from the rightmost brink, to the center, and that the time for broader strides leftwards will have to wait until after Obama has finished restoring balance. m

DougJ at Balloon Juice also takes issue with Quiggin's last point, pointing out that incrementalism is a good thing, relative to the alternative:

It's true that pragmatic liberalism has its shortcomings as a political strategy. Much of the appeal of conservatism comes from how thorough-going its dictates are. Contemporary liberal discussion (at least as I see it on blogs and in opinion columns) mostly confines itself to governmental policies. The conservosphere gets involved with what movies you should watch, what kinds of scarves you should wear in Dunkin' Donuts ads, what kinds of countertops you should have in your house, and so on. (I'm not saying liberals can't be preachy, mind you, but it's one thing for your friend to lecture you about recycling, it's another for prominent political columnists to devote multiple columns to Avatar.) That's seductive in the same way that religion is.

That's a good insighgt and it's worth exploring that religion analogy further (even though I likely disagree with DougJ on the value of religion as a whole). The analogy I would make is that movement conservatism is a lot like the stereotypical Shari'ah (as envisioned in the fevered dreams of the islamophobes). It demands total subjugation and defines all aspects of life to fall within its purview. Everything must be judged on the binary scale and assessed by the orthodoxy as Good or Evil; the good must be enjoined and the evil must be repudiated. There is no moderation or middle ground.

Liberalism, in contrast, is how Islam is practiced by ordinary muslim folk - in essence, ijtihad. We go about our lives and try to live our lives as best we can in accordance with our principles and cultural tradition. It is inherently incrementalist; there's no master Plan, but as we become aware of ways in which we can conform our actions to our beliefs, we make adjustments. It's inherently an individual movement, because of our personal interpretations and decisions - for example, I might abstain from fish oil supplements on the basis of halal rules, but eat at McDonalds, and another may do the exact opposite. There's no central authority dictating the details, though there are authorities dictating teh rules which we have to interpret and apply to the unique context of our individual lives.

Conservatism looks at Islam and sees only Shari'ah, because it projects itself there. The reality, however, is much more mundane, as it should be.

Iran's nuclear ambiguity

noreply@blogger.com (Aziz P.) — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 13:44:00 +0000

It seems that every year, there's a breathless report that Iran is a year ortwo away from having nuclear weapons. Once again:

Two of the nation's top military officials said Wednesday that Iran could produce bomb-grade fuel for at least one nuclear weapon within a year, but would most likely need two to five years to manufacture a workable atomic bomb.

The time frame ... was roughly in line with the finding of a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate. That document, which is about to be updated, said that Iran would probably be able to produce a nuclear weapon between 2010 and 2015, while cautioning that there was no evidence that the Iranian government had decided to do so.

(...) The generals offered a number of significant caveats about their assessment of Iran's capabilities. When asked, for example, how long it would take Iran to convert its current supplies of low-enriched uranium into bomb-grade material, General Burgess said, "The general consensus - not knowing again the exact number of centrifuges that we actually have visibility into - is we're talking one year."

(...) Even if Iran produced a weapon's worth of material in a year, it would not necessarily mean the country was ready for what experts call "breakout" - renouncing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and declaring, as North Korea did, that the country was now a nuclear power.

I am not a foreign policy or nonproliferation expert, so take this post as purely speculative. But it occurs to me after reading the above that Iran's nuclear strategy may be inspired by Israel's policy of "nuclear ambiguity" - to neither confirm nor deny that they possess nuclear weapons, and thus remain free of pressure to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. This gives Israel (and thus, potentially, Iran) all the benefits of nuclear deterrence against its hostile neighbors, but avoids the legal and diplomatic pressures on a nuclear state that come with being a non-signatory to the NNPT (such as India and Pakistan).

Israel's argument for this is that it is uniquely isolated as a small nation surrounded by "enemies" and thus must rely on any strategic advantage it can. The same argument, however, applies to Iran, which is surrounded on both sides by US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, has hostile relations with a nuclear-armed Israel, and is also facing serious Arab nation hostility and fear (which currently manifests as anti-Shi'a policies, but is also spurring an Arab nuclear arms race.

At Talk Islam, a commenter observed that "the middle east has Israel to bind them together." While true, the same could be said of Iran - Israel already has diplomatic relations with Egypt, and Saudi Arabia shares Israel's paranoia about Iran. There's even reason to be optimistic about Syrian-Israeli relations. Ultimately, Iran is competing with Israel for regional hegemony, Persian Shi'a and Jews in a predominantly Sunni Arab milieu. And while the ignorant masses may hate Israel, their cynical leaders fear Iran more.

Nuclear ambiguity also gives Iran a useful loophole with respect to President Obama's new nuclear posture. That policy was written with Iran and North Korea in mind, stating that any state that is either (a) non-nuclear or (b) nuclear, but signs the NNPT will be exempt from American nuclear attack, but makes specific exception for any nuclear state that does not sign the NNPT. If Iran's nuclear status is ambiguous, however, then Iran can legally argue that it should qualify as exempt. This gives Iran additional diplomatic and legal cover.

Ultimately, Iran has as many enemies as Israel does - with the significant difference being that Israel calls the world's remaining superpower an ally. Therefore all the logic of Israel's nuclear ambiguity fully applies.

Related: Nuclear policy blogger Page van der Linden has two excellent summary articles at DailyKos, providing a recap of the START treaty and the revised nuclear posture, and a wrap-up analysis of the nuclear security summit. Both are must-read "big picture" briefing articles that really give you a great overview of how momentous and significant the progress made towards a nuclear-free world over these last two weeks.

Tea party? I'm proud to pay my taxes

noreply@blogger.com (Aziz P.) — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 19:11:00 +0000

This year, I won't be getting a refund - in fact I had to cut two sizable checks to the Department of Revenue and the Wisconsin Treasury. Yes, it was indeed painful.

Fundamentally, the idea of sending your money to faceless bureaucrats is one that provokes some resentment in even the most mild-mannered citizen. In fact, there's a Tea Party rally going on right now in Capitol Square here in Madison full of people who are really angry about it, who think that taxes are a form of tyranny, who are holding signs evoking the Revolutionary War ("Don't Tread on Me", etc.) and who fervently believe that Barack Obama is a socialist/muslim/fascist/communist dedicated to destroying this nation, who will throw you in jail if you don't buy health insurance.

That's patriotism, in a way. These people believe that their liberty is being threatened, and they are making their voices heard in defense of what they believe.

However, my understanding of patriotism is that freedom isn't free. I know that taxes are actually a fantastic deal; for my taxes, I get roads and schools, water and national defense, the Internet, NASA, and of course a social safety net that keeps millions of Americans out of poverty and in health. Here's a fantastic, interactive graphic from the New York Times that makes it clear exactly where our federal tax dollars will be going in 2011.

In fact, most of the people at the Tax Day Tea Party rallies today would vigorously object if told that many of these things that are funded by their taxpayer dollar were to be cut. In fact there's a huge disconnect between what people say should be cut from the budget and how much we actually spend on those things. And often, the people most up in arms about government handouts are the ones who benefit from fedderal spending the most.

Without getting into issues of race and class - even though these are at the very heart of the Tea Party anger - it's simple to observe that most of the anger playing out today is due to a lack of information, and a deliberate strategy of mis-information. Tea Partyers are mad about lots of things that simply are not true, like being thrown in jail for not having health insurance, or about how the poor supposedly pay no taxes at all, or that the average person works four months of the year to pay off Uncle Sam.

In reality, tax rates today are the lowest in 60 years - 98% of Americans got tax cuts, directcly thanks to President Obama's stimulus plan. And the majority of Americans think taxes are fair, putting the Tea Partiers way outside the mainstream.

Ultimately, it boils down to a question of responsibility. In a strange way, the Tea Partiers marching out on Capitol Square this afternoon view freedom and liberty, ironically, as an entitlement. I view it as something worth paying for. Who between us values it more?

I paid my taxes, and I'm proud.

Related: a new poll from the New York Times and CBS about Tea Partiers' beliefs. (handy interactive graphic, too). Bottom line: lots of misinformation, leading to extreme views on pretty much everything. And Fox News is the primary engine for their anger and deception. And let's not forget that the systematic and deliberate lies being fed to the Tea Partiers today has already had direct, and tragic, consequences.

Confessions of an Obama-bot

noreply@blogger.com (Aziz P.) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 17:36:00 +0000

President Obama has been riding high the past few weeks, moving forward on his agenda from health care to nuclear arms reduction to the prospect of appointing another judge to the Supreme Court. However, there's a dark lining to this fluffy white cloud of hope and change - his record on civil liberties. Specifically, the problem is that the Obama Administration still reserves to itself the power to indefinitely imprison - and even outright kill - and American citizen, without public trial or evidence or due process of law. Two cases in particular stand out: the first is the case of Syed Fahad Hashmi, who has been held for three years in solitary confinement in a a New York City prison, and the second is the decision to add Anwar al-Awlaki to a CIA "target list" which permits US forces to essentially kill him on sight. Neither of these men are the type I'd want to invite over to dinner, but the fact remains that as US citizens they are guaranteed - in fact, not theory - the due process of law.

The conservative movement is unsurprisingly utterly silent about this¹. However, the Left is rightly pushing back hard. The best critiques of Obama on this front have consistently been from Glenn Greenwald at Salon, and his latest piece builds on his arguments over the past year:

In Barack Obama's America, the way guilt is determined for American citizens -- and a death penalty imposed -- is that the President, like the King he thinks he is, secretly decrees someone's guilt as a Terrorist. He then dispatches his aides to run to America's newspapers -- cowardly hiding behind the shield of anonymity which they're granted -- to proclaim that the Guilty One shall be killed on sight because the Leader has decreed him to be a Terrorist... nd the punishment is thus decreed: this American citizen will now be murdered by the CIA because Barack Obama has ordered that it be done. What kind of person could possibly justify this or think that this is a legitimate government power?

(read the whole thing, and click his supporting links as well).

Glenn's question isn't just rhetorical, but aimed directly at people like me who are generally supportive of President Obama's agenda. While I do not "justify" these actions, nor do I think they are legitimate, I do not consider them a deal-breaker for my support of the President, which is probably enough to convict me in the eyes of the Progressive Left as an Obama fanatic, or "Obama-Bot"² (essentially, that I am an unthinking robot, blindly following programming to love Dear Leader instead of seeing the Truth).

The key issue here of disconnect seems to be a misunderstanding of how the American government operates. Most of the critique from the Leftf takes the form of, "Obama should ..." or "Obama didn't..." - usually indicating a desire to essentially reverse every decision or process implemented by the Bush Administration, on the theory that 100% of the Bush actions were wrong because they were perfomed by Bush. The idea that Obama might have evaluated Bush policies on their merits, and that Obama might actually be constrained in adjusting even the ones he disagrees with, is an alien one to cynical observers on the Left.

No President is a dictator. The President is actually a centrally-located decision making node in a hierarchy of nodes, many of which form networks within the overall structure that serve to counteract his influence (often by design). Ultimately, everything the President does is a dance - much like the classic game of a wooden box with a marble - balancing everything to enact policy/move the ball - towards some specific goal.

Actually, two goals: re-election, and the welfare of the nation as a whole, in about equal measure of importance. President Obama and President Bush were no different from their predeccesors in this regard³.

President Bush appeared to have a lot of power solely because he had a Legislative Branch that had essentially abdicated its authority to him. The single most critical Check and Balance in the USCON is that of the Legislative Branch over the Executive, and that was essentially non-functional (with the Dem minority essentially cowed, unlike the current GOP minority).⁴

In addition, President Bush had the truly rare opportunity to appoint judges to SCOTUS that represented an ideological shift, unlike Obama who can only act to preserve the current ideological balance. The just-announced retirement of Justice Stevens is no exception.

Combine this with the national trauma of 9-11 and you have a Presidency that truly was unencumbered by almost all the usual constraints. The damage inflicted on the nation as a result of two terms (well, actually one and a half) would probably require an equal amount of time by an equally unencumbered President to reverse. But even then, this would return us to the status quo of circa 2000 with no major progress on any of the immensely important issues that needed addressing - health care, bank reform, Israel-Palestine, nuclear proliferation, trade, labor, education, immigration, fiscal policy, space policy, science funding, etc - by no means a complete list - but which languished under the Bush Administration's focus on terrorism and Iraq abroad and a ideological campaign to push conservative dogma at home.

