Healthcare costs in the United States are like a tapeworm eating at our economic body.
Those words come from famed investor Warren Buffett, who said he would scrap Obamacare and start all over.
“We have a health system that, in terms of costs, is really out of control,” he added. “And if you take this line and you project what has been happening into the future, we will get less and less competitive. So we need something else.”
Buffett insists that without changes to Obamacare average citizens will suffer.
“What we have now is untenable over time,” said Buffett, an early supporter of President Obama. “That kind of a cost compared to the rest of the world is really like a tapeworm eating, you know, at our economic body.”
Buffett does not believe that providing insurance for everyone is the first step to take in correcting our nation’s healthcare system.
“Attack the costs first, and then worry about expanding coverage,” he said. “I would much rather see another plan that really attacks costs. And I think that’s what the American public wants to see. I mean, the American public is not behind this bill.”
Republicans should take Buffett’s words as an invitation to propose a long-overdue Obamacare alternative, one that would lower costs, fix the unfairness in the tax code, deal with the specific problem of preexisting conditions, breathe life into a moribund individual insurance market, and constitute real reform. It’s time to delay Obamacare and propose an alternative, then repeal Obamacare (in 2017) and pass the alternative.
UPDATE: It appears that Buffett made his anti-Obamacare comments in 2010, thereby showing that he, like most of the American people, has opposed Obamacare since even before it was passed—a point that Mark Hemingway addressed yesterday in response to USA Today’simplication that Americans’ widespread dislike of Obamacare is mostly attributable to Republicans’ efforts to fight it.
In other instances, I have written that people pay too much attention to Buffett’s political views. In this case, though, consider what Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway owns — Dairy Queen, employer of a lot of minimum-wage employees who are finding their hours cut because their employers (generally franchise owners, not International Dairy Queen) foresee spiralling insurance costs.
That’s already happening in other businesses, which came as a surprise to U.S. Ron Kind (D–La Crosse), who at an ObamaCare informational session/pep rally claimed “we aren’t seeing” companies cut employees’ hours due to ObamaCare. Kind apparently isn’t paying attention, since two people at the forum said their hours had been cut, and a third, who works with businesses, had customers who were cutting their employees’ hours.
Twice, in The American Presidency, Professor Forrest McDonald states that the executive office of our government “has been responsible for less harm and more good … than perhaps any other secular institution in history.” In the same sentence, he also notes that “the caliber of the people who have served as chief executive has declined erratically but persistently from the day George Washington left office.” And elsewhere, McDonald acknowledges that he is “not sanguine about its [the presidency’s] future and [does] not feel how anyone who lived through the 1992 presidential election could be.” The decline of the presidency follows the transformation of a nation. When the dreaded bureaucracy first arose, only a handful of men toiled for the state. By the 1920s, the bureaucratic machinery had exploded in size-over 120 federal units running the country and the worst was yet to come.
The author of histories on both the Washington and the Jefferson eras, McDonald devotes two chapters to the administrations of those two leaders. Again, Washington shines through as the indispensable man; the triumphant general who, unlike a Caesar or a Cromwell, did not use his military victories as a springboard for dictatorial rule. Instead, he resigned his post as commanding general of the Continental Army as soon as the Revolutionary War ended. This and other acts of self-denial convinced the Founding Fathers that Washington could be trusted with the new office, one that avoided the trappings of a monarchy, but also one that would project an image of strength and authority. Washington’s genius was that he understood the “dual nature” of the office: a president who was not only a competent executive, but also a man who performed equally important ceremonial duties. Washington guided the former colonies through the transformation from a monarchy to a republic by “serving as the symbol of nationhood …. [H]e behaved as if [his] every move was being closely scrutinized.” This recalls one of Washington’s favorite dicta, that a man must be a gentleman, as well as always give the appearance of a gentleman. This dual role worked splendidly for Washington; as such, the image of the presidency began taking shape.
Then came Thomas Jefferson, who inaugurated an activist presidency. The word “activist” has obviously changed in meaning over the years. Jefferson, of course, did not propose a welfare state, but he did pursue a forceful foreign policy. Jefferson further defined the office. He “humanized” the office both by being a “man of the people,” and by being part of a “natural aristocracy,” or what Richard Weaver would call an aristocracy of achievement. For Jefferson, being the symbol of a nation wasn’t enough. A president needed to set and control the political agenda. He needed to steer his own legislation through Congress and act decisively in foreign engagements. Thus Jefferson created the image of the president as the nation’s maximum political leader.
The idea of a strong president who can handle Congress remains popular in the public mind. Signs of weakness in the Oval Office or an inability to get legislation through Congress is often a prescription for political disaster.
The legacies of Washington and Jefferson left great burdens on their successors. Few presidents could approach Washington’s ability to combine executive competence and a strong, reassuring image. Jefferson left behind a more powerful (and jealous) Congress that would stymie future presidents. …
Throughout much of the book, McDonald details a history conservatives know all too well: government became larger and less efficient; more laws were passed, less order was found in towns and neighborhoods. Concerning alcohol, drugs and crime, Congress and various presidents felt something should be done. But the legislation passed through the decades did nothing to stop a trend towards disorder. Increasingly the job of the president became an enormous physical burden on its occupants. In the pre-Civil War era the average president’s life was a full 73 years. But in the post-Civil War era, with technology increasing life expectancies, the average presidential age is only 63 years. The social upheavals caused by the industrial and technological revolutions contributed considerably to a president’s burden, but there were other, more fool-hardy factors involved.
For years, conservatives have been told that it was Abraham Lincoln with the Civil War, the suspension of habeas corpus, the imprisonment of political rivals, the shutting down of opposition newspapers, and other dubious acts- who was responsible for the imperial presidency. McDonald acknowledges Lincoln’s extraordinary behavior, but from this book it appears that a corner was turned during the administration of Woodrow Wilson. The size of government kept expanding, but here, too, also was a president who saw himself as the “leader of the free world” on a mission to spread democracy everywhere. Wilson’s bequests were America’s entry into World War 1, the failed League of Nations and a messianic quest to remake the world in America’s image. From then on, administrations which had little success with Congress concerning domestic affairs often turned to foreign policy to conduct grand strategies (New World Order, “nation-building”), and to embark on empire-building and gain political victories through military action that increase poll ratings.
Wilson’s messianic visions have been shared, more or less, by most succeeding presidents-Harding and Eisenhower come to mind as exceptions. Something had changed with the office. Now the image of a president as a mighty commander-in-chief and as the “most powerful man in the world” was born. In an era when foreign affairs dominated the agenda, there was plenty of eccentric thinking from both the Left and Right. Liberals, for instance, liked the idea of a strong presidency when Franklin Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy were in power, but soon complained about an “imperial presidency” when Richard Nixon came to office. Similarly, Robert Taft conservatives sought to disengage the country from overseas commitments (opposition to NATO, foreign aid programs), but during the Reagan Administration many conservatives complained about “535 Secretaries of State” micro-managing foreign policy, when in fact, this sphere was the domain of the commander-in-chief.