Note that the focus on terrorism was justified, but carried to extremes - but we cannot for certain say that those extremes were not effective. How can we ever know if Bush had the benefit of a Patriot Act that was only half as abusive of civil rights, that we still wouldn't have had any terror attacks on our soil after 9-11 on that scale? How can anyone test that hypothesis? Bush saw it as his responsibility to err on the side of caution. That was his choice - and thus his legacy - but I doubt he will ever lose sleep over that decision.

And Bush did not create a permanent change. Much of that anti-terrorist infrastructure that Bush put in place after 9-11 was already being moderated by his second term. In fact, he himself said he wanted to be sure that what was in place would be something that even a Democratic President would find at least partially justifiable, because Bush saw it as his responsibility to ensure that the safety of the nation was contnued. Obama has a fundamental disagreement with Bush on the means, here, but utterly dismantling the framework of 8 years would leave us vulnerable in a way that he too could not justify. As Bush wound it down between term 1 and 2, so too Obama will have to wind it down over term 1 and into 2 - and whoever succeeds him will have to continue the process.

I dont like it either. And I think that if you fail to see the gradual process of restoration going on - even during the Bush era, let alone the Obama era - then you're overly cynical. I understand that Greenwald et al are ideologues of a sort and I think that they provide valuable pressure on ensuring the drawdown continues. Without them, the process would surely be slower. But this is why I dont read Greenwald's essay and despair of Obama being no different than Bush, not when so much of what needs to be done is actually, finally, getting done.

Ultimately, every failure of civil liberties under Obama's watch is Obama's responsibility. But then again, thats true no matter what he does, because no President can succeed at everything. Obama has made the decision to prioritize the rest of the domestic and foreign policy agenda ahead of normalization of civil rights - primarily because those issues are just as if not more so urgent, affecting millions of lives directly, and because the threat of terrorism is growing, not reducing - including rightwing violence here at home. Obama will preserve what tools he has inherited from Bush, and even expand others, discarding only those like Guantanamo along the way that he sees as actively inmical to the end goal. And in doing so, Obama must navigate the network in a constrained way totally unlike what Bush faced. Its a GOOD thing Obama is constrained. But it requires patience on our part.

As a male American citizen, a bearded muslim, and a brown skinned guy who flies often to countries in the middle east, the burden of Obama's continued (subset) of Bush policies is frankly more an immediate concern to me than the average person. And yes technically tomorrow I could be vanished, incarcerated without due process, and perhaps even killed outright, for nothing more than excercising my right of free speech. I'm not ignorant of the risk here, but to be honest the likelihood of all that is very low, and the imposition on my liberty far less than the economic difficulty I would have if my family lacked health insurance, or couldn't find a job, or were victims of a terrorist attack like in Austin, Fort Hood, Waco, Oaklahoma City, etc.

What makes me an Obama-bot I guess is that I am willing to trust Obama not to abuse that (temporary) authority. And I trust him precisely because he is more constrained - by Dems, by Republicans, by the media, by lefties like Glenn Greenwald - unlike President Bush was. But that trust is contingent on progress leftward over time.

And I believe the Obama era will get us closer to center, so after him the progressive era can truly begin.

This is much more important than being forced to pay a small fine. Once upon a time, "conservatives" cared about the entirety of the Constitution. Today, however, they invoke it only when their pocketbooks are threatened. There is a serious debate to be had about whether "the Constitution is not a suicide pact" but right now, the conservative movement is AWOL on that debate.

Perhaps I am indeed an O-bot, laboring under an illusion of free will. But I will articulate my suppoort for Dear Leader nevertheless; it is up to Dear Reader to decide if it is rationale or rationalization.

what? Did OBot Aziz just admit that Obama is a politician and not the One? revoke his card immediately!

the reason for being cowed is because the Dems are ideologically more broad, so there is genuine disagreement about what policy is Best for the Country. The GOP is more ideologically unified, therefore it rationalizes its political opposition as Best for the Country. In equating its own political fortune with that of the national self-interest, The GOP had essentially made the calculation that any victory of Obama, however small, is a huge loss for America, and vice versa and loss for Obama, however small, a huge win. This has necessitated a almost 180 degree flip on the issues, including health care and nuclear weapon policy, from the times of such still-revered conservative icons as Nixon and Reagan.

Signing health reform into law

noreply@blogger.com (Aziz P.) — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 17:41:00 +0000

And there it is - officially the law of the land:

Television networks actually broke their daytime coverage to show the historic signing. Vice President Biden is reputed to have added, "This is a big f$%king deal" - seriously! (no s^!t, Joe.)

There was a moment yesterday of well-deserved recognition for Speaker Pelosi, who has cemented her place in the ranks of the greatest Speakers of the House in history:

And the Republicans held a press conference of their own today:

heh.

Also, The Republicans have officially introduced legislation to repeal the health reform. That legislation reads, in full,

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. REPEAL OF PPACA.

Effective as of the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, such Act is repealed, and the provisions of law amended or repealed by such Act are restored or revived as if such Act had not been enacted.

Dante at Daily Kos summarizes the consequences of such a repeal-health-reform bill should it ever pass:

Make a whole ton of young voters ineligible to be on their parents' insurance plans.

Allow health insurers to commit rescission of policyholders at any time.

Allow health insurers to deny coverage to anyone, including children, based on pre-existing conditions.

Allow health insurers to charge women higher rates simply because they're women.

good luck with that!

Victory Hug

noreply@blogger.com (Aziz P.) — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 15:05:00 +0000

P032210PS-0292
Originally uploaded by The White House

President Obama is congratulated by an ecstatic Hillary Clinton for finally achieving the goal of health reform. Hillary was the chief architect of President Clinton's own failed bid to reform health care back in 1993, so for her this victory must be especially sweet. Its literally been one of her policy goals for 20 years.

Do doctors oppose health care reform?

noreply@blogger.com (Aziz P.) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:35:00 +0000

Conservative opponents to health reform have been pushing a recent poll ostenibly conducted by the New England Journal of Medicine which claims that doctors are indeed opposed to health reform. This even got play on Fox News by Bill O'Reilly a couple days ago:

This seems to contradict an earlier poll by NEJM that found that doctors actually did support health care reform, including both public and private options, by an overwhelming majority of 69%. In fact, that NEJM poll found that support dropped to only 27% when the public option was removedn and only private options remained.

So what's the deal with this new NEJM poll? Well, as it turns out, it wasn't actually by NEJM - but rather by a physician recruitment firm, The Medicus Firm, and published in Recruiting Physicians Today, a free advertiser newsletter dedicated to physician employment headhunting. NEJM strongly distanced itself from any affiliation with this poll:

Media Matters for America contacted the New England Journal of Medicine, which confirmed it neither conducted nor published the "survey."

NEJM spokesperson Jennifer Zeis told Media Matters that the study had "nothing to do with the New England Journal of Medicine's original research." She also made clear that the study "was not published by the New England Journal of Medicine," and said that "we are taking steps to clarify the source of the survey."

The survey - published on The Medicus Firm's website - was not a conducted using rigorous polling methodology, but instead on email from a marketing database:

"The survey sample was randomly selected from a physician database of thousands. The database has been built over the past eight years by The Medicus Firm (formerly Medicus Partners and The MD Firm) from a variety of sources including, but not limited to, public directories, purchased lists, practice inquiries, training programs, and direct mail responses. The survey was conducted via emails sent directly to physicians."

In addition to the statement given to Media Matters by NEJM, they have also posted this on their own website to emphasize that they had nothing to do with this survey:

Recruiting Physicians Today is a free advertiser newsletter published by the Worldwide Advertising Sales and Marketing Department in the publishing division of the Massachusetts Medical Society... The Medicus Firm, a national physician search firm based in Dallas and Atlanta, published the results of a survey they conducted with 1,000 physicians regarding their attitudes toward health reform. To read their survey results at The Medicus Firm website, click here.

The opinions expressed in the article linked to above represent those of The Medicus Firm only. That article does not represent the opinions of the New England Journal of Medicine or the Massachusetts Medical Society.

So, in summary: NEJM actually scientifically polled doctors via mail and found support for reform. A marketing firm involved in physician recruiting, did an email survey using a (totally unscientific) marketing database that found a lack of support. But even in that survey, Medicus notes:

It's probably not likely that nearly half of the nation's physicians will suddenly quit practicing at once... Skeptics may suspect that physicians exaggerate their intent to leave medicine due to health reform. Some experts point to the malpractice crisis of years ago, when many doctors also expressed a desire to leave medicine. Some did quit; many did not.

(...) Do physicians feel that health reform is necessary? The survey indicates that doctors do want change. Only a very small portion of respondents - about four percent - feel that no reform is needed.

Yes, there probably are a lot of physicians that are nervous about reform - especially if those physicians are misinformed about what it will entail. But reliable polling of physicians still shows broad support for reform, because it's the doctors on the front lines who see the damage done every day by the unsustainable course we are on. This is why the American medical Association continues to support reform this time around, despite its past opposition.

Incidentally, this is a perfect example of how Fox News misinforms its readers. Will Fox run a corretion? Doubtful. Meanwhile, NPR covered the authentic NEJM poll - so which news source gives you "fair and balanced" news? You decide.

Related: From DailyKos, here's a video that sums up the episode:

forget the public option - I want Medicare

noreply@blogger.com (Aziz P.) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:49:00 +0000

The public option is almost assuredly not going to be in the final package for health reform, and that's a good thing because it's existence imperils passage of this historic and incredibly progressive legislation. It represents a huge - and long overdue - leftwards shift for American social policy, despite the public option's absence. And note again that the PO would not have been available to everyone anyway, so how progressive was it really?

The ultimate progressive health reform would have been single-payer insurance, but that was taken off the table (with good reason) by President Obama. However, since Medicare is already a single-payer system, it's possible to leverage that existing system for creating a "single payer option" which would not be as disruptive as true single payer, would provide a more genuinely public option than the public option, and possibly even help reduce structural deficits. That would simply be to allow people under age 65 to "buy-in" to Medicare.

Think about this. Medicare caters to people over 65, whose medical expenses cost more than young peoples'. By allowing yong people to buy in, who presumably will have less demands on payouts due to better health, then the financial situation of Medicare actually improves.

And legislation to achieve Medicare buy-in is quite a simple change, which can exist separate from the comprehensive (and still necessary) reform in the broader health care package. In fact it's already been introduced to the House by Rep Alan Grayson - clocking in at only 4 pages.

In fact, there's an online petition by Rep Grayson to encourage Speaker Pelosi to bring the Medicare buy-in to a vote - just go to WeWantMedicare.com to sign it.

reconciliation and healthcare - the R in COBRA

noreply@blogger.com (Aziz P.) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:32:00 +0000

Have you ever had COBRA health insurance coverage? It's the stopgap insurance coverage you get after you leave a job, intended to fill the gap in your coverage until you find a new job (and doesn't last forever, which is why extended unemployment still leaves people uninsured. This in a nutshell why single-payer/Medicare for all is a better system than our employer-provided insurance model, and why since we are stuck with employer-provided insurance, why we need universal insurance coverage reform.)

As NPR - exclusively - reminded us today, the "R" in COBRA stands for none other than budget reconciliation, the very process currently being painted as a "nuclear option" by establishment Republicans desperate to stop the health reform train. In fact, as it turns out, budget reconciliation has a long history of being used for health care legislation:

health care and reconciliation actually have a lengthy history. "In fact, the way in which virtually all of health reform, with very, very limited exceptions, has happened over the past 30 years has been the reconciliation process," says Sara Rosenbaum, who chairs the Department of Health Policy at George Washington University.

For example, the law that lets people keep their employers' health insurance after they leave their jobs is called COBRA, not because it has anything to do with snakes, but because it was included as one fairly minor provision in a huge reconciliation bill, she says.

"The correct name is continuation benefits. And the only reason it's called COBRA is because it was contained in the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985; and that is how we came up with the name COBRA," she says.

It's not just COBRA - children's health insurance has also been implemented via reconciliation:

The expansion of health insurance coverage for low-income children is a prime example.

"In 1980, children who were living at less than half the poverty level in the United States could not get a Medicaid card in half the states if they had two parents at home," she says.

But via a series of budget reconciliation bills, beginning in 1984, Congress began expanding Medicaid coverage. In 1997, also in a budget reconciliation bill, it created the Children's Health Insurance Program, known as CHIP. Today, says Rosenbaum, who helped write many of the children's health provisions in those bills, Medicaid and CHIP together cover 1 in every 3 children in the United States.

"So literally we've changed everything about insurance coverage for children and families, and we've changed access to health care all across the United States all as a result of reconciliation," she says.

What about Medicare? Yup, also via reconciliation:

Budget reconciliation has also been an important tool for changing the Medicare program.

"Going back even close to 30 years, if you start say in 1982, the reconciliation bill that year added the hospice benefit, which is very important to people at the end of life," says Tricia Neuman, vice president and director of the Medicare Policy Project for the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Over the years, budget reconciliation bills added Medicare benefits for HMOs, for preventive care like cancer screenings; added protections for patients in nursing homes; and changed the way Medicare pays doctors and other health professionals.

Because the point of budget reconciliation was usually to cut the deficit, the huge Medicare program was nearly always on the chopping block.

NPR even provides a helpful list summarizing all the health-care legislation over the past 30 years that was passed via the reconciliation process - see below. The bottom line is that reconciliation is a valid legislative process - one used by every President, including Presidents Bush, Clinton, and Reagan, and health care reform qualifies because it is fundamentally about a government outlay and thus well within the boundaries of the Byrd Rule.

Kudos to NPR. Then again, its not a surprise, given that NPR listeners are the most well-informed of any broadcast news audience. That's the value of public broadcasting in an era where the mainstream media are forced to lay off hundreds of staff by their entertainment industry conglomerate owners.

A History of Reconciliation

For 30 years, major changes to health care laws have passed via the budget reconciliation process. Here are a few examples:

1982 - TEFRA: The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act first opened Medicare to HMOs

1986 - COBRA: The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act allowed people who were laid off to keep their health coverage, and stopped hospitals from dumping ER patients unable to pay for their care

1987 - OBRA '87: Added nursing home protection rules to Medicare and Medicaid, created no-fault vaccine injury compensation program

1989 - OBRA '89: Overhauled doctor payment system for Medicare, created new federal agency on research and quality of care

1990 - OBRA '90: Added cancer screenings to Medicare, required providers to notify patients about advance directives and living wills, expanded Medicaid to all kids living below poverty level, required drug companies to provide discounts to Medicaid

1993 - OBRA '93: created federal vaccine funding for all children

1996 - Welfare Reform: Separated Medicaid from welfare

1997 - BBA: The Balanced Budget Act created the state-federal childrens' health program called CHIP

2005 - DRA: The Deficit Reduction Act reduced Medicaid spending, allowed parents of disabled children to buy into Medicaid

(List reproduced from "Health Care No Stranger To Reconciliation Process" by Julie Rovner on NPR's Morning Edition. Here's the story transcript and audio.)

Related: An explanation of how the budget reconciliation process works, also at NPR.

The view from inside Israel

noreply@blogger.com (Aziz P.) — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 18:26:00 +0000

This is a pretty depressing assessment by Joel Rubin at Democracy Arsenal, who just returned from the Herzliya conference in Israel (the premier security summit attended by all major Israeli politicians).

It was clear, after attending this conference, that the weight of a decade of American neoconservative failure in the Middle East had brought Israelis neither security nor peace of mind.

This situation is problematic for Israeli political elites, who are also concerned that President Obama, unlike his predecessor, will not indulge conservative Israeli politicians in their greatest self-destructive behaviors anymore, especially when it comes to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Compounding this dilemma is the irony that the population supports a hard-line government, despite being frustrated by the policies that it is advancing.

For example, the citizens of Tel Aviv loathe settlers, whose representatives hold sway over the Netanyahu government. While settlers hold on to their vision of maintaining control over the West Bank and the Palestinians that live there, Tel Avivis understand that they are being sucked in to their dangerous, apocalyptic views.

My Tel Aviv cousins, for example, pay more than half their income to national taxes, with a significant portion dedicated to supporting these settlers. They are infuriated by the reality that they are subsidizing the lifestyle of a group of people that has no interest in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a two-state solution, relegating Israelis to unending conflict.

Worse, while the people of Tel Aviv know that the settlers are holding the country's politics hostage, they have no idea how to change this.

As for the political elites, despite repeated calls at Herzliya by prominent Israeli politicians, such as Tzipi Livni, Ehud Barak, Shaul Mofaz and Dan Meridor, for a two-state solution, it is becoming clear that the Israeli political system is incapable of getting there.

Compounding this dysfunction, there is a fear in Israel that the United States is a waning power. Israelis have thrown in their lot with America, and they are now beginning to worry about whether the U.S. will still be able to carry them on its back.

I left feeling that I had never seen such a demoralized Israel. Both the elites and the population looked tired, frustrated and uncertain.

It should be noted that right now there isn't an active intifada, there aren't missiles raining down on Israeli towns, or any other active security threat right now. It's as quiet as it has ever been, with the Palestinians more focused on internal affairs (like Hamas policing the Gaza Strip against Al Qaeda operatives) and Israel more obsessed with Iran.

I think that we are passing through an inflection point here. It's quite possible that 5 years from now we will look back at the winter of 2008-1009 and realize that was when the two-state solution died quietly in its sleep.

is there a "right" to health care?

noreply@blogger.com (Aziz P.) — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:25:00 +0000

In the debate over health care, and the associated debate over illegal immigration, I've often heard the argument that "health care isn't one of the rights defined in the Constitution." This argument seems to me to deny the very concept of human rights itself.

Let's make no mistake - the present era is 100% different from the world just 60 years ago. The passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Conventions mark a major turning point in the entire history of humanity and civilization. That is the world we live in now and that world is better in every respect than the previous one.

The Constitution of the United States was written in that old world - but what makes it such a brilliant document is that it anticipated the new world, even though at its draftin it was still saddled with language that was a compromise to the old (in particular, the slaves are 3/5ths of a human being clause, the silence on slavery, etc.)

No, health care is not an explicit constitutional right. So what? Here's the genius of our Fonding Fathers: rights are not defined by whether they are in the Constitution or not. No government has authority to "grant" us rights. Rights are inalienable and can be generalized as life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. It took almost 200 years for that basic truth to be made explicitly universal by the UDHR but we, as a planetary civilization, have finally managed to complete the work the Founders started.

By that standard, basic health care (ie, emergency room to treat a gunshot wound or antibiotics to cure a child's raging fever - not sex changes or botox) is clearly a right - obviously health is the key to Life. But it's also Liberty, in that being too poor to afford health care is in essence an economic oppression. And it's equally obvious that being ill is an obstacle to the Pursuit of Happiness, not the hedonistic kind but rather the betterment of home and hearth, and pursuit of opportunity and self-betterment.

A basic minimum standard of care is thus in my view a universal human right as critical if not more so than free speech or religious freedom.We are a nation founded on explicitly humanistic and moral principles, therefore we have a duty to extend these rights to all persons, not just those who are citizens. We cannot argue on one hand that rights are universal and then on the other hand argue that only a priveleged class may be afforded them.

Health care can be delivered by the private secctor, of course. But insurance is the mechanism by which health care is made affordable to all, irrespective of class or status. The details are of course subject to political reality (and leadership) but denying even a basic level of coverage to any group is tantamount to a betrayal of our core values. Not liberal or conservative values, mind you, but our Founding values as a nation.

Massachusetts Senate Race post-mortem: a progressive failure

noreply@blogger.com (Aziz P.) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:35:00 +0000

Congratulations to Senator-elect Brown - in the end, he was a better candidate and ran a better campaign against the hapless Martha Coakley, who thought she could coast on Kennedy-Obama coat-tails into office. A single statistic explains all - @marcambinder notes that "Coakley had 19 events after the primary through Sunday; Scott Brown had 66." And more than anything else, the election outcome last night was not because of governing philosophes or political ideologies, but simply the economy, stupid.

The political blogsphere is of course consumed with the significance of MA-SEN as pertains to Obama's anniversary in office, and the conventional wisdom is gelling across the usual lines. The GOP in full concern-troll mode says that Obama has governed as a leftist and thus must seek bipartisanship; of course it's precisely because of Republican ideological obstructionism, filibustering every bill in the Senate and negotiating over health care in bad faith, that the Democrats have needed 60 votes to pass any bill instead of a simple majority. Then again, when your 60 vote "super majority" includes Democrats who also negotiate in bad faith, like Joe Lieberman, then you never really had 60 votes to begin with.

The simple truth is that Obama has sought a middle ground on health ~~care~~ insurance reform and pursued a bipartisan approach from the beginning, taking single payer off the table right off the bat, making a (in retrospect, also bad faith) deal with the industry on drug reimportation/price negotiation, and favoring but not drawing the line on a public option. As David Leonhardt points out at the NYT, the health-care reform bills before Congress are substantially more conservative than Bill Clinton's 1993 bill or even Richard Nixon's 1971 bill!

Meanwhile, the progressive left, immune to the irony inherent in their own ideological posturing, interpret last night as vindication of their argument that Obama hasn't been progressive enough. In one sense, they are right - Obama has certainly not been governing as a leftist (in a sane world, this critique by the left wing would serve as sufficent rebuttal to the GOP's claim that Obama has been too partisan, but...). But they also seem to think that Barack Obama is Howard Dean, when Obama explicitly campaigned as a moderate in all respects. Obama spoke of change, and the progressive Left translated this as "do everything the opposite of Bush" because from their perspective, that Bush was wrong on every decision and policy is an absolute political axiom. (I'm happy to list Bush policies that I agree with in a future post, but not right now).

Last night's loss by Coakley was Coakley's fault alone and as I have argued was in no way a referendum on Obama's first year in office; it should be noted that Scott Brown even won Ted Kennedy's home district of Hyannis, which suggests that the MA electorate (which is predominantly Purple, not blue or red) was looking for a Senator who respected them, not one who saw the seat as a birthright. As Mike Allen also noted on MSNBC, Coakley was leading Brown by 15 points only one week ago, which would not have been the case if this were a referendum on Obama or the Democrats.

And yet the race does indeed materially change the political environment under which Obama must labor for his second year. In some ways this is a preview of November, where the Democrats are guaranteed to lose more seats, so at some point Obama was going to have to figure out a way to govern without a supermajority in the Senate anyway. The question is what strategy to use.

The choice facing Obama and the Democratic leadership is to either a. pursue transformative, partisan, progressive-leftist change or b. pursue incrementalist, bipartisan, moderate-liberal change. The progressive netroots are as immune to reason on this as they were about the public option; they think that it's worth abandoning health care, fighting Quixotic battles over ideological policies and achieving nothing, and maybe even primarying Obama in 2012. In this, they are allied to the Republicans, though they don't realize it. The only progressive who does understand reality is Chris Bowers.

Obviously I favor choice b. because long ago I realized, by actually paying attention to Obama's speeches and rhetoric, that this is what he believes in, and the post-MA-SEN political environment essentially makes this the only pragmatic route to getting anything of substance done at all. You can have meaningful health care reform without a public option, you can have meaningful climate change policy without cap and trade, you can have meaningful financial reform without increasing corporate taxes.

In a perfect world, Obama would have been able to pursue bipartisan, transformative change, but that would have required an opposition party with more dedication to the national interest rather than their own political interest. But even 60 seats was an illusion - it was really 59 + Lieberman (who backstabbed Reid), and of the 59 remaining a large bloc are Blue Dog Senators who are fiscal hawks (which most of America, even liberal blue state America, doesn't see as a bad thing, something progressives don't seem to really understand).

The political environment for the GOP Senators is also different as well. The threat of a Democratic Supermajority is gone, so the incentive for minority party unity is gone. With the election in November ahead, and Obama's brilliant decision to make financial sector reform and deficit reduction the next priority, many Republican Senators are going to want to lay claim to partial ownership on these issues to show the voters that they are doing their jobs. The crew at Open Left, Swing State Project, and Congress Matters will break down the 2010 Senate races in obsessive detail over the next few months and it will be clear that there are going to be at least a few Senators (R) who will be very receptive to Obama's imminent charm offensive.

And doing their jobs is the way that all Congress critters, R or D alike, keep their jobs. Chris Bowers posits a simple hypothetical to everyone out there who thinks otherwise:

If you think the political situation for Democrats would have been better if they had different messaging or passed different legislation, consider a simple hypothetical:

Over the past year, instead of saying and doing what they did, Democrats in D.C. and President Obama passed exactly the legislation, and engaged in exactly the sort of messaging, you suggest..

Despite doing this, current economic conditions are exactly the same as they are today.

In this hypothetical, if you think the political situation would be any different for Democrats than it is currently, then you are deluding yourself.

Or even more succinctly, "If you are not facing scandals, and times are good, then you will be popular no matter what you pass into law. This is about being in power when times are bad." The key then is to pass legislation that may not be "perfect" but at least is "good" in that it makes a material differenmce to people's lives. And that's not going to happen without bipartisanship. Even if the GOP still refuses en masse to cooperate, then at least the Democrats have a message for November: look, we tried, but the GOP obstructed everything, even deficit reduction and financial sector reform! It's not like we have a super majority in the Senate to force it through!"