With the Cold War over and with a public less interested in foreign affairs, the presidency, it seems, might make its way back to its original role as custodian of the constitution. But one chapter, “lmages and Elections, Myths and Symbols,” underscores McDonald’s earlier pessimism. It is fine for a president, as George Washington understood, to project a noble image, to be a “living embodiment of the nation.” But in an age of mass media, all this has been taken to extremes. A president is still expected to be demigod who can singlehandedly save the nation. Sound bites, consultants, pollsters, obligations to fund-raisers-it has become impossible for any man to speak with much candor and sincerity about the nation’s problems and win a national election. To be sure, in the primary season some candidates do come forward with straight talk about economic and social decline. But in every instance, such candidates are savaged by the media as either bigots or flakes. Not only that, they run into fierce opposition from their party’s hierarchy, who prefer “experienced” politicos that pose no threat to the status quo. And so, we are left with issues determined by endless polls and “study groups” among ordinary citizens. It takes a clever man to make it to the top and an equally clever administration to keep a president in power for more than four years. Yet all of this has little to do with a declining standard of living and a cultural revolution that is separating the country from its Western heritage. Modern presidents are happy just to survive their terms.
What more can we conclude after reading James Taranto that Barack Obama has sold out the United States to Russia?
Taranto begins with Vladimir Putin’s New York Times piece …
My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.
… and then from there:
That last line is a fallacy of composition. From the premise that all men are created equal, it does not follow that all countries are. But the rhetorical trick is clever. Putin (or perhaps a ghostwriter at Ketchum PR) rests his disparagement of American exceptionalism on its very basis–on the first of the “truths” that the Founding Fathers held “to be self-evident.”
This is right out of Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals“: “The fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more live up to their own rules than the Christian Church can live up to Christianity.” (Putin also appeals to the pope’s authority.)
And the Russian president applies this rule not just to America, but to Obama, whose own ambivalence about American exceptionalism is well known:
It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you’re either with us or against us.”
Can you think of another world leader who rode similar sentiments into office? Hint: He defeated John McCain and Mitt Romney.
Putin’s piece is aimed at influencing American public opinion for the purpose of undermining the effectiveness of American power. It deviously reinforces both dovish and hawkish arguments against the administration’s Syria policy. It reminds the doves that military action against Syria goes against everything they believe–and that Obama as a candidate claimed to believe. It reminds the hawks that Obama has shown no inclination or capacity to lead a serious military effort.
Washington’s responses have been pitiful. “That’s all irrelevant,” CNN quotes a White House official as saying: “[Putin] put this proposal forward and he’s now invested in it. That’s good. That’s the best possible reaction. He’s fully invested in Syria’s CW disarmament and that’s potentially better than a military strike–which would deter and degrade but wouldn’t get rid of all the chemical weapons. He now owns this. He has fully asserted ownership of it and he needs to deliver.”
In his op-ed, Putin even disputes that the regime used poison gas. “There is every reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists.” He isn’t committed to disarming the regime but to keeping it in power–a goal that is served by undermining whatever shred of resolve America might have had to act. …
Putin doesn’t take his readers for idiots, he takes Obama for a fool–a bumbling improviser who can be rolled by appealing to his vanity and his short-term political needs, and whose actions have no broader purpose. Even the New York Times editorial page acknowledges that last point: “The [Tuesday] speech lacked any real sense of what Mr. Obama’s long-term or even medium-term strategy might be, other than his repeated promise not to drag a nation fed up with wars into a ‘boots-on-the-ground’ fight.”
Yet the Times ends on a hopeful note: “At least Syria has admitted that it has chemical weapons, for the first time ever; Mr. Putin has acknowledged to the world that there must be limits on the blank checks he was writing his client state; and Russia and the United States are working toward a common strategic goal for the first time in a very long time.”
So America has no strategy and is “working” with Russia “toward a common strategic goal”? The only way to reconcile those two assertions is to admit that Putin has capitalized on America’s purposelessness in order to advance his own purposes. As a Times news story puts it: “Suddenly Mr. Putin has eclipsed Mr. Obama as the world leader driving the agenda in the Syria crisis.” …
Because America is so much mightier than Russia, the American presidency is a much stronger position than the Russian presidency. But a strong man in a position of weakness, if he is ruthless about taking advantage of his adversary’s vulnerabilities, can get the better of weak man in a position of strength. Saul Alinsky understood that, and so does Vladimir Putin.
Time magazine publishes four global editions: The cover story of the Europe/Africa edition, the Asia edition and the Pacific edition reflect what actually happened this week; the cover story of the US edition is some heartwarming fluff about nothing. The palace guard in the America media are doing a straddle Pravda and Comical Ali never had to attempt – telling the truth to the world while keeping their domestic readership in the dark.
Hence, the cooing coverage of this weekend’s “agreement”. A “deal” that pretends to be about chemical weapons inspections is, in fact, a deal that “the US will not interfere in Syria’s civil war“. Under the absurd plans to send international inspectors into a war-zone is an agreement by Obama and Putin that what happened to a US client in Egypt and a French client in Tunisia and an Anglo-American-French client in Libya will not be permitted to happen to a Russo-Iranian client in Syria.
Whether Obama knows that’s what he’s signed on to is unclear. But, if you don’t think the Middle East and the wider world get that message, you must be reading the US edition of Time.
For generations, eminent New York Times wordsmiths have swooned over foreign strongmen, from Walter Duranty’s Pulitzer-winning paeans to the Stalinist utopia to Thomas L. Friedman’s more recent effusions to the “enlightened” Chinese Politburo. So it was inevitable that the cash-strapped Times would eventually figure it might as well eliminate the middle man and hire the enlightened strongman direct. Hence Vladimir Putin’s impressive debut on the op-ed page this week.
It pains me to have to say that the versatile Vlad makes a much better columnist than I’d be a KGB torturer. His “plea for caution” was an exquisitely masterful parody of liberal bromides far better than most of the Times’ in-house writers can produce these days. He talked up the U.N. and international law, was alarmed by U.S. military intervention, and worried that America was no longer seen as “a model of democracy” but instead as erratic cowboys “cobbling coalitions together under the slogan ‘you’re either with us or against us.’” He warned against chest-thumping about “American exceptionalism,” pointing out that, just like America’s grade-school classrooms, in the international community everyone is exceptional in his own way.
All this the average Times reader would find entirely unexceptional. Indeed, it’s the sort of thing a young Senator Obama would have been writing himself a mere five years ago. Putin even appropriated the 2008 Obama’s core platitude: “We must work together to keep this hope alive.” In the biographical tag at the end, the Times editors informed us: “Vladimir V. Putin is the president of Russia.” But by this stage, one would not have been surprised to see: “Vladimir V. Putin is the author of the new memoir The Audacity of Vlad, which he will be launching at a campaign breakfast in Ames, Iowa, this weekend
As Iowahawk ingeniously summed it up, Putin is “now just basically doing donuts in Obama’s front yard.” …
With this op-ed Tsar Vlad is telling Obama: The world knows you haven’t a clue how to play the Great Game or even what it is, but the only parochial solipsistic dweeby game you do know how to play I can kick your butt all over town on, too.This is what happens when you elect someone because he looks cool standing next to Jay-Z. …
Putin has pulled off something incredible: He’s gotten Washington to anoint him as the international community’s official peacemaker, even as he assists Iran in going nuclear and keeping their blood-soaked Syrian client in his presidential palace. Already, under the “peace process,” Putin and Assad are running rings around the dull-witted Kerry, whose Botoxicated visage embodies all too well the expensively embalmed state of the superpower. …
Nobody, friend or foe, wants to hear about American exceptionalism when the issue is American ineffectualism. On CBS, Bashar Assad called the U.S. government “a social-media administration.” He’s got a better writer than Obama, too. America is in danger of being the first great power to be laughed off the world stage.