So, what is the bottom line? MA-SEN was no referendum on Obama, but it was a sea change. In many ways it is better that this happened now instead of (inevitably) in November, because we won't waste the next 12 months seeking mythical 60 vote super majorities and appeasing Lieberman and engaging in pointless negotiations with Snowe. Instead, the illusion is gone, and the Republicans no longer have the cover they did for their nihilistic obstructionism. Obama is freer to seek common ground and find practical, if limited, solutions. To that end it's worth recalling Obama's own comments from MLK day this past monday:

...our predecessors were never so consumed with theoretical debates that they couldn't see progress when it came. Sometimes I get a little frustrated when folks just don't want to see that even if we don't get everything, we're getting something. (Applause.) {Rev. Martin Luther] King understood that the desegregation of the Armed Forces didn't end the civil rights movement, because black and white soldiers still couldn't sit together at the same lunch counter when they came home. But he still insisted on the rightness of desegregating the Armed Forces. That was a good first step -- even as he called for more. He didn't suggest that somehow by the signing of the Civil Rights that somehow all discrimination would end. But he also didn't think that we shouldn't sign the Civil Rights Act because it hasn't solved every problem. Let's take a victory, he said, and then keep on marching. Forward steps, large and small, were recognized for what they were -- which was progress.

It's a bitter irony indeed that progressives, of all people, are the ones who are most opposed to progress today.

Is the Massachusetts Senate race a referendum on Obama's first year?

noreply@blogger.com (Aziz P.) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 14:09:00 +0000

Today, Massachusetts votes for a Senator to replace Ted Kennedy in a special election scheduled on the eve of President Obama's first anniversary in office. The expectation is, to put it bluntly, that Republican challenger Scott Brown will probably defeat incumbent Martha Coakley (who was appointed to fill the empty seat after Sen. Kennedy's passing last winter). The immediate impact of a Coakley loss would be to reduce the Democratic coalition by one, from a filibuster-proof 60 to merely 59. The thinking goes that this imperils President Obama's entire governing agenda, kills health care reform, and is a preview of further losses this November (where the Dems are already expected to lose seats in both the House and the Senate).

The spin from the right is that a Coakley defeat is a victory for the oppressed masses who reject Obama's socialist agenda and vindication of the Tea Party movement. But a Brown victory is more likely to come from depressed Democratic turnout, and a split independent vote, than any conservative surge. Brown himself is only a transient darling of the conservatives for the black eye he will give Obama; the moment he casts his first pro-choice vote, he'll be labeled a RINO. That's the reality of blue-state politics.

The question is, why is the Democratic base depressed? The spin from the left is that Obama hasn't been liberal enough. In this argument, Obama's failures to close Guantanamo immediately, put the single-payer reform on the table, etc - basically, Obama's failure in their eyes to govern as a far-left ideological progressive instead of the center-left liberal pragmatist he has been his whole life and actually campaigned as - is the cause.

And yet, as I have argued before, it is precisely the far left who have failed to learn the central lesson of the Bush era - that ideology is the antithesis of policy. The change that Obama talked about bringing to Washington was not a promise of knee-jerk reactionism to Bush, and govern purely in ABB mode. Rather, it was to stop ideological governance entirely and bring an intellectual, pragmatic, and principled Administration to power in the hope and belief that genuine progress on our various policy ills can be found. But what progressives demand instead is a repeat of the Bush era, only skewed the other way. Yes, that too would technically be Change, but not Hope. Certainly that sort of change is nothing to believe in.

The true culprit of a Coakley loss is that the independent vote - who represent a majority of registered voters in Massachusetts and the silent majority of citizens in the United States as a whole - was lost. Not by Obama per se but by the very far left who sought to turn every victory into a defeat. The battle for the public option is a perfect example of this, which is a case study for the aphorism, "the perfect is the enemy of the good."

So, is MA-SEN a referendum on Obama? The far left has already concluded it is, and will seek to push Obama further left. But in many ways, the loss of the 60 vote majority is freedom for Obama. No longer does Joe Lieberman have veto rights over the agenda; a Republican like Brown is someone who might actually be willing to work across the aisle. With 59 seats the validation of Obama's strategy to seek common ground is a reality - and a neccessity. And Obama would have had to seek this common ground in November anyway; as the Dems woudl surely have lost seats then too. But now, he has a year to really show how much he can do.

This race isn't a referendum on Obama's past, it's a liberation instead. Moderate Republicans like Snowe and Brown will now be empowered the way Lieberman was to defy their party. And it is they who have incentive to help Obama deliver now, because with a 41 seat minority, the GOP can no longer claim that the Democrats own everything. Their political strategy of threatening a filibuster on every vote now has teeth - which means that failure to find common ground really is theirs as much as Obama's - and possibly even more.

Related, Bernard Avishai makes a passionate case in defense of Obama's governance, and I think the all-too-appropriate title of his post is probably emblematic of a fundamental paradox at the heart of our politics. Avishai offered brief commentary on the Coakley race in the same vein this morning.

Devil's advocate: Pat Robertson and Haiti's curse

noreply@blogger.com (Aziz P.) — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:30:00 +0000

There's really no better term for Pat Robertson than "Christian extremist" - there's not much point in going over his long history of public outbursts of intolerance, racism, and hatred, except in noting that ordinary Christians (and evangelicals in particular) bear as much responsibility for his ravings as ordinary muslims do for the sermons of Anwar al-Awlaki. That is to say, none.

But Robertson's recent comments about Haiti were particularly cruel and (if I may offer my opinion) un-Christian, even by his standards. During his televised 700 Club program, he said,

"Something happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about. They were under the heel of the French, you know Napoleon the third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said 'We will serve you if you will get us free from the prince.' True story. And so the devil said, 'Ok it's a deal.' And they kicked the French out. The Haitians revolted and got something themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after another."

Here's video of Robertson making the remarks:

There's pretty righteous outrage from the Christian sphere about this - for example, see Burke's Corner - so I'll leave the theological remonstrations to them. And for what it's worth (YMMV) Robertson did urge his millions of listeners to donate to Haitian relief - unlike the utterly reprehensible Rush Limbaugh.

But it also is worth noting that Robertson makes a historical libel against Haiti as well, one rooted in a colonialist mindset. A spokesman for Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network attempted to do damage control by releasing a statement which actually served to emphasize the historical libel all the more:

On today's The 700 Club ... Dr. Robertson also spoke about Haiti's history. His comments were based on the widely-discussed 1791 slave rebellion led by Boukman Dutty at Bois Caiman, where the slaves allegedly made a famous pact with the devil in exchange for victory over the French. This history, combined with the horrible state of the country, has led countless scholars and religious figures over the centuries to believe the country is cursed. Dr. Robertson never stated that the earthquake was God's wrath.

This is a common theme in the post-colonial narrative about Haiti, which is always described as a "broken nation" or "failed state" in a historical vacuum, as if the woes of this island nation were entirely of its own making. But if you look at the actual history of Haiti, a different picture emerges. In many ways, Haiti is the living proof of the universality of human rights and the true birthplace of freedom in the Western hemisphere.

This history of Haiti is a long one, and so deserves serious scholarship instead of a blog summary. There's in fact a brilliant three-part series published 5 years ago by licensed minister Jean R. Gelin, Ph.D., who was born in Haiti and makes a passionate and inspiring case for his homeland's true history, not as some land of devil-worshipping savages but as a Christian nation, founded in Enlightenment values, and then ravaged and exploited by the imperial powers of the 19th century - especially France and the United States. The three part series, entitled God, Satan, and the Birth of Haiti, is reprinted on BlackAndChristian.com: part I, part II, part III. I can't possibly excerpt enough of it to do it justice, just read the whole thing - but I will note some of main points that Gelin makes:

- Haiti is the only nation in the history of the world where African slaves successfully led a revolution and threw off the yoke of slavery, to win both emancipation and independence from France in 1804. This predated the Emancipation Proclamation by almost 60 years.

- Many of Haiti's first leaders were Catholic christians and invoked their faith's long theological heritage against oppression and tyranny as te basis for their struggle. Haiti remains 80% Christian today.

- There supposed "pact with the Devil" made by leader Boukman Dutty was actually a prayer to the "God of Heaven", not to the Devil or to voodoo pagan gods. The idea that a black savage could be so devout is incomprehensible to those who insist on the devil's pact reading of the events, and they insist that even if Bookman invoked god that day, he must have meant the Devil, because how could a savage understand God?

- the very logic of the "devil pact" libel is nonsensical. Why would the devil want to help them achieve freedom? Why would God be on the side of the slavers? In the Bible, God is always freeing slaves - like the Israelites in Egypt. Does the devil pact libel really make any theologic sense? (Robertson and his apologists are making a theological argument after all, so this is a valid counter argument within that context).

- Even after Haiti's birth, it remained the plaything of imperial powers. One of the major burdens and contributors to Haiti's descent into poverty was a vast sum of blood money it was forced to pay to France as recompense for its own independence. Think about the logic of this for a moment. It is akin to demanding that the descendants of slavery in the United States pay reparations to the US government! And it wasn't just the French who demanded protection money from Haiti either - at various times in its history, Haiti has had to make payments to forces from the US, Germany and Britain.

The United States has remained active in Haiti's affairs in the 20th century, particularly from 1994 to 2004. Even with the best of intentions in recent decades, continued interference has left Haiti utterly dysfunctional and corrupt. Mr. Robertson would have us believe this is all the work of the Devil; maybe in one sense he's correct. But Haiti has never willingly signed any pact with the powers that have dictated it's existence - it's always been on the recieving end. I hope that the aftermath of the earthquake gives Haiti a chance to rebuild itself, in more ways than one - and this time perhaps we can actually help rather than hinder.

Related - Talk Islam's posts on Robertson. Also there's an interesting story about the Polish-Haitian connection. And finally, here's a list of easy ways to donate to Haitian relief, either online, by phone, or via text message/SMS.

Rotten in the state of Denmark: Chindia at Copenhagen

noreply@blogger.com (Aziz P.) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 13:25:00 +0000

I've been meaning to comment on the Copenhagen conference, since the perspective from the Indian press is probably quite different from that in the US media. According to the papers here, Obama forced his way into a private meeting between Chinese premier Wen Jibao and Indian PM Manmohan Singh because he didn't want them "negotiating in private". China and India resisted all attempts by the US to make the Copenhagen draft legally binding, and fought monitoring and transparency tooth and nail. This plays well here as a strike against US/Western imperialistic moralizing, on behalf of the developing nations, whose champions are now... China and India? really?

I am frankly disgusted. India and China - both nuclear powers and members of the UN Security Council - can no longer by any stretch of the imagination be considered "developing nations" and they are cynically using their endemic poverty as bargaining chips to benefit their industrial and economic elites. It's precisely those hundreds of millions of poverty-stricken Chinese and Indians who are going to suffer the most from global warming, while the rich ensconce themselves ever further into their posh enclaves.

The problem is that the failure of the US to unilaterally act on climate change gives the industrialized asian giants the political cover they can need to avoid doing anything. They see it as a zero-sum game - and they are wrong. But the truth is that the ball is indeed in our court; we still are the highest per-capita emitters of greenhouse gases. This is why it is imperative that we act, regardless of what Chindia does.

Taken together, I suspect that Chindia is a worse offender than we are - but in their recalcitrance is our opportunity. If the US is now forced to act unilaterally, then we and not they will be the owners of the New Energy economy. China has a lead on nuclear power but pebble-bed reactor technology only faces regulatory, not technical hurdles in the US. And we are the leader in wind turbines, not to mention other projects like the Polywell reactor and more exotic stuff like the National Ignition Facility at Livermore. All the pieces are in place on our home turf, and if we aggressively go after the prize of an alternate energy economy then we will remain dominant on the world stage, to Chindia's dismay.

Ultimately, global warming's solution is indirect - and it's all about energy. If the US can enact strict new emissions standards, a cap and trade program, and massive investment in alternate energy sources (say, a goal of 50% of our domestic power by 2025) then we win. And because it's not a zero sum game, so too do the poor in the developing world. If only China and India saw it that way too, we could really achieve something.

Obama takes troop reduction n Afghanistan off the table

noreply@blogger.com (Aziz P.) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:34:00 +0000

John McCain:

"I think the great danger now is a half-measure, sort of a - you know, try to please all ends of the political spectrum," McCain told CNN chief national correspondent John King. "And, again, I have great sympathy for the president, making the toughest decisions that presidents have to make, but I think he needs to use deliberate speed."

Many people assume McCain's comments only apply to the left, but the fact is that they also apply to the right, and it's precisely because Obama has in fact taken the right VERY seriously indeed that he's in so much hot water with the Progressives (who I admit in the interest of full self-disclosure I do not self-identify with; I am a liberal on a elliptical orbit around the center of political mass, thus I drift rightwards in a very predictable fashion.)

Much of the critique of Obama from the right comes via political scoring rather than a genuine critique of policy; a great example is the replacement of Gen McKiernan by Gen McChrystal. McChrystal's background is special operations, commanding JSOC for five years (and capturing Saddam under his watch). The man is as much an expert in SO as Petraeus is in COIN. That strikes most principled observers as significant, though obviously it's not officially commented on by the White House. The implications of policy shift are clear. That is the President's prerogative; note that he has retained Secretary Gates from the previous Administration (again, a sore spot for lefties, and utterly ignored by righties intent on scoring points).

President Obama has asked for Gen. McChrystal's assessment and he has received it in detail. Now, McCain woudn't be doing his job if he didn't pressure the President to act quickly, but the truth is that when you request a gigantic policy review from your top commanders, you do so because you want to make a decision, not a rubber stamp. President Bush was content to leave broad strategy to Gen. Petraeus and that was also his prerogative, but righties have assumed that this is the normal course of things. It's not; the President, the Commander in Chief, is a civilian. It's the President's prerogative to give a general free reign, but it extends only as far and as long as the Commander in Chief wills it so. In Iraq, that free reign by Petraeus was one thing; in Afghanistan it is quite another. Afghanistan is not Iraq.

No General will ever - if he is competent and values his career - ask for less troops. That Gen. McChrystal would ask for more was a given, but if you read the report you find he makes a very different argument. In General McChrystal's own words:

Success is achievable, but it will not be attained simply by trying harder or "doubling down" on the previous strategy. Additional resources are required, but focusing on force or resource requirements misses the point entirely. The key take away from this assessment is the urgent need for a significant change to our strategy and the way that we think and operate.

Emphases mine. I've spent enough time reading and analyzing it that I refuse categorically to discuss it with someone who hasn't bothered with due diligence; I care enough about the outcome that I take it more seriously than my political allegiances*.

The bottom line is that Obama has already sent more troops to Afghanistan than President Bush did. And Obama has taken reducing the troops serving there off the table. The question now remains, will President Obama send more troops, and if so, how many? That's a decision Obama must make in context of the entirety of the United States security needs, not just in Afghanistan. Gen. McChrystal, on the other hand, makes his recommendations with the Afghanistan theater alone in mind.

And truth to tell, there's a very good argument for not sending any more troops - one acknowledged by McChrystal himself. ending more troops amounts to raising expectations, in the face of increasing public distaste for the war. The amount requested by McChrystal are not a panacea in themselves; to really do secure-and-hold (as opposed to secure-move on-revisit as we do now), you'd need not 40,000 more troops, but 400,000. McChrystal knows this full well, and anyone reading the report in full will understand his reasoning. In a lot of ways more troops as requested wouldn't really improve that much on the ground, but would buy make things easier. The cost would be increased public patience ; the challenge is to find a middle ground between these opposing forces and realities. McChrystal is not only aware of these tensions but states them explicitly in his report - the number of 40,000 quoted is in my opinion a brilliant gift to the President which gives him the executive operational freedom he needs to find that balance. I'm kind of in awe.

The mission in Afghanistan does not hinge upon the number of troops sent, but on the "change in thinking" alluded to above by McChrystal. Marc Lynch lays out the case for simply "muddling through":

Sending more troops may in fact be the right call -- I'm open-minded on that question -- but the attempts to bull-rush the process are problematic on their face.

"All in or get out" is a typical false choice offered by advocates of any position who support the "all in" option in question, since it's so much easier to argue the risks of "getting out" than it is to argue against intermediate options. And as for the rush, why make such a momentous choice precisely at a moment of total political chaos in Afghanistan and the near complete absence of a legitimate partner on which to build due to the rampant fraud which eviscerated the Afghan election?

This is particularly problematic because, as the President's advisers clearly understand, there is absolutely no reason to think that Gen. McChrystal's current request is really "all in". McChrystal's review is admirably clear and quite honest that even with such changes, the policy may not succeed.

The overwhelming odds are that if the escalation option is chosen, in a year or two we will be confronting the exact same questions. More troops will once again be needed, a new strategy will once again be demanded, we'll still be reading about how the Taliban is out-communicating us and about how the corruption of the Karzai government poses a serious challenge. And then the exact same debate will recur… the Kagans will demand more troops, dark mutterings about tensions between the administration and the generals will roil the waters, the Washington Post editorial page will publish debates where everyone is on the same side, the smart think-tankers will agonize over the tough choices but ultimately come down on the side of escalation. Might as well have this debate now, and get it right.

[...]

what's so terrible with muddling through for a while, giving the new tactics a chance to work at the local level while preventing the worst-case scenarios from happening? Why choose between escalation or withdrawal at exactly the time when the political picture is at its least clear? Why not maintain a lousy Afghan government which doesn't quite fall, keep the Taliban on the ropes without defeating it, cut deals where we can, and try to figture out a strategy to deal with the Pakistan part which all the smart set agrees is the real issue these days? Why not focus on applying the improved COIN tactics with available resources right now instead of focusing on more troops? If the American core objective in Afghanistan is to prevent its re-emergence as an al-Qaeda safe haven, or to prevent the Taliban from taking Kabul, those seem to be manageable at lower troop levels.

Good for the President's team to take the time to have a serious debate about this and not give in to the politically expedient path (in either direction). The readouts on yesterday's big Afghan strategy meeting reflect exactly what you want to see from a President making a tough call.

Let's also note something very important here - if you are absolutely against the practice of aerial bombardment and collateral damage - which I am also strenuously on the record about - then Biden's preferred policy (persuasively argued in the LRB by Rory Stewart) of reducing troops and relying heavily on COIN/SO alone is indeed "Chaosistan". There's a direct, causal inverse relationship between number of troops and collateral damage casualties. This is a paradox that no one on the left is willing to grapple with, but must factor into any principled assessment or policy prescription.

My own prediction and preference is that Obama will send more troops, in the range of 5-10,000. More importantly, the budget for Afghanistan is going to rise as the Iraq war winds down - Obama will not spend any more money in total between these two wars, but will shift the expenses from one to the other. The difference is that the same money won't go into funding a huge force of boots on the ground (as in Iraq) but will be channeled into the "change in strategy" of which McChrystal spoke. Call it the "$urge 2.0," because money matters as much if not more than men, this time. If politics truly stopped at the water's edge, this would be a strategy that everyone could agree on. Unfortunately, Obama has a fight on multiple fronts, abroad and at home. McChrystal has a much easier job by far.

*I remind the gentle reader that while I was against the Iraq War, I also was against total withdrawal.

Deserve this! The Nobel Peace Prize Agenda for Obama

noreply@blogger.com (Aziz P.) — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 17:56:00 +0000

President Obama is now a Laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize. There's enough in that statement alone to drive rightwing conservatives insane. And insane they certainly are, as others are ably and gleefully documenting. The general gist of the response by the Right is twofold, and predictably schizophrenic: 1. Obama has not accomplished enough in office to deserve the NPP, and 2. the NPP only awarded it to Obama because he is a. not-Bush and b. he is African-American. In essence, this means that they are arguing that the Nobel Peace Prize is both a farce and sacred at the same time. Of course, conservatives' enmity for the Peace prize is longstanding, given that it was awarded to Yasser Arafat, Jimmy Carter, and Al Gore, even as they pine for it's omission to George W. Bush.

While the conservatives' newfound concern for the integrity of the NPP is certainly touching, the same critique coming from the Left carries more weight. But to address this, you have to consider the intention of the Peace Prize. And for that, we can look to the wishes of Alfred Nobel himself. In his will, he stipulated that the Nobel Peace Prize shall be awarded to

"to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."

Now, there's nothing in there about solving the Middle East conflict or riding the world of nuclear weapons, though certainly progress towards these goals would count. But the secific language used to define the concept of "peace" itself is interesting. The NPP is to be awarded for 1. doing work towardds fraternity of nations, and promotion of peace congresses. These are process, not end-result, statements. The sole end-result qualification listed in "reduction of armies" which I don't think any winner has ever managed to achieve, though President Obama's renewed attention to nuclear non-proliferation is relevant here (and explicitly quoted by the Nobel Committee as part of their justification for awarding it to him).

First, consider the process-oriented criteria. What has Obama achieved along these lines? Glenn Greenwald offers a summary of how Obama has "promoted peace" and "fraternity between nations":

Obama has changed the tone America uses to speak to the world generally and the Muslim world specifically. His speech in Cairo, his first-week interview on al-Arabiya, and the extraordinarily conciliatory holiday video he sent to Iran are all substantial illustrations of that. His willingness to sit down and negotiate with Iran -- rather than threaten and berate them -- has already produced tangible results. He has at least preliminarily broken from Bush's full-scale subservience to Israel and has applied steadfast pressure on the Israelis to cease settlement activities, even though it's subjected him to the sorts of domestic political risks and vicious smears that have made prior Presidents afraid to do so. His decision to use his first full day in office to issue Executive Orders to close Guantanamo, ostensibly ban torture, and bar CIA black sites was an important symbol offered to the world (even though it's been followed by actions that make those commitments little more than empty symbols). He refused to reflexively support the right-wing, civil-liberty-crushing coup leaders in Honduras merely because they were "pro-American" and "anti-Chavez," thus siding with the vast bulk of Latin America's governments -- a move George Bush, or John McCain, never would have made. And as a result of all of that, the U.S. -- in a worldwide survey released just this week -- rose from seventh to first on the list of "most admired countries."

That's an impressive list, though the caveats about rendition are noted. Some righties argue Obama should only be "eligble" for his actions as President in the 11 days he was in office prior to the NPP nomination deadline of Feb 1st - which is silly, since the actual deliberations took seven months. Why wouuldn't Obama's actions over that time be relevant to the decision? But it's still worth pointing out that Obama's executive orders on his very first day in office about torture and Guantanamo alone represent as significant an ideological change in direction for America as Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika did (earning him a NPP in 1990, even though the actual and unanticipated breakup of the Soviet Union didn't happen until the following year).

It's clear that Obama meets the process-oriented criteria. But what about "reduction of standing armies" and its nuke proxy? The Nobel Committee explicitly lauded Obama's commitment to nuclear non-proliferation, especially recently at the United Nations. However, the truth is that Obama remains wedded to the double standard on nuclear power, holding Iran and India to one standard while looking the other way when it comes to Israel's obsolete "strategic ambiguity". A genuine commitment to "zero nuke" policy would entail no favoritism, and insisting all nuclear-capable nations sign the NPT, Israel included. The hypocrisy on this does not go unnoticed and the threat of Israeli nuclear power is what drives the nuclear arms race in the middle east.

However, all of this is really beside the point, since it assumes that the Nobel Prize remains an "award" when in fact it is no such thing. It is actually a shrewd vehicle for influencing the power elite, and as such represents an attempt to lobby Obama and influence him over the course of his next term(s). The decsion of who gets a Nobel Peace Prize, and just as importantly who doesn't, is an explicit editorial statement. That President Bush was not awarded one* was a rebuke of the unilateral, pre-emptive, diplomacy-averse doctrine that bears his name. But with Obama, it is an attempt to shape the doctrine yet to be.

Richard Silverstein makes much the same point:

I think this award is really a shot in the dark. A big gamble. They're telling Obama and the world that they have enormous hopes for him. They're also telling us what deep straits the world is in. From Gaza to Teheran to Kabul to Baghdad, things are a mess. A military attack against Iran hangs like a question mark over the Middle East. The committee is essentially saying that tough times demand risk and this award is a risk. It could be that Obama will merit it over time. It could be that the award will make it that much easier for him to achieve some of his agenda. If so, the Swedes are telling us that's all to the good.

Lately, Obama has taken hits both at home and abroad. This award is meant as a shot in the arm, a bit of courage for the tough times ahead. He'll need it.

I hope against hope that this award will encourage the realist camp in dealing with Iran. I hope it will give pause to the Israeli adventurists gunning for a fight with Iran. I do think it will make it that much harder for Obama himself to turn hawkish, as he has intimated he might do if negotiations fail. So maybe there's some shrewdness to this award as well.