That’s not my headline; that comes from the Denver Post:
An epic national debate over gun rights in Colorado on Tuesday saw two Democratic state senators ousted for their support for stricter laws, a “ready, aim, fired” message intended to stop other politicians for pushing for firearms restrictions. Senate President John Morse and Sen. Angela Giron will be replaced in office with Republican candidates who petitioned onto the recall ballot.
Party insiders always said Giron’s race was the harder one. Although her district is heavily Democratic, Pueblo is a blue-collar union town. Morse’s district included Manitou Springs and a portion of Colorado Springs — and more liberals. …
The turn of events made Morse and Giron the first Colorado state lawmakers to be recalled. Former Colorado Springs councilman Bernie Herpin will take Morse’s seat in the Senate, while Pueblo will be represented by former Deputy Police Chief George Rivera. …
Sen. Lois Tochtrop, an Adams County Democrat and longtime Second Amendment activist, opposed five of the seven gun bills initially introduced in the session, including a lightning-rod proposal by Morse.
That proposal would have assigned liability for assault-style weapon damages to manufacturers and sellers, but Morse killed it at the 11th-hour because he didn’t have the votes to pass it through the Democratic-controlled Senate.
“I feel like all these gun bills have done — to quote the last words in the movie ‘Tora! Tora! Tora!’ — is to awaken a sleeping giant,” Tochtrop said during the debate.
Awaken they did. …
Recall opponents argued that the elections — which the two counties have to pay for — were a waste of money because Morse is term-limited next year and Giron is up for re-election. They also said recalls should not be used to solve policy differences.
But recall supporters contend Morse and Giron ignored their constituents and the constitution by advancing the gun laws. They accused the governor and the legislature of taking marching orders from the White House and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who contributed $350,000 to fight the recalls. Vice President Joe Biden even called Democrats on the House floor on the day that chamber was debating the gun package.
The most hilarious statement on the recalls comes from Bloomberg via the Washington Post:
“This election does not reflect the will of Coloradans, a majority of whom strongly support background checks and opposed these recalls,” said Bloomberg in a statement distributed by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the group he co-founded. “It was a reflection of a very small, carefully selected population of voters’ views on the legislature’s overall agenda this session.”
Maybe it’s just me, but I think a New York mayor is unlikely to be a credible source on “the will of Coloradans.”
Wisconsinites who endured Recallarama in three parts over public employee collective bargaining “rights” might wonder about the difference between those recalls and these recalls. It certainly proves the immutable law of politics that people generally favor whichever process and whichever level of government will achieve the desired result.
There is, however, one big difference. While union membership is a constitutional right under freedom of association, public-employee collective bargaining is not. Public-employee collective bargaining was allowed by legisiation, which means the Legislature can revise the law, or repeal the law as it should (as it should). The right to bear arms is a constitutional right. Infringe that in the eyes of the voters, and see the headline.
Sept. 11, 2001 started out as a beautiful day, in Wisconsin, New York City and Washington, D.C.
I remember almost everything about the entire day. Sept. 11, 2001 is to my generation what Nov. 22, 1963 was to my parents and Dec. 7, 1941 was to my grandparents.
I had dropped off our oldest son, Michael, at Ripon Children’s Learning Center. As I was coming out, the mother of one of Michael’s group told me to find a good radio station; she had heard as she was getting out with her son that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.
I got in my car and turned it on in time to hear, seemingly live, a plane hit the WTC. But it wasn’t the first plane, it was the second plane hitting the other tower.
As you can imagine, my drive to Fond du Lac took unusually long that day. I tried to call Jannan, who was working at Ripon College, but she didn’t answer because she was in a meeting. I had been at Marian University as their PR director for just a couple months, so I didn’t know for sure who the media might want to talk to, but once I got there I found a couple professors and called KFIZ and WFDL in Fond du Lac and set up live interviews.
The entire day was like reading a novel, except that there was no novel to put down and no nightmare from which to wake up. A third plane hit the Pentagon? A fourth plane crashed somewhere else? The government was grounding every plane in the country and closing every airport?
I had a TV in my office, and later that morning I heard that one of the towers had collapsed. So as I was talking to Jannan on the phone, NBC showed a tower collapsing, and I assumed that was video of the first tower collapse. But it wasn’t; it was the second tower collapse, and that was the second time that replay-but-it’s-not thing had happened that day.
Marian’s president and my boss (a native of a Queens neighborhood who grew up with many firefighter and police officer families) had a brief discussion about whether or not to cancel afternoon or evening classes, but they decided (correctly) to hold classes as scheduled. The obvious reasons were (1) that we had more than 1,000 students on campus, and what were they going to do if they didn’t have classes, and (2) it was certainly more appropriate to have our professors leading a discussion over what had happened than anything else that could have been done.
I was at Marian until after 7 p.m. I’m sure Marian had a memorial service, but I don’t remember it. While I was in Fond du Lac, our church was having a memorial service with our new rector (who hadn’t officially started yet) and our interim priest. I was in a long line at a gas station, getting gas because the yellow low fuel light on my car was on, not because of panic over gas prices, although I recall that one Fond du Lac gas station had increased their prices that day to the ridiculous $2.299 per gallon. (I think my gas was around $1.50 a gallon that day.)
Two things I remember about that specific day: It was an absolutely spectacular day. But when the sun set, it seemed really, really dark, as if there was no light at all outside, from stars, streetlights or anything else.
For the next few days, since Michael was at the TV-watching age, we would watch the ongoing 9/11 coverage in our kitchen while Michael was watching the 1-year-old-appropriate stuff or videos in our living room. That Sunday, one of the people who was at church was Adrian Karsten of ESPN. He was supposed to be at a football game working for ESPN, of course, but there was no college football Saturday (though high school football was played that Friday night), and there was no NFL football Sunday. Our organist played “God Bless America” after Mass, and I recall Adrian clapping with tears down his face; I believe he knew some people who had died or been injured.
Later that day was Marian’s Heritage Festival of the Arts. We had record attendance since there was nothing going on, it was another beautiful day, and I’m guessing after five consecutive days of nonstop 9/11 coverage, people wanted to get out of their houses.
In the decade since then, a comment of New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has stuck in my head. He was asked a year or so later whether the U.S. was more or less safe since 9/11, and I believe his answer was that we were more safe because we knew more than on Sept. 10, 2001. That and the fact that we haven’t been subject to another major terrorist attack since then is the good news.