Indeed. Liberal critics like Greenwald** point to the Afghanistan War as evidence Obama doesn't "deserve" the prize, but General McChrystal's public call for more troops seems to have influenced Obama to take a troop reduction off the table. This represents a success for McChrystal, who may not (probably won't) get his full requested 40,000 troops, but also won't face the Biden-advocated strategy of reducing troops still further in favor of purely couunter-terrorism operations. The Nobel Peace Prize applies pressure on Obama from the opposite end. Like it or not, Obama has to factor the potential of headlines like "Obama wins Peace Prize, extends War" into his political calculus; the Afghanistan people themselves are making the case already.

I think that the best interpretation of the Nobel Peace Prize is the single word response from Barack Obama's official Twitter account: "Humbled." In his public response, President Obama said, "I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments. But rather as an affirmation of American leadership. ... I will accept this award as a call to action."

Indeed, recognition that the award represents global aspirations for peace and an expectation of American leadership should be a heavy burden that weighs on Obama's soul as he occupies the most powerful office in the world, at a time when the world is arguably at its most uncertain and strife-laden. Let's hope that the intentions of the Nobel Committee, if not their specific agenda, come true. As Obama charts the way forward in Afghanistan, pursues non-proliferation, engages Iran and North Korea, promotes a two-state solution, and more, the heavy weight NPP around his neck will hopefully inure him to short-term political distractions and focus him on the end goals, and question whether the conventional wisdoms he so far has largely hewn to will indeed be sufficient for the task.

Related: Mixed responses to Obama's Peace Prize from the streets of Iran, Iraq and Gaza. Also, see the usual lively discussion at Talk Islam. Also, I found Al Gore's comments of interest.

*For what it's worth, if I were eligible to nominate, I'd have nominated Bush, for the sole reason of deposing Saddam. That doesn't mean he'd have won, of course.

**Arguably, though Greenwald won't agree, Obama's decision to send 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan in March has actually lessened the need for aerial strikes. The truth behind the troops debate is that the fewer troops we have, the heavier reliance on drone attacks will be and thus the more civilian casualties. This is a fact that lefty critics of Obama's war must accept.

Copenhagen dreaming II: global warming as opportunity

noreply@blogger.com (Aziz P.) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:17:00 +0000

This is the second part of my series in anticipation of the upcoming Copenhagen conference. The previous post in this series was a defense of the scientific method.

So, what do I think about global warming? The consensus is a powerful one, and it's not built upon one tree ring or one temperature reconstruction, it's been built upon thousands of independent studies by thousands of different authors. That said, there are some valid critiques on methodological issues. Even if those critiques are fully accurate, that isn't enough by itself to warrant throwing out the entire body of literature, which over the years of reading both Climate Audit and Real Climate I've seen extends far beyond just one paper by Mann et al or one set of trees at Yamal. The very fact that there is a controversy, and both sides are able to endlessly rebut the other in a seemingly-never ending cycle of rebuttal, proves that there is indeed more to the story. Like blind men in a room with an elephant, the dissenters and the keepers of orthodoxy have valid observations and methods. Reconciling them requires moving forward, not standing still.

I've watched An Inconvenient Truth and I've seen A Convenient Fiction. I've read the Wegman Report and the RealClimate folks' highly-convincing response on the technical merits. I read Climate Audit and now, thanks to suggestions from others here, will also check out Watt's Up With That, but I also cross-check dissenters' arguments against the RC Archive and RC Index. I think I am doing due diligence here. The consensus for global warming remains robust, despite the dissenters' well-publicized arguments. Until the dissenters repudiate their partisan political fellow-travelers who engage in irresponsible rhetoric about GW being a "massive lie" or the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people" they will never attain the credibility they require to persuade and influence the concensus the way it has always been done.

Fundamentally, however, the basic goal of those who advocate anthropogenic global warming is simple: to reduce carbon emissions worldwide. The single best route to doing that is to make our civilization more energy efficient and less polluting. Technologies to make this so represent as much of an immense, industry-creating opportunity as the semiconductor industry or the space program. One of Al Gore's maxims is that you should never underestimate human ingenuity; to this, I would also add the corollary, never underestimate the ability of Americans to make a profit off it, either. Those who argue that the Kyoto Protocol or the upcoming Copenhagen treaty would bankrupt the business world sound to me like Malthusian alarmists, without faith in the genius of men like Norman Borlaug to find ways of escaping the constraints. The business world itself is on board with the opportunity ahead. In that sense, the scientific world has fallen behind. It's time to catch up... to the Chinese and the Indians. They see the writing on the wall - in terms of threat to their own territory from increased sea levels, but also from the basic security/economic perspectives of needing less oil imports and having greater energy to fuel their growing societies.

So, count me as convinced that GW is real and requires action. The dissenters are important, as they provide a needed critique from within. But they cannot and should not be the cause for holding back on moving ahead full speed.

Copenhagen dreaming: In defense of the scientific method

noreply@blogger.com (Aziz P.) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:16:00 +0000

As the Copenhagen conference on the successor to the Kyoto Protocol draws near, I want to lay some meta-thoughts out about the scientific method which I think are important, as a context for my general support of the theory of global warrming and the need for decisive action by our own nation to reduce carbon emissions and embrace alternative forms of energy (including nuclear). The next post in this series will then lay out my position on global warming specifically.

The debate about Global Warming, not unlike that regarding AIDS, or evolution, boils down to this: the Scientific Method is an attempt by human beings to establish rigorous theories drawn from empirical observations, for the purpose of creating models of reality, so that these models may be employed in some pragmatic fashion. When this method is applied to a topic that is insulated from what I call the Political Method, there's not much controversy to be had. However, the "employed in some pragmatic fashion" part above is where the outcomes of the SM start encroaching on the PM and then battle lines are drawn.

Science is not a clean affair. Its hard, for one thing, and it requires a lot of art in some ways. The basic task of taking measurements is pretty consensus-prone, but everything downstream to that is subject to the old adage, TMTOWTDI. In science, the way things are done usually settles on what has worked before. Science is conservative that way.

The SM method provides an internal mechanism for disputes, however - publishing. Proponents of a minority view who are challenging an orthodoxy often tend to scream conspiracy and exclusion from the literature, but the fact remains that the scientific literature is by far the most open system for dissent that the human race has ever devised. This is because, fundamentally, science rewards its iconoclasts instead of punishing them. The reason for this is a function of the funding system, which penalizes anything that isn't "novel".

The reason that orthodoxy develops in science is because of the mass of literature that accretes over time. Anyone trying to challenge an orthodoxy who simply waves away pre-existing literature as being corrupt or dishonest or conspiratorial is essentially repudiating the system at a fundamental level. Are only the dissenters against orthodoxy the ones with a professional ethos, with ethics and pride in their work? To hear the dissenters gripe, you'd think that they were the sole bearers of the flame of Science and everyone else is a charlatan. Any argument which strays into this territory not only can be dismissed, it must be dismissed. Anyone willing to burn the system down is someone whose own motivations are far more suspect than the thousands of scientists who have dedicated their lives to their field and are willing to play by the rules.

The single biggest (and potentially most cogent) critique that the dissenters make is that the peer review system is essentially a "social network". Well, they're right. It is indeed a social network, of experts in a field. But if you don't do science you can be forgiven for assuming this makes everyone in a field, esecially a small one, seem like pals on facebook all playing the same inane games and joining the same groups and causes ad infinitum. In reality, the smaller the field, the more concentrated the competition. Every research group tries to outdo the other, because the funding game (again, which only cares about "novelty") is literally zero-sum. That said, for the good of the field, everyone does come together and write joint papers for special issues of various journals, review papers and collaborations on multi-center trials or studies. That's part of paying your dues for the good of the field as a whole. But having written a paper with someone - even ten papers - is not an abdication of your ethical responsibilities. Nor would it be very good for your career to be someone else's "yes man". In fact, you'd lose funding and be out of a job if all you ever did was agree with your peers. Very few people outside the system really understand just how precarious most research groups' existences really are, or just how unbelievably damaging it would be to scientists' livelihoods to act in such a cartoon fashion. Indeed, you cant teach a man a thing if his career depends on him not knowing it, but in science the opposite is true - you can't stop a man from learning something in science, because his career depends on him learning it.

Are there flaws in peer review? Oh, Yes. And it's scientists who are at the forefront of self-evaluation and addressing those flaws. If scientists were all Vulcan or robots it would be a non-issue; instead, they are just human beings, and that means they have to accept some basic level of fundamental flaw, and seek to minimize the damage as best they can. The peer review system is not static, it's continually being refined and tweaked, and like democracy it may suck at times but still remains better than anything else by a longshot.

We don't do science by press release. We do it by trial, error, and publishing. If you can't get your amazing challenge to the orthodoxy published, its not because "They" are silencing you, its because you don't have the data. If you are right - and you may well be! - then doing the due diligence is your responsibility.

Fundamentally, the consensus in science isn't an illusion or a conspiracy. It has meaning, and it has validity, and deserves to be taken at face value. That's not to say that the dissenters should be ignored, but until such time as they are able to change that consensus by the virtue of their evidence and their arguments, they cannot be allowed to impede progress.

word cloud and transcript: Sarah Palin on common-sense conservatism

noreply@blogger.com (Aziz P.) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 03:15:00 +0000

This is the text and word cloud of the speech by Sarah Palin while in Hong Kong on September 23rd, for the CLSA Pacific Markets Conference. Note the dominant topic (in the cloud) in her speech is obvious, and hardly a surprise given the context and locale of the speech.

You can call me a common-sense conservative. My approach to the issues facing my country and the world, issues that we'll discuss today, are rooted in this common-sense conservatism... Common sense conservatism deals with the reality of the world as it is. Complicated and beautiful, tragic and hopeful, we believe in the rights and the responsibilities and the inherent dignity of the individual.

We don't believe that human nature is perfectible; we're suspicious of government efforts to fix problems because often what it's trying to fix is human nature, and that is impossible. It is what it is. But that doesn't mean that we're resigned to any negative destiny. Not at all. I believe in striving for the ideal, but in realistic confines of human nature...

The opposite of a common-sense conservative is a liberalism that holds that there is no human problem that government can't fix if only the right people are put in charge. Unfortunately, history and common sense are not on its side. We don't trust utopian promises; we deal with human nature as it is.

While we might be in the wilderness, conservatives need to defend the free market system and explain what really caused last year's collapse.

According to one version of the story, America's economic woes were caused by a lack of government intervention and regulation and therefore the only way to fix the problem - because, of course, every problem can be fixed by a politician - is for more bureaucracy to impose itself further, deeper, forcing itself deeper into the private sector.

I think that's simply wrong. We got into this mess because of government interference in the first place. The mortgage crisis that led to the collapse of the financial market, it was rooted in a good-natured, but wrongheaded, desire to increase home ownership among those who couldn't yet afford to own a home.

In so many cases, politicians on the right and the left, they wanted to take credit for an increase in home ownership among those with lower incomes. But the rules of the marketplace are not adaptable to the mere whims of politicians.

Lack of government wasn't the problem. Government policies were the problem. The marketplace didn't fail. It became exactly as common sense would expect it to.

The government ordered the loosening of lending standards. The Federal Reserve kept interest rates low. The government forced lending institutions to give loans to people who, as I say, couldn't afford them. Speculators spotted new investment vehicles, jumped on board and rating agencies underestimated risks.

So - how can we discuss reform without addressing the government policies at the root of the problems? The root of the collapse? And how can we think that setting up the Fed as the monitor of systemic risk in the financial sector will result in meaningful reform?

The words "fox" and "hen house" come to mind. The Fed's decisions helped create the bubble. Look at the root cause of most asset bubbles, and you'll see the Fed somewhere in the background.

Common sense tells you that when you're in a hole, you have to stop digging! A common sense conservative looks to history to find solutions to the problems confronting us, and the good news is that history has shown us a way out of this, a way forward from recession.

Ronald Reagan, he was faced with an even worse recession, and he showed us how to get out of here.

If you want real job growth, you cut taxes! And you reduce marginal tax rates on all Americans. Cut payroll taxes, eliminate capital gain taxes and slay the death tax, once and for all. Get federal spending under control, and then you step back and you watch the U.S. economy roar back to life.

But it takes more courage for a politician to step back and let the free market correct itself than it does to push through panicky solutions or quick fixes...

I can't wait until we get that Reaganomics sense supplied again because we are going to survive, and we're going to thrive and expand and roar back to life. And as the world sees this, the world will be a healthier, more secure, safer and more prosperous place when this happens.

Yet it seems like some are looking to ever more ways that will actually destroy economic opportunities today. Take for example, Washington's cap-and-trade scheme. I call it the "cap-and-tax" scheme.