Osama bin Laden (who I hope is enjoying Na’ar, Islam’s hell) and others in Al Qaeda apparently thought that the U.S. (despite the fact that citizens from more than 90 countries died on 9/11) would be intimidated by the 9/11 attacks and cower on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, allowing Al Qaeda to operate with impunity in the Middle East and elsewhere. (Bin Laden is no longer available for comment.) If you asked an American who paid even the slightest attention to world affairs where a terrorist attack would be most likely before 9/11, that American would have replied either “New York,” the world’s financial capital, or “Washington,” the center of the government that dominates the free world. A terrorist attack farther into the U.S., even in a much smaller area than New York or Washington, would have delivered a more chilling message, that nowhere in the U.S. was safe. Al Qaeda didn’t think to do that, or couldn’t do that. The rest of the Middle East also did not turn on the U.S. or on Israel (more so than already is the case with Israel), as bin Laden apparently expected.
The bad news is all of the other changes that have taken place that are not for the better. Bloomberg Businessweek asks:
So was it worth it? Has the money spent by the U.S. to protect itself from terrorism been a sound investment? If the benchmark is the absence of another attack on the American homeland, then the answer is indisputably yes. For the first few years after Sept. 11, there was political near-unanimity that this was all that mattered. In 2005, after the bombings of the London subway system, President Bush sought to reassure Americans by declaring that “we’re spending unprecedented resources to protect our nation.” Any expenditure in the name of fighting terrorism was justified.
Six years later, though, it’s clear this approach is no longer sustainable. Even if the U.S. is a safer nation than it was on Sept. 11, it’s a stretch to say that it’s a stronger one. And in retrospect, the threat posed by terrorism may have been significantly less daunting than Western publics and policymakers imagined it to be. …
Politicians and pundits frequently said that al Qaeda posed an “existential threat” to the U.S. But governments can’t defend against existential threats—they can only overspend against them. And national intelligence was very late in understanding al Qaeda’s true capabilities. At its peak, al Qaeda’s ranks of hardened operatives numbered in the low hundreds—and that was before the U.S. and its allies launched a global military campaign to dismantle the network. “We made some bad assumptions right after Sept. 11 that shaped how we approached the war on terror,” says Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism research fellow at the New America Foundation. “We thought al Qaeda would run over the Middle East—they were going to take over governments and control armies. In hindsight, it’s clear that was never going to be the case. Al Qaeda was not as good as we gave them credit for.”
Yet for a decade, the government’s approach to counterterrorism has been premised in part on the idea that not only would al Qaeda attack inside the U.S. again, but its next strike would be even bigger—possibly involving unconventional weapons or even a nuclear bomb. Washington has appropriated tens of billions trying to protect against every conceivable kind of attack, no matter the scale or likelihood. To cite one example, the U.S. spends $1 billion a year to defend against domestic attacks involving improvised-explosive devices, the makeshift bombs favored by insurgents in Afghanistan. “In hindsight, the idea that post-Sept. 11 terrorism was different from pre-9/11 terrorism was wrong,” says Brian A. Jackson, a senior physical scientist at RAND. “If you honestly believed the followup to 9/11 would be a nuclear weapon, then for intellectual consistency you had to say, ‘We’ve got to prevent everything.’ We pushed for perfection, and in counterterrorism, that runs up the tab pretty fast.”
Nowhere has that profligacy been more evident than in the area of homeland security. “Things done in haste are not done particularly well,” says Jackson. As Daveed Gartenstein-Ross writes in his new book, Bin Laden’s Legacy, the creation of a homeland security apparatus has been marked by waste, bureaucracy, and cost overruns. Gartenstein-Ross cites the Transportation Security Agency’s rush to hire 60,000 airport screeners after Sept. 11, which was originally budgeted at $104 million; in the end it cost the government $867 million. The homeland security budget has also proved to be a pork barrel bonanza: In perhaps the most egregious example, the Kentucky Charitable Gaming Dept. received $36,000 to prevent terrorists from raising money at bingo halls. “If you look at the past decade and what it’s cost us, I’d say the rate of return on investment has been poor,” Gartenstein-Ross says.
Of course, much of that analysis has the 20/20 vision of hindsight. It is interesting to note as well that, for all the campaign rhetoric from candidate Barack Obama that we needed to change our foreign policy approach, President Obama has changed almost nothing, including our Afghanistan and Iraq involvements. It is also interesting to note that the supposed change away from President George W. Bush’s us-or-them foreign policy approach hasn’t changed the world’s view, including particularly the Middle East’s view, of the U.S. Someone years from now will have to determine whether homeland security, military and intelligence improvements prevented Al Qaeda from another 9/11 attack, or if Al Qaeda wasn’t capable of more than just one 9/11-style U.S. attack.
Hindsight makes one realize how much of the 9/11 attacks could have been prevented or at least their worst effects lessened. One year after 9/11, the New York Times book 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers points out that eight years after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, New York City firefighters and police officers still could not communicate with each other, which led to most of the police and fire deaths in the WTC collapses. Even worse, the book revealed that the buildings did not meet New York City fire codes when they were designed because they didn’t have to, since they were under the jurisdiction of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. And more than one account shows that, had certain people at the FBI and elsewhere been listened to by their bosses, the 9/11 attacks wouldn’t have caught our intelligence community dumbfounded. (It does not speak well of our government to note that no one appears to have paid any kind of political price for the 9/11 attacks.)
I think, as Bloomberg BusinessWeek argues, our approach to homeland security (a term I loathe) has overdone much and missed other threats. Our approach to airline security — which really seems like the old error of generals’ fighting the previous war — has made air travel worse but not safer. (Unless you truly believe that 84-year-old women and babies are terrorist threats.) The incontrovertible fact is that every 9/11 hijacker fit into one gender, one ethnic group and a similar age range. Only two reasons exist to not profile airline travelers — political correctness and the assumption that anyone is capable of hijacking an airplane, killing the pilots and flying it into a skyscraper or important national building. Meanwhile, while the U.S. spends about $1 billion each year trying to prevent Improvised Explosive Device attacks, what is this country doing about something that would be even more disruptive, yet potentially easier to do — an Electromagnetic Pulse attack, which would fry every computer within the range of the device?
We haven’t taken steps like drilling our own continent’s oil and developing every potential source of electric power, ecofriendly or not, to make us less dependent on Middle East oil. (The Middle East, by the way, supplies only one-fourth of our imported oil. We can become less dependent on Middle East oil; we cannot become less dependent on energy.) And the government’s response to 9/11 has followed like B follows A the approach our culture has taken to risk of any sort, as if covering ourselves in bubblewrap, or even better cowering in our homes, will make the bogeyman go away. Are we really safer because of the Patriot Act?
American politics was quite nasty in the 1990s. For a brief while after 9/11, we had impossible-to-imagine moments like this:
And then within the following year, the political beatings resumed. Bush’s statement, “I ask your continued participation and confidence in the American economy,” was deliberately misconstrued as Bush saying that Americans should go out and shop. Americans were exhorted to sacrifice for a war unlike any war we’ve ever faced by those who wouldn’t have to deal with the sacrifices of, for instance, gas prices far beyond $5 per gallon, or mandatory national service (a bad idea that rears its ugly head in times of anything approaching national crisis), or substantially higher taxes.
Then again, none of this should be a surprise. Other parts of the world hate Americans because we are more economically and politically free than most of the world. We have graduated from using those of different skin color from the majority as slaves, and we have progressed beyond assigning different societal rights to each gender. We tolerate different political views and religions. To the extent the 9/11 masterminds could be considered Muslims at all, they supported — and radical Muslims support — none of the values that are based on our certain inalienable rights. The war between our world, flawed though it is, and a world based on sharia law is a war we had better win.
In one important sense, 9/11 changed us less than it revealed us. America can be both deeply flawed and a special place, because human beings are both deeply flawed and nonetheless special in God’s eyes. Jesus Christ is quoted in Luke 12:48 as saying that “to whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required.” As much as Americans don’t want to be the policeman of the world, or the nation most responsible for protecting freedom worldwide, there it is.
Wisconsin’s current unemployment rate (6.9%) is shrinking faster than the nation’s (8.1%). The state’s median household income extended its lead over the U.S. from 2.2% to 4.0%, according to latest available figures (2011). And, spending on research and development grew faster here (41%) than nationally (21%) during 2005-10.
These are some of the signs from the state’s just-released yearly report card, Measuring Success: Benchmarks for a Competitive Wisconsin 2013, that suggest Wisconsin’s economy is moving again after the Great Recession. In another encouraging sign, the number of private firms in Wisconsin rose 1.6% in 2011, the first increase since 2008 and almost double the national increase (0.9%). Firm creation is key to job growth, according to much economic research, since new jobs are mostly created by young and small businesses.
Few report cards show all “A’s,” and Wisconsin’s is no different. Although the average wage here grew 11.3% (to $47,248) during 2006-11, compared to 10.2% for the U.S., it remained 12% below the national norm. And, as it has for decades, per capita income in the Badger State continued to lag the U.S. by 5.1%.
Despite falling joblessness, the report card shows mixed results on the jobs front. In 2012, Wisconsin employment grew 0.9%, compared to 1.7% nationally and at least 1.2% in the four surrounding states. That said, Wisconsin outperformed in manufacturing; job numbers climbed 2.2% here vs. 1.6% elsewhere. …
The job and income measures reported here reveal the improving position of Wisconsin’s economy during 2011-12, but the new report card also focuses on important building blocks for future economic success:
Good roads and highways are critical for getting materials to producers and products to market. In a new development, Wisconsin’s overall road quality appears to be slipping. Only 40.6% of state highway miles in 2011 were rated in one of the top two smoothness categories. That was down from 57.7% in 2009, and below the national average of 56.0%.
High school graduation rates rose―for the third consecutive year―to 86.8%, compared to 70.1% for the nation. However, average college entrance exam scores have fallen slightly in recent years. The percent of the state’s population with a bachelor’s degree is up slightly to 26.5% but remains below the national average (28.5%).
Energy costs remain important for many industries. During 2009 and 2010, Wisconsin’s natural gas prices declined from $11.76 per million British thermal units (Btus) to $9.34. However, due partly to recent investment in new plants, electricity prices rose from $26.38 per million Btus to $28.66. Despite the increase, electricity prices here are slightly below the national average.
Often, young companies with high potential turn to venture capital firms for funds necessary to sustain growth. In 2012, Wisconsin companies received an average of $34.23 per worker in venture capital, an increase of 6.5% over the past five years. However, the state remains below the national average ($200.94 per worker) and below all neighboring states, except Iowa.
That’s the state picture. Federally, reports the Washington Post …
1) Revisions. In truth, the most important parts of any jobs report are the revisions to the past two jobs reports. That’s because the initial estimate of how many jobs we added or lost in any given month is typically off by about 100,000 jobs. That’s how you get situations like August 2011, when the jobs report said we created no jobs but we later learned we’d created more than 100,000 jobs.
Revisions are where we get that better information. They’re the most accurate part of the unemployment numbers. And, in this jobs report, they’re a huge disappointment. “The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for June was revised from +188,000 to +172,000, and the change for July was revised from +162,000 to +104,000.” That means we added 74,000 fewer jobs than we thought in June and July.
2) The unemployment rate dropped for the worst reason. Unemployment dropped to 7.3 percent in August. Huzzah? Sorry, but no.
There are two reasons the unemployment rate dropped. One is that people get jobs. Huzzah! The other is that people stop looking for jobs, and so they’re no longer counted as technically unemployed. That’s what happened here. The number show 312,000 people dropping out of the labor force. That’ll be revised, but if the truth is anywhere close, it’s horrible.
3) Job creation was terrible. I know I said initial jobs reports are often misleading. And August jobs reports in particular have tended to see sharp upward revisions in recent years. But still, this report was a bummer: 169,000 jobs added. Plug that into the Hamilton Project’s handy-dandy jobs gap calculator, and you’ll find that this hiring pace will close the jobs gap sometime in 2023:
4) Unemployment among teenagers, African Americans and Hispanics remains insane. Among teenagers, the unemployment rate is 22.7 percent; for African Americans, it’s 13 percent; for Hispanics, 9.3 percent. And remember, those numbers only count people actively looking for work. Many others would like work but have stopping hunting. In these communities, then, the job market is somewhere between an awful recession and a severe depression.
Having been one of the Obama unemployed, I do not take schadenfreude out of reading Personal Liberty, other than to repeat the Facebook comment that Ignorance of the laws of economics is not an excuse:
The cynic might say that President Barack Obama is pushing to make war on Syria to distract Americans from the myriad scandals swirling around his Administration and/or his failed efforts at economic recovery. …
For instance, recovery summer never materialized — not in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 or 2013 — despite predictions by Obama and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. And guess who’s hurt the most by Obama’s policies. It’s Obama’s core demographic.
Obama received 51 percent of the vote in 2012. The five demographic groups he carried and the percentage that voted for him were youths (60 percent), single women (67 percent), blacks (93 percent), Hispanics (71 percent), and those without a high school diploma (64 percent).
According to a report by Sentier Research, since recovery summer was announced in 2009, households headed by single women have seen their incomes fall by 7 percent, and those under age 25 have seen their incomes drop 9.6 percent.
The incomes for black heads-of-household have dropped by 10.9 percent, and Hispanic heads-of-household have seen theirs drop 4.5 percent. For those with a high school diploma or less, incomes dropped 8 percent. (Incomes fell 6.9 percent for those with less than a high school diploma and 9.3 percent for those with one.)
In dollar terms, female heads of household saw their annual salaries drop by $2,300. Black-led households saw their annual salaries drop by more than $4,000, and Hispanic-led households saw their annual salaries drop $2,000.
Gallup released its monthly Payroll-to-Population survey yesterday. It showed that only 43.7 percent of the eligible population is employed, and it pegged unemployment at 8.7 percent. In 2012, those numbers were 45.3 percent and 8.1 percent.
Jonah Goldberg expresses an interesting opinion about what’s wrong with the Republican Party that has nothing to do with positions on issues:
While I have my sympathies and positions in all of these fights, I’ve long argued that regardless of what policies Republicans should offer or what philosophical North Star they might follow, one thing the GOP could definitely use is better politicians.