Right now we have the highest unemployment rate in 25 years, and it's still rising. And yet some in D.C. are pushing a cap-and-tax bill that could cripple our energy industry or energy market and dramatically increase the rates of the unemployed, and that's not just in the energy sector.

American jobs in every industry will be threatened by the rising cost of doing business under this cap-and-tax plan. The cost of farming will certainly increase. That's going to drive up the cost of groceries and drive down farm incomes. The cost of manufacturing, warehousing and transportation will also rise. We are all going to feel the effects. The Americans hardest hit will be those who are already struggling to make ends meet today, much less with this new tax every month.

I am not indifferent to environmental concerns. Far from it. As governor, I created a sub-cabinet to study the impacts of climate change in my state. And I was the first governor to do so. It took us in a new direction.

I'm a supporter of nuclear power and renewables. We can develop these resources without destroying our economy. And we can help the environment and our economy through energy independence.

Now, I seem to have acquired notoriety in the national debate on health care. And all because of two words: "death panels." And it is a serious term. It was intended to sound a warning about the rationing that is sure to follow if big government tries to simultaneously increase health care coverage while also claiming to decrease costs.

Government has just got to be honest with the people about this.

As I said, it's just common sense to realize that government's attempts to solve large problems like the health-care challenges that we have, more often create new ones, and a top down one size fits all plan will not improve the workings of a nationwide health-care system that accounts for some one-fifth of our economy.

Common sense also tells us that passing a trillion dollar new retirement program is not the way to reduce health-care spending. Real health-care reform is market oriented, patient centered and result driven.

The ideal plan that I would have in mind would give all individuals the same tax benefits as those who get coverage through their employers. And give Medicare recipients vouchers so that they can buy their own coverage. And reform tort laws and change regulations to allow people to buy insurance across state lines.

Rather than another top down government plan, we should give Americans themselves control over their own health care with market friendly responsible ideas.

So far, I've given you the view from Main Street, USA. I'd like to share with you how a Common Sense Conservative sees the world at large.

Later this year, we will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall - an event that changed not just Europe but the entire world. In a matter of months, millions of people in formerly captive nations were freed to pursue their individual and national ambitions.

The competition that defined the post World War II era was suddenly over. What was once called "the free world" had so much to celebrate - the peaceful end to a great power rivalry and the liberation of so many from tyranny's grip.

Some, you could say, took the celebration too far. Many spoke of a "peace dividend," of the need to focus on domestic issues and spend less time, attention and money on endeavors overseas.

Many saw a peaceful future, where globalization would break down borders and lead to greater global prosperity. Some argued that state sovereignty would fade - like that was a good thing? - that new non-governmental actors and old international institutions would become dominant in the new world order.

As we all know, that did not happen. Unfortunately, there was no shortage of warning signs that the end of the Cold War did not mean the end of history or the end of conflict.

In Europe, the breakup of Yugoslavia resulted in brutal wars in the Balkans. In the Middle East, a war was waged to reverse Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. North Korea's nuclear program nearly led to military conflict. In Africa, U.S. embassies were bombed by a group called Al Qaeda.

Two weeks ago, America commemorated the 8th anniversary of the savagery of September 11, 2001. The vicious terrorist attacks of that day made clear that what happened in lands far distant from American shores directly affect our security. We came to learn, if we did not know before, that there were violent fanatics who sought not just to kill innocents, but to end our way of life. Their attacks have not been limited to the United States.

They attacked targets in Europe, North Africa and throughout the Middle East. Here in Asia, they killed more than 200 in a single attack in Bali. They bombed the Marriott Hotel and the Australian Embassy in Jakarta. Last year in Mumbai, more than 170 were killed in coordinated attacks in the heart of India's financial capital.

In this struggle with radical Islamic extremists, no part of the world is safe from those who bomb, maim and kill in the service of their twisted vision.

This war - and that is what it is, a war - is not, as some have said, a clash of civilizations. We are not at war with Islam. This is a war within Islam, where a small minority of violent killers seeks to impose their view on the vast majority of Muslims who want the same things all of us want: economic opportunity, education, and the chance to build a better life for themselves and their families. The reality is that al Qaeda and its affiliates have killed scores of innocent Muslim men, women and children.

The reality is that Muslims from Algeria, Indonesia, Iraq, Afghanistan and many other countries are fighting Al Qaeda and their allies today. But this will be a long war, and it will require far more than just military power to prevail. Just as we did in the Cold War, we will need to use all the tools at our disposal - hard and soft power. Economic development, public diplomacy, educational exchanges, and foreign assistance will be just as important as the instruments of military power.

During the election campaign in the U.S. last year, you might have noticed we had some differences over Iraq.

John McCain and I believed in the strength of the surge strategy - and because of its success, Iraq is no longer the central front in the war on terrorism. Afghanistan is.

Afghanistan is where the 9/11 attacks were planned and if we are not successful in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda will once again find safe haven there.

As a candidate and in office, President Obama called Afghanistan the "necessary war" and pledged to provide the resources needed to prevail. However, prominent voices in the Democratic Party are opposing the additional U.S. ground forces that are clearly needed.

Speaker of the House Pelosi, Defense Subcommittee Chairman Murtha, the Senate Armed Services Committee Chair, and many others, recently expressed doubts about sending additional forces! President Obama will face a decision soon when the U.S. Commander in Afghanistan requests additional forces to implement his new counterinsurgency strategy.

We can win in Afghanistan by helping the Afghans build a stable representative state able to defend itself. And we must do what it takes to prevail. The stakes are very high.

Last year, in the midst of the U.S. debate over what do to in Iraq, an important voice was heard - from Asia's Wise Man, former Singaporean Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, who wrote in the Washington Post about the cost of retreat in Iraq. In that article, he prophetically addressed the stakes in Afghanistan. He wrote:

"The Taliban is again gathering strength, and a Taliban victory in Afghanistan or Pakistan would reverberate throughout the Muslim world. It would influence the grand debate among Muslims on the future of Islam. A severely retrograde form of Islam would be seen to have defeated modernity twice: first the Soviet Union, then the United States. There would be profound consequences, especially in the campaign against terrorism."

That statesman's words remain every bit as true today. And Minister Lee knows, and I agree, that our success in Afghanistan will have consequences all over the world, including Asia. Our allies and our adversaries are watching to see if we have the staying power to protect our interests in Afghanistan.

That is why I recently joined a group of Americans in urging President Obama to devote the resources necessary in Afghanistan and pledged to support him if he made the right decision.

That is why, even during this time of financial distress we need to maintain a strong defense. All government spending should undergo serious scrutiny. No programs or agencies should be automatically immune from cuts.

We need to go back to fiscal discipline and unfortunately that has not been the view of the current Administration. They're spending everywhere and with disregard for deficits and debts and our future economic competitiveness.

Yet, though we are engaged in two wars and face a diverse array of threats, it is the defense budget that has seen significant program cuts and has actually been reduced from current levels!

First, the Defense Department received only ½ of 1 % of the nearly trillion dollar Stimulus Package funding - even though many military projects fit the definition of "shovel-ready."

In this Administration's first defense budget request for 2010, important programs were reduced or cancelled. As the threat of ballistic missiles from countries like North Korea and Iran grow, missile defense was slashed.

Despite the need to move men and material by air into theaters like Afghanistan, the Obama Administration sought to end production of our C-17s, the work horse of our ability to project long range power.

Despite the Air Force saying it would increase future risk, the Obama Administration successfully sought to end F-22 production - at a time when both Russia and China are acquiring large numbers of next generation fighter aircraft. It strikes me as odd that Defense Secretary Gates is the only member of the Cabinet to be tasked with tightening his belt.

Now in the region I want to emphasize today: The reason I speak about defense is because our strong defense posture in Asia has helped keep the region safe and allowed it to prosper.

Our Asian allies get nervous if they think we are weakening our security commitments. I worry about defense cuts not because I expect war but because I so badly want peace. And the region has enjoyed peace for so long because of our security commitment to our longstanding allies and partners.

Asia has been one of the world's great success stories. It is a region where America needs to assist with the right mix of hard and soft power. While I have so much hope for a bright future in Asia, in a region this dynamic, we must always be prepared for other contingencies. We must work at this - work with our allies to ensure the region's continued peace and prosperity.

I know that you all -- like all of Asia and indeed the whole world - have a keen interest in the emergence of "China as a great power."

Over the past few decades China's economic growth has been remarkable. So has the economic growth and political liberalization of all of our key allies in Asia, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Asia's economic growth and political development, together with our forward military presence in the region and strong alliances, have allowed the region to prosper in peace for a long time.

We hope that Asia will continue to be an engine of world economic growth, will continue to democratize and will remain at peace.

Our future is now deeply linked to Asia's success. Our children's future. We must continue to strengthen our key alliance with Japan, a country going through its own democratic change. Together the U.S. and Japan built the security umbrella under which so many Asians prospered. While there is so much attention to China these days, we cannot forget the importance of Japan in helping to make this the "Pacific Century."

The recent elections in Japan demonstrated that voters wanted reform and an end to debt and stagnation. We have a substantial stake in Japan's success -- our alliance with must continue to be the linchpin of regional security.

With its open political system and vibrant democracy, South Korea wants to play a larger role on the international stage as well. Of course it wants us to work together toward a future where the peninsula is irreversibly denuclearized, and unified. But it also wants to play a global role. We need to work together with Japan, South Korea and our steadfast ally to the south, Australia, to make sure Asia remains peaceful and prosperous.

Australia rightly reminds us to keep our eye on Southeast Asia, where Indonesia has proved that Islam and democracy can co-exist. Indonesia has fought extremism inside its own border and is consolidating a multi-ethnic democracy that is home to hundreds of millions of Muslims.

Those who say Islam and democracy are incompatible insult our friends in Indonesia.

Our great democratic friend India is also "looking East", seeking a greater role in East Asia as well. Together with our allies we must help integrate India into Asia. If we do so we will have yet another strong democracy driving Asia's economy and working on shared problems such as proliferation and extremism.

And we must continue working with the region's most dynamic economy, China. We all hope that China's stated policy of a "Peaceful Rise" will be its future course.

You know better than most the enormous change that has taken place in China over the last thirty years. Hundreds of millions of Chinese have been pulled out of poverty as China has undertaken economic reforms that have resulted in unprecedented growth. Even today, China's economy is projected to grow by some 8%. It is helping to edge the world out of recession.

China has amassed huge financial reserves. Chinese diplomats are engaged on every continent and, through its vote on the United Nations Security Council, China has become critical in gaining UN support on multilateral issues from Darfur to Iran to North Korea.

Just four years ago, then-Deputy Secretary of State Bob Zoellick urged China to become a "responsible stakeholder" in the international system. He observed the many benefits to China of a "benign international environment."

The peaceful regional environment that China has enjoyed was created through the hard work of Americans, Japanese, South Koreans and Australians. Secretary Zoellick urged China to step up and play its role too.

We are working with China to de-nuclearize North Korea. But to be a responsible member of the international community China should exert greater pressure on North Korea to denuclearize and undergo the fundamental reforms it needs. Zoellick urged China to play a greater role in stabilizing the international energy market by ceasing its support of dangerous regimes.

China could play a role in stabilizing its ally Pakistan, and working for peace in Afghanistan. There are many areas where the U.S. and China can work together. And, we would welcome a China that wanted to assume a more responsible and active role in international politics.

But Secretary Zoellick also noted that many of China's actions create risk and uncertainty. These uncertainties led nations to "hedge" their relations with China because, in Zoellick's words: "Many countries HOPE China will pursue a 'Peaceful Rise' but NONE will bet their future on it."

See: this is the heart of the issue with China: we engage with the hope Beijing becomes a responsible stakeholder, but we must takes steps in the event it does not. See?

We all hope to see a China that is stable, peaceful, prosperous and free. But we must also work with our allies in the region and the world in the event China goes in a direction that causes regional instability.

Asia is at its best when it is not dominated by a single power. In seeking Asia's continued peace and prosperity, we should seek, as we did in Europe, an Asia "whole and free" - free from domination by any one power, prospering in open and free markets, and settling political differences at ballot boxes and negotiating tables.

We can, must and should work with a "rising China" to address issues of mutual concern. But we also need to work with our allies in addressing the uncertainties created by China's rise. We simply CANNOT turn a blind eye to Chinese policies and actions that can undermine international peace and security.

China has some 1000 missiles aimed at Taiwan and no serious observer believes Taiwan poses a military threat to Beijing. Those same Chinese forces make our friends in Japan and Australia nervous.