Ronald Reagan’s cult of personality remains strong and deep on the right, and I count myself a member of it. But what often gets lost in all the talk of the Gipper’s adamantine convictions and timeless principles is the simple fact that he was also a really good politician. Barry Goldwater was every bit as principled as Reagan, but Reagan was by far a better politician. That’s at least partly why Goldwater lost in a stunning landslide in 1964 and why Reagan was a two-term political juggernaut. Reagan won votes from moderates, independents and lots of Democrats.
To listen to many conservative activists today, we need a candidate as principled as Reagan to save the country, but you rarely hear of the need for a politician as good as Reagan.
Unfortunately, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, you go into elections with the politicians you have, not the politicians you want. So the question isn’t how to find better leaders but how to make the leaders we have better.
One answer is really remarkably simple: Tell better stories.
In July, Rod Dreher, author of the memoir “The Little Way of Ruthie Leming,” wrote a deeply insightful essay for the American Conservative on how the right has largely lost the ability to tell stories. Worse, many of the stories we continue to tell “are exhausted and have taken on the characteristics of brittle dogma.”
This is a problem not just for Republican politicians but for conservatives generally. For roughly 99.9% of human history, nearly all of human wisdom was passed on in stories. We are a species that understands things — i.e. morality, politics, even religion — in terms of tales of heroism, sacrifice and adversity. Yet so much of what passes for conservative rhetoric these days isn’t storytelling but exhortation. Whatever the optimal policy might be, if you can’t talk to people in human terms they can relate to, you can’t sell any policy. The war on poverty, for instance, has been an enormous failure in so many policy terms, but it stays alive because of the stories liberals tell. …
As Dreher noted, conservatives have largely abdicated their role in “tending the moral imagination,” which Russell Kirk defined as “conservatism at its highest.” Too many on the right don’t even claim what victories there are in the popular culture, which is far richer and more rewarding than many older conservatives are comfortable acknowledging.
Many historians will tell you that the secret of Reagan’s political success was his gift for storytelling. By all means, Republicans, be more like Reagan — but don’t tell his stories; tell your own.
Between Reagan’s retirement as California governor and his successful run for the presidency, Reagan did syndicated radio commentaries that ran as far east as Iowa. The subject frequently was abuse of and by government. And well before that, Reagan toured U.S. General Electric plants giving speeches.
I’d been asked to write a letter for a “time capsule” which would be opened in Los Angeles 100 yrs. from now. It will be The occasion will be the Los Angeles Bicentennial & of course our countrys tri-centennial. It was suggested that I mention some of the problems confronting us in this election year. Since I’ve been talking about those problems for aboutsome 9 months that didn’t look like too much of a chore.
So riding down the coast highway from Santa Barbara–a yellow tablet on my lap (someone else was driving) I started to write my letter to the future.
It was a beautiful summer afternoon. The Pacific stretched out to the horizon on one side of the highway and on the other the Santa Ynez mt’s. were etched against a sky as blue as the Ocean.
I found myself wondering if it would look the same 100 yrs. from now. Will there still be a coast highway? Will people still be travelling in automobiles, or will they be looking down at the mountains from aircraft or moving so fast the beauty of all I sawthiswould be lost?
Suddenly the simple drafting of a letter became a rather complex chore. Think about it for a minute. What do you put in a letter that’s going to be read 100 yrs. from now–in the year 2076? What do you say about our problems when those who read the letter will alr know what we dont know–namely how well we did with those problems? In short they will be living in the world we helped to shape.
Here’s another:
Some of these broadcasts have to be put together while I’m out on the road traveling what I call the mashed potato circuit. In a little while I’ll be speaking to a group of very nice people in a banquet hall.
Right now however I’m looking down on a busy city at rush hour. The streets below are two coloredtwin ribbons of sparkling red & white. The colored onesTail lights on the cars moving away from my vantage point provide the red and the headlights ofthose on the opposite side of the streetthose coming toward me the white. It’s logical to assume all or most are homeward bound at the end of thea days work.
I wonder why some social engineer hasn’t tried to get them to trade homes. The traffic is equally heavy in both directions so if they all lived in the end of town where they worked it would save a lot of travel time. Forget I said thator& dont even think it or some burocrat will try do it.
But youI wonder about the people in those cars, who they are, what they do, what they are thinking about as they head for the warmth of home & family. Come to think of it I’ve met them–oh–maybe not those particular individuals but still IIfeel I know them. Some of our social planners refer to them as “the masses” which only proves they dontknow them. I’ve been privileged to meet people all over this land in the special kind of way you meet them when you are campaigning. They are not “the masses,” They are individuals.or as the elitists would have it–”the common man.” They are very uncommon. individuals who make this system work.Individuals each with his or her own hopes & dreams, plans & problems and the kind of quiet courage that makes this whole country run better than just about any other place on earth.
Goldberg’s theme could be more broadly defined as the GOP’s ongoing need to communicate itself better. That is content, but it’s also delivery. Reagan was a master at delivery, which is why conservatives pine for Reaganesque candidates, because Reagan was so comfortable delivering the conservative message regardless of audience or medium.
Ten months after Mitt Romney shuffled off the national stage in defeat — consigned, many predicted, to a fate of instant irrelevance and permanent obscurity — Republicans are suddenly celebrating the presidential also-ran as a political prophet.
From his widely mocked warnings about a hostile Russia to his adamant opposition to the increasingly unpopular implementation of Obamacare, the ex-candidate’s canon of campaign rhetoric now offers cause for vindication — and remorse — to Romney’s friends, supporters, and former advisers.
“I think about the campaign every single day, and what a shame it is who we have in the White House,” said Spencer Zwick, who worked as Romney’s finance director and is a close friend to his family. “I look at things happening and I say, you know what? Mitt was actually right when he talked about Russia, and he was actually right when he talked about how hard it was going to be to implement Obamacare, and he was actually right when he talked about the economy. I think there are a lot of everyday Americans who are now feeling the effects of what [Romney] said was going to happen, unfortunately.”
Of course, there is a long tradition in American politics of dwelling on counterfactuals and re-litigating past campaigns after your candidate loses. Democrats have argued through the years that America would have avoided two costly Middle East wars, solved climate change, and steered clear of the housing crisis if only the Supreme Court hadn’t robbed Al Gore of his rightful victory in 2000. But a series of White House controversies and international crises this year — including a Syrian civil war that is threatening to pull the American military into the mix — has caused Romney’s fans to erupt into a chorus of told-you-so’s at record pace.
In the most actively cited example of the Republican nominee’s foresight, Romneyites point to the candidate’s hardline rhetoric last year against Russian President Vladimir Putin and his administration. During the campaign, Romney frequently criticized Obama for foolishly attempting to make common cause with the Kremlin, and repeatedly referred to Russia as “our number one geopolitical foe.”
Many observers found this fixation strange, and Democrats tried to turn it into a punchline. A New York Timeseditorial in March of last year said Romney’s assertions regarding Russia represented either “a shocking lack of knowledge about international affairs or just craven politics.” And in an October debate, Obama sarcastically mocked his opponent’s Russia rhetoric. “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years,” the president quipped at the time.
That line still chafes Robert O’Brien, a Los Angeles lawyer and friend of Romney’s who served as a foreign policy adviser.
“Everyone thought, Oh my goodness that is so clever and Mitt’s caught in the Cold War and doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” O’Brien said. “Well guess what. With all of these foreign policy initiatives — Syria, Iran, [Edward] Snowden — who’s out there causing problems for America? It’s Putin and the Russians.”