China provides support for some of the world's most questionable regimes from Sudan to Burma to Zimbabwe.

China's military buildup raises concerns from Delhi to Tokyo because it has taken place in the absence of any discernable external threat.

China, along with Russia, has repeatedly undermined efforts to impose tougher sanctions on Iran for its defiance of the international community in pursuing its nuclear program.

The Chinese food and product safety record has raised alarms from East Asia and Europe to the United States. And, domestic incidents of unrest -- from the protests of Uighurs and Tibetans, to Chinese workers throughout the country rightfully make us nervous.

It is very much in our interest and the interest of regional stability that China work out its own contradictions - between a dynamic and entrepreneurial private sector on the one hand and a one party state unwilling or unable to adjust to its own society's growing needs and desires and demands, including a human being's innate desire for freedom.

I do not cite these issues out of any hostility toward China. Quite the contrary, I and all Americans of good faith hope for the Chinese people's success. We welcome the rise that can be so good for all mankind. We simply urge China to rise responsibly. I simply believe we cannot ignore areas of disagreement as we seek to move forward on areas of agreement. Believe me, China does not hesitate to tell us when it thinks we are in the wrong.

I mentioned China's internal contradictions. They should concern us all. We hear many Chinese voices throughout that great country calling out for more freedom, and for greater justice. Twenty years ago, many believed that as China liberalized its economy, greater political freedom would naturally follow. Unfortunately that has not come to pass.

In fact, it seems China has taken great pains to learn what it sees as "the lesson" of the fall on the Berlin Wall and the demise of the Soviet Union: any easing of political constraints can inevitably spin out of control. But, in many ways, it is the essence of China's political system that leads to concerns about its rise.

Think about it. How many books and articles have been written about the dangers of India's rise? Almost as large as China - and soon to be more populous - virtually no one worries about the security implications of India becoming a great power - just as a century ago the then-preeminent power, Great Britain, worried little about the rise of America to great power status.

My point is that the more politically open and just China is, the more Chinese citizens of every ethnicity will settle disputes in courts rather than on the streets. The more open it is, the less we will be concerned about its military build-up and intentions. The more transparent China is, the more likely it is they we will find a true and lasting friendship based on shared values as well as interests.

I am not talking about some U.S.-led "democracy crusade." We cannot impose our values on other counties. Nor should we seek to. But the ideas of freedom, liberty and respect for human rights are not U.S. ideas, they are much more than that. They are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and many other international covenants and treaties.

They apply to citizens in Shanghai as much as they do to citizens in Johannesburg or Jakarta. And demands for liberty in China are Chinese, not American, demands. Just last year, many brave Chinese signed Charter 08, a Chinese document modeled on the great Czech statesman Vlacav Havel's Charter 77.

Charter 08 would not be unfamiliar to our Founding Fathers and was endorsed by Havel himself. No, we need not convince the Chinese people that they have inalienable rights. They are calling for those rights themselves. But we do have to worry about a China where the government suppresses the liberties its people hold dear.

Nothing of what I am saying should be seen as meaning conflict with China is inevitable. Quite the contrary. As I said, we welcome China's responsible rise. America and China stood together against fascism during World War II, before ravages took over in China - we were ready to stand together with China to shape international politics after World War II. Much has been accomplished since President Nixon's fateful visit. And again, we stand ready to work with what we hope will be a more open and responsible China on the challenges facing the 21st century.

All of you here know how deeply integrated the economies of the United States' and China's are. We rely on each other, sometimes unfortunately in unhealthy ways. America spends too much that we don't have, and then we go to China as a lender of first resort.

Our fiscal policy, lately, seems to be "tax, spend, borrow, tax some more, repeat" and then complain about how much debt China holds. America needs to gets its own fiscal house in order. That's a Common Sense Conservative perspective.

We can hardly complain that China holds so much of our debt when it's our over spending that created the debt.

But here's the reality. If in fact the United States does the "right" thing - if we spend less and save more - then China will also have to rebalance its economy. We need to export more to China - and we'd like China to consume more of our goods - just as we need to save and invest more. This vital process - so crucial to both countries - is impeded by problems of market access.

We must talk about these issues with more candor. If China adopts policies that keep our highest value products out of their markets, by manipulating technical standards or licensing requirements, our economic relationship suffers.

Our economic interdependence drives our relationship with China. I see a future of more trade with China and more American high-tech goods in China. But in order for that to happen, we need China to improve its rule of law and protect our intellectual property.

We need to avoid protectionism and China's flirtation with state-assisted "national champions." On our part, we should be more open to Chinese investment where our national security interests are not threatened. In the end, though, our economic relationship will truly thrive when Chinese citizens and foreign corporations can hold the Chinese government accountable when their actions are unjust.

I see a bright future for America in Asia. One based on the alliances that have gotten us this far, one based on free and open markets, one that integrates democratic India into East Asia's political life and one in which China decides to be a responsible member of the international community and gives its people the liberty - the freedom - they so desperately want.

Sadly, however, our largest free trade agreement ever in Asia, with South Korea, sits frozen in the Congress. In contrast, China is behaving wisely in negotiating free trade agreements throughout Asia. We want an Asia open to our goods and services. But if we do not get our free trade act together, we will be shut out by agreements Asians our making among themselves.

All of you here follow global financial markets and economic policy closely, so I know that it will come as no surprise to you that United States leadership on global trade and investment is being sorely tested at this moment.

We are struggling with a monumental debate on whether fiscal discipline, or massive government spending, will drive a sustained recovery. We are struggling to repair the excesses that grew in our own economy and served as a trigger to a catastrophic collapse in the global financial system.

And we are attempting to do so under the weight of a global imbalance of debt and trade deficits that are not only unbearable for the world's mightiest economy, but also unacceptable in that they foster tensions between global economic partners like the United States and China.

I am proud to be an American. As someone who has had the tremendous opportunity to travel throughout the United States and listen to the concerns of Americans in towns and cities across the country, I can tell you that there is a sense of despair and even crisis afoot in America that has the potential to shape our global investment and trade policies for years, and even decades to come.

Never has the leadership of our government ever been more critical to keeping my country, and the world, on a path to openness, growth and opportunity in global trade and investment.

It would of course be a mistake to put the entire burden of restoring the global economy on the backs of America's leaders. There is plenty of work for all of us to do in this matter. Governments around the world must resist the siren call of trade protection to bring short term relief during a time of crisis.

Those who use currency policy or subsidies to promote their nation's exports should remain acutely aware that if there ever were a time in which such policies could be viewed as "tolerable," that time has now passed. All participants who seek to find benefit in the global trading system must also take the responsibility of playing by the rules.

The private sector has responsibilities as well. For instance, it should not be the responsibility of government to dictate the salaries of bankers or the ownership of companies. And yet, due of the excesses committed by some, this is exactly where we find ourselves now because government now owns substantial portions of the private economy - even, unbelievably, in the United States.

These are challenging times for everyone, but we in the United States must humbly recognize that if we are to lead and to set the direction for the rest of the world, it must be by our example and not merely our words. And we must tread lightly when imposing new burdens on the imports of other countries.

Well, CLSA: My country is definitely at a crossroad. Polling in the U.S. shows a majority of Americans no longer believe that their children will have a better future than they have had...that is a 1st.

When members of America's greatest generation - the World War II generation - lose their homes and their life savings because their retirement funds were wiped after the financial collapse, people feel a great anger.

There is suddenly a growing sentiment to just "throw the bums out" of Washington, D.C. - and by bums they mean the Republicans and the Democrats.

Americans are suffering from pay cuts and job losses, and they want to know why their elected leaders are not tightening their belts. It's not lost on people that Congress voted to exempt themselves from the health care plan they are thrusting on the rest of the nation. There is a growing sense of frustration on Main Street. But even in the midst of crisis and despair, we see signs of hope.

In fact, it's a sea change in America, I believe. Recently, there have been protests by ordinary Americans who marched on Washington to demand their government stop spending away their future. Large numbers of ordinary, middle-class Democrats, Republicans, and Independents from all over the country marching on Washington?! You know something's up!

These are the same people who flocked to the town halls this summer to face their elected officials who were home on hiatus from that distant capital and were now confronted with the people they represent. Big town hall meetings - video clips circulating coverage - people watching, feeling not so alone anymore.

The town halls and the Tea Party movement are both part of a growing grassroots consciousness among ordinary Americans who've decided that if they want real change, they must take the lead and not wait to be led. Real change - and, you know, you don't need a title to do it.

The "Tea Party Movement" is aptly named to remind people of the American Revolution - of colonial patriots who shook off the yoke of a distant government and declared their freedom from indifferent - elitist - rulers who limited their progress and showed them no respect. Today, Main Street Americans see Washington in similar terms.

When my country again achieves financial stability and economic growth - when we roar back to life as we shall do - it will be thanks in large part to the hard work and common sense of these ordinary Americans who are demanding that government spend less and tax less and allow the private sector to grow and prosper.

We're not interested in government fixes; we're interested in freedom! Freedom! Our vision is forward looking. People may be frustrated now, but we're very hopeful too.

And, after all, why shouldn't we be? We're Americans. We're always hopeful.

Thank you for letting me share some of that hope, and a view from Main Street with you. God Bless You.

(via)

Should conservatives embrace Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story" ?

noreply@blogger.com (Aziz P.) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:35:00 +0000

I admit to not having ever seen a Michael Moore movie, though from what I understand his film Roger and Me was probably his defining film, one that predated the Bush era and thus was more balanced in its critiques. Of course his latest effort, a rant against the horrors of unrestrained capitalism, is not going to make any converts. Still, I was intrigued by the positive review of Capitalism: A Love Story at AICN by their resident conservative critic Massawyrm (he lambasted the animated film Happy Feet for being a propaganda film against religion, intended to indoctrinate children, and proclaimed The Ant Bully to be a storybook version of The Communist Manifesto. I have to agree with the former, and haven't seen the latter.).

Massawyrm speaks of his admiration for the "old" Michael Moore, invoking Roger and Me, and then makes the claim that this new movie is the closest Moore has come to returning to those genuine speak-truth-to-power roots. And he puts it in context of conservative ideals, even though it's basically an argument for socialism:

Now, it is important to understand that I wholeheartedly disagree with Moore's final conclusions. I do not believe that the framework of a "second bill of rights" - as FDR referred to it - is the solution to the problem. BUT, Moore's argument is compelling and very, very important. He makes a solid, virtually unassailable case against deregulation and fiscal anarchy, showcasing how it has profoundly crushed the backbone of the country and left many of our citizenry looted, helpless and worst of all, holding the bag. And what frustrates me most about all this is that it is an argument those of us on the republican side of the aisle really need to hear right now.

You see, while it is easy to point at the crazed evangelical ultra-conservatives as the source of the Republican party's problems, the truth is they're just the easy target; the loud distraction while the crew cuts in three piece suits repeat over and over that we are a party about freedom (that's good) and freedom means keeping the government out of our daily life (that's really good) and keeping the government out of our daily life means letting the financial industry do what they want without oversight (that's BAD.) In truth, the fundamental core of what a large majority of Republicans believe in is very much rooted in what Moore is talking about. After all, I can name three guys off the top of my head that hated banking, speculation and usury. Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and Jesus. Not exactly the thinkers most often quoted at liberal cocktail parties. Here Moore refers to them all.

If that segment of the population would see this film and hear Moore's arguments - while they won't throw up their arms and embrace socialism - the argument could become just how to go about fixing [capitalism] again, rather than screaming SOCIALIST! FASCIST! at one another. But Moore commits one, serious, fatal error.

Emphasis mine. This is a remarkable argument and one that in many ways captures my own fascination with conservatism, a movement whose core principles are in many ways complementary to liberalism, not opposed.

The error to which he refers is that Moore doesn't level the same critique at Obama. He puts this in context of marketing, ie that the film will be seen as critical of GOP Presidents but deferential to The One, and thus dismissed by the very people he argues most need to see it. Thats probably a fair assessment, since Obama is a pro-Establishment politician and not a revolutionary. However the bulk of the bank bailouts were indeed the previous Administration, and the Obama stimulus was a much broader package that in no way was limited only to "fat cats". Also, it should be noted that Banks accepting stimulus money were forced to accept exactly the type of rigorous, anti-capitalist intrusive regulation that Moore is probably advocating for, which is why the Banks are trying to give the money back now that they are out of the woods.

At any rate, it's likely that the relevance of Moore's critique to Obama is going to fall along the usual partrisan lines. I don't think omission of the Obama era invalidates the thesis for the preceding Administrations, however.