…
To Romney’s fans, these episodes illustrate just how unfairly their candidate was punished during the election for speaking truths the rest of the country would eventually come around to. …
During a foreign policy debate in October, the candidate briefly expressed concern over Islamic extremists taking control of northern Mali — an obscure reference that was mocked on Twitter at the time, including by liberal comedianBill Maher. Three months later, France sent troops into the country at the behest of the Malian president, bringing the conflict to front pages around the world.
On the domestic front, Obamacare — which Romney spent more time railing against on the stump than perhaps any other progressive policy — is less popular than ever, while the federal government struggles to get the massive, complicated law implemented. (One poll in July found for the first time that a plurality of Americans now support the law’s repeal.)
And while the unemployment rate has, in the first year of Obama’s second term, gradually fallen to post-crisis lows, the still-ailing U.S. economy, which served as the centerpiece for Romney’s unsuccessful case against Obama’s reelection, was given a potent symbol earlier this summer when Detroit became the largest American city ever to declare bankruptcy.
The Motor City became a symbolic battleground during the election, with Romney proudly touting his father’s ties to the auto industry, and the Obama campaign relentlessly attacking the Republican for a Times op-ed he had written years earlier headlined “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.”
“The president took the title of that op-ed, which of course was written by editors of the New York Times, and used it to say Gov. Romney was being insensitive about his own home city,” complained former campaign spokesman Ryan Williams. Romney’s article argued that beleaguered automakers should consider going through a managed bankruptcy instead of taking a bailout but, Williams said, “the president’s campaign intentionally tried to blur the lines. It worked. And several months later, the city is going bankrupt because of liberal democratic officeholders.” …
Romneyites are processing these feelings of vindication in different ways. The campaign’s chief strategist, Stuart Stevens, said he has been disappointed to see their central message — that Obama would be unable to restore America’s strength — turned out to be so accurate: “If there is a part of the world in which America is stronger, it’s hard to find. What’s the president doing? Attacking a talk radio host. He has criticized Rush Limbaugh with more conviction than the leaders of Iran… We can only hope it improves. ”
And Jennifer Rubin, the conservative Washington Post blogger who became Romney’s most outspoken advocate in the press, accused members of the news media of failing to take the Republican’s arguments seriously, while allowing the incumbent skate through the race untouched.
It is a sad measure of how distressingly backward this nation has fallen in just a few short months that President W. Mitt Romney now harkens back to the international lawlessness of the Bush/Cheney years by proposing a completely unauthorized, unilateral strike on Syria – and this in response to “evidence” of chemical weapons attacks we find no more compelling than the now throroughly discredited claims of WMD possession made by Bush and Cheney against Saddam Hussein.
Is America really returning to cowboy unilateralism to this extreme?
Mr. Romney’s insistence that Bashar Assad has used chemical weapons against his own people is far from a slam dunk, as many regional media reports dispute the U.S. version of events. What’s more, the White House insistence that it will only launch a limited aerial attack with “no boots on the ground” is laughable on its face, as the history of Republican administrations demonstrates a lust for Middle Eastern blood that will surely lead to an all-out ground assault and an inevitable quagmire as we once again undertake a quixotic pursuit of nation-building in a place where we are neither wanted nor needed.
To the extent that Mr. Assad has been guilty of atrocities, we can’t help but wonder how Mr. Romney might have calmed the situation with a more diplomatic approach to the relationship. His choice of John Bolton as special emmisary to the region has only inflamed anti-U.S. sentiments, and his ill-advised statements of unqualified support for right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu have had the unfortunate effect of stunting useful dialogue with moderates in the region.
We also wish Vice President Paul Ryan would stop making unhelpful pronouncements condemning Al Qaeda when we thought the emotions of post-9/11 hysteria had finally receded under the calm, realism-based leadership of former President Barack H. Obama.
In typical Republican fashion, Mr. Romney gives little credence to international law as he pays wanton disregard to the role of the U.N. Security Council. If Russia and China threaten vetoes, that is no excuse to disdain the process. Rather, it shows Mr. Romney’s need to be a real diplomat for a change and to seek international consensus.
America should have learned from Iraq that we cannot bomb our way to a friendly Middle East. Sadly, the Romney team of Bush re-treads and right-wing fanatics appears to have limitless faith in U.S. power, and simply cannot resist the urge to send missiles flying and bombs dropping in the delusional hope that this will somehow bring calm to the situation.
Oh. I forgot to include Cain’s opening:
In the real world, whether we like it or not, Barack Obama was re-elected in the 2012 presidential election. And in the real world, the one-time hero of the peaceniks is now prepared to attack Syria without UN authorization and quite possibly without authorization from Congress. Some peacenik he turned out to be! The editorial page of New York Times, which is little more than a propaganda rag for the Democratic Party, offered little more than a tepid warning that Obama needs to make his case more convincingly, etc.
Here is the Times’ “tepid warning”:
There is little doubt that President Obama wants to take military action. As Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday of Mr. Obama, “He believes we need to move. He’s made his decision. Now it’s up to the Congress of the United States to join him in affirming the international norm with respect to enforcement against the use of chemical weapons.” …
It is unfortunate that Mr. Obama, who has been thoughtful and cautious about putting America into the Syrian conflict, has created a political situation in which his credibility could be challenged. He did that by publicly declaring that the use of chemical weapons would cross a red line that would result in an American response. Regardless, he should have long ago put in place, with our allies and partners, a plan for international action — starting with tough sanctions — if Mr. Assad used chemical weapons. It is alarming that Mr. Obama did not.
Remember when the news media spoke truth to power and challenged presidents Democratic and Republican? I remember half of that. Apparently we are now in the empty-suit era of presidents, similar to Wisconsin’s being without U.S. Senators between 1993 and 2010, with a president who does either (1) nothing or (2) the wrong thing.
To everyone who voted because they were angered by a dog on the roof of a car, terrified of Big Bird getting his federal funds cut, or duped into thinking that binders full of women were an actual thing:
Our initial reaction was that if we were a member of Congress, we would be inclined to vote “no.” We ultimately, and with some difficulty, changed our mind, as we shall detail below. Our resistance–and our continuing misgivings about the prospect of an attack on Syria–are informed by reflection on our errors during the 2002-03 debate that preceded the Iraq war, of which we were a strong supporter. …
Things are not so bad today that one can say with anything approaching certainty that they would be better if Congress had voted down the authorization to use force in 2002, or if President Bush had declined to avail himself of it the following year. It is not difficult to imagine a counterfactual scenario in which Saddam Hussein is still in power and things are worse than they are today. It is easier still to imagine one in which things are bad enough that those who supported war in 2002-03, having lost the political debate, feel as justified in saying “I told you so” as those who opposed it do today. All we know–all we can know–is what happened; might-have-beens are by definition speculative.
What we can say is that events disproved certain of our expectations–that our predictions were wrong. Three such erroneous expectations are pertinent here:
First, that because the U.S. military was so much mightier than the Iraqi one, victory would be comparatively easy. (“Cakewalk” was a buzzword of the day.) Although that was true of the initial invasion, opponents who warned of the possibility of a lengthy and difficult terrorist/guerrilla insurgency proved to be correct.
Second, that the liberation of Iraq from Saddam’s dictatorship would have a benevolent transformative effect on the broader Middle East. The region does appear to be undergoing a transformation–the so-called Arab Spring–but as to whether that is because of or in spite of the Iraq war, one can hardly fault the answer Paul Wolfowitz gave us in a 2011 interview: “It’s a fascinating question, and one should probably simply . . . say it’s in the category of the unknowable.” More important, it is clear by now that the transformation is very far from unambiguously benevolent.
Third, that the breadth of domestic political support for the war–which had the contemporaneous bipartisan backing of 69% of House members, 77% of senatorsand around 70% of the public–was indicative of a durable commitment to the war effort. Some Democratic supporters–John Kerry most notable among them–switched sides even before the shooting began; and support from the broader public slowly, and it turned out irretrievably, diminished over the ensuing few years.
All these erroneous assumptions fall into the category of wishful thinking.
Opponents of the war were also prone to wishful thinking, as well as to the magical kind. The appeal of Barack Obama in 2008 lay not only in his status as the only serious Democratic candidate to have opposed the war from the outset, but also in the belief that his conciliatory rhetoric, along with his “multicultural” identity (black, with Muslim ancestors and an Arabic middle name to boot!) would “restore our moral standing,” as the future president put it in his nomination speech, and usher in “a new beginning,” as he announced in Cairo in June 2009.
Obama’s supporters would now have us believe that his swaggering words are as powerful as his soothing ones were supposed to have been. The McClatchy Washington Bureau reported Saturday that “foreign policy experts questioned the wisdom of waiting at least another week for Congress to return before the U.S. could act.” In response:
Administration officials downplayed any risk at the military level, saying they believed Obama’s strong words alone would prevent Assad or his allies from striking before the U.S. make [sic] a decision. One official simply called any future attack by Assad a “big mistake.”
This is an example of magical thinking that is not wishful. It would indeed be a big tactical mistake for Assad either to attack U.S. forces or again to use chemical weapons while congressional action is pending. But that is because of Obama’s political weakness, not his rhetorical strength. Congressional assent to Obama’s request for military authorization is far from assured; if Assad wants to keep it that way, he will lie low as the debate plays out. …
Obama is not making any claim that military action against Syria will have a transformative effect. His argument, instead, rests on the potential dire consequences of inaction. We find it persuasive. Maintaining the international taboo against the use of chemical weapons (and nuclear and biological ones) is a moral imperative. These armaments have the capacity to kill on a far greater scale than conventional explosives and bullets.
But if action is necessary as a moral matter, it must also be sufficient as a practical matter. And that is where Obama’s plan falls terrifyingly short. Here is what he said on Saturday:
This would not be an open-ended intervention. We would not put boots on the ground. Instead, our action would be designed to be limited in duration and scope.
On Friday, before Obama made the decision to seek congressional authorization first,Secretary of State Kerry said that “whatever decision [the president] makes in Syria it will bear no resemblance to Afghanistan, Iraq or even Libya.” That’s a bizarre and illogical assertion: It will be a “resemblance” to Afghanistan and Iraq, for instance, if Obama acts with congressional authorization, and to Libya had he chosen to act without it. But Kerry elaborated in words similar to those the president used the next day:
It will not involve any boots on the ground. It will not be open ended. And it will not assume responsibility for a civil war that is already well underway. The president has been clear: Any action that he might decide to take will be [a] limited and tailored response to ensure that a despot’s brutal and flagrant use of chemical weapons is held accountable.
In short, the administration is promising a cakewalk: an easy strike with little American blood or treasure at stake. As we argued Friday, it is fatuous to assume that would prove sufficient to hold Assad “accountable” or to deter him and other dictators from further bad acts. …
Which makes the president’s request for congressional authorization difficult to understand as anything but a political ploy, at best an exercise in buck-passing, at worst–and this has been suggested approvingly by some of his admirers–a strategic effort to inflict political damage on congressional Republicans. In support of the latter hypothesis one may note that Obama maintained the element of surprise with his Capitol Hill adversaries while going to ridiculous lengths to spare Bashar Assad of it. …
There is an intellectually respectable argument that the Constitution prohibits the president from taking any military action, except in response to an imminent or actual attack on U.S. territory or armed forces, without congressional approval. But Obama himself disavowed that view on Saturday! According to him, he thinks he has the authority to act in Syria without Congress, and he thinks action is imperative. Yet he invited Congress to say “no”–or, at best, to tie his hands so that he cannot, without defying the law, take further action should his promised cakewalk fail to deliver the sweets. …
If you believe the media stereotype of Republicans, and especially House Republicans–that they are science-hating anti-intellectuals; knaves, zealots and racists happy to put political power, ideology and hatred of the president above any concern for the good of the country–then you should view his discretionary decision to give them veto power over a matter of grave national importance as a disgraceful abdication of responsibility, if not an impeachable offense.
Which brings us back to Iraq. In 2002 some Democrats (and perhaps a few Republicans) went against their inclinations and voted to authorize the war for reasons of political expediency. With the memory of 9/11 still fresh, the public was behind the president, and lawmakers feared being tagged as soft on terror.
That was a political miscalculation. As the Democratic nominee in 2004, Kerry could not explain his flip-flop, and the next Democrat to be elected president was a future senator who had shown political prescience in denouncing what he called a “dumb war” in a Chicago speech in 2002.
In that speech, it is worth noting, Barack Obama rejected precisely the moral argument he made so powerfully on Saturday:
Now let me be clear–I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied U.N. resolutions, thwarted U.N. inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity.
He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.
But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.
Unless in the next week or so he discovers a heretofore unrealized capacity to move public opinion on substantive matters of policy, the expedient thing for lawmakers of either party to do will be to vote “no” while smugly minimizing the moral stakes by noting that while Assad is of course “a bad guy,” he poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, the Syrian economy is in shambles, there are lots of other mass-murdering dictators and we can’t bomb ’em all, and so forth.
Any opportunistic lawmaker who takes that path will be following the example set by the man who is now president of the United States.
I’m a big fan of Taranto’s, but I’m confused after reading this. He gives better arguments to be against bombing Syria than arguments on the side he says he favors. There remains the issue of whether the Syrian government used chemical weapons. Given that the weapons were used on Syrians who were supporting Assad, the entire premise of a future attack seems dubious.
One of the Facebook comments about Taranto’s piece explains things well:
Tradition had it that “politics stops at the waters’ edge when it comes to war.” It’s not Congress that is playing politics with Syria, it’s our President. Shame, shame, shame on Obama and shame on all who thought this weak, vain and selfish man was what our country needed. I hated Bill Clinton because I thought he was a sleaze ball in his personal life and greedy. I never, however, thought that he didn’t love his country or that he didn’t always try to do his best when it came to foreign affairs, even if I didn’t agree with his decisions. Obama, however, makes Clinton look like George Washington. There is clearly nothing that shouldn’t and will not be used by our current President to achieve his political objectives and cover his own butt.
In other words: No one — no one — should trust Obama’s ability to make the right decision.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 