Obama, Right and Wrong

This blog is dedicated to the proposition that it makes a significant difference for human kind to get it right. What "right" means is something of a moving target, but it finds it home where a morality inspired by the values of freedom, equality, justice and peace meet the human reality created by governments, corporations and civil societies here and around the world.

President Obama's address to the nation this evening struck many "right" chords for the future of American foreign policy and was presented in a way that will make sense to many Americans. The decision he is obligated to make as President about a strategy to end the war in Afghanistan is one that was mandated by the mistakes of the past under the control of a foreign policy which did not get American or global interests "right".

President Obama is right that the war in Iraq was wrong and diverted valuable resources and caused a huge loss of life that was both unnecessary and not serving of U.S. nor global interests for security and peace. In fact, it created a world less secure and less peaceful, empowered other forces that could destabilize the whole nuclear weapon reality of our world and unleashed a series of consequences both here and around the world that still are causing problems for humankind.

President Obama is right to stake out the beginnings of a foreign policy that stresses the use of all the resources of this nation and its partners in the world to combat that which threatens not only our security, but the security of health network of common efforts by the global community to improve life on the planet. He is right to switch our approach to foreign policy to "right makes might", not "might makes right" as was the case in the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfield days. He is right that the focus in Afghanistan/Pakistan should be on disarticulating Al Quaeda and not on nation building in Afghanistan and he is right to set a plan and timetable for exiting Afghanistan.

Obama is also right that Al Quaeda and their associates are not a threat to Pakistan. And the reason for this is that we were wrong to make war in Afghanistan as consequence of this to all who gave war a second threat, would be to push the terrorists into neighborhing states, the consequence of which is that they would eventually see that they had to extend the reach of their terror into that neighborhing state in order to build a buffer that would protect themselves, i.e. the one sure way to keep the Pakistani army out of Al Quaeda safe haven area is to make the other parts of the country unsafe and in need of Pakistani army protection.

Unfortunately, he is wrong on some important interpretation of history and analysis that may put his current efforts to resolve the war in Afghanistan in a way favorable to the fight to restrict the reach of terrorism in our world.

Let us begin with history and its interpretation. The war in Afghanistan was wrong. It was wrong despite the facts of the overwhelming support (not really for war but for all and every action needed to combat Al Quaeda) given both by the Congress as well as by NATO and UN. It was wrong because it misinterpreted the enemy. The enemy is not, as Bush tried to persuade us, the nations that give space to groups like Al Quaeda. The enemy that attacked us was Al Quaeda and, behind them, a huge well of discontent among a certain portion of the Muslim community around the world. We did not wait long enough or try hard enough or use every other weapon at our disposal to disarticulate Al Quaeda before supporting a war effort in Afghanistan. We gave the Taliban just a short time to response to our request for help and we did not put any prolonged pressure on them. We had the possibility of many military actions short of war to convince Taliban Afghanistan to help us root our and up the Al Quaeda network. For instance, as the Taliban had no Air Force and no Navy, we could have used these two resources from the Gulf and through flyovers to monitor and even attack key sites of Al Quaeda while we worked diplomatically to build a larger coalition of peaceful partners to convince Taliban/Afghanistan to help us with our goal of disarticulating Al Quaeda. Al Quaeda would have ened as a prisoner in Afghanistan, under constant air and navy attack without any ability to fight back. As it was, we tried to kill a fly with a sledge hammer and the fly got away to fight another day. The war was wrong as a strategy and as policy. You cannot defeat terrorism with war because war is a form of terror and spreads terror in reaction.

The arguement that some object to increasing troops because Afghanistan is like Vietnam is a paper tiger which can easily be destroyed, as President Obama did in his speech. But, the reason not to increase troops or use a "surge" in Afghanistan is not that it is Vietnam, but because it is Afghanistan: a nation that is not a nation, in the middle of a region that has no desire for it to be a nation of any strength with a geography that defies containment or destruction of any and all forces who have access to financing. The Taliban can close one enclave on Monday and open another on Tuesday as they recently have in the north and Al Quaeda has a million friens and more than a 1000 miles of sparsely populated, absolutely desolate and difficult terrain just on the Pakistan border with Afghanistan.

So, the overarching ideas of the Obama approach to foreign policy are good, helpful, to be applauded, but the strategy may not work in Afghanistan, because it is Afghanistan. It is our attack on the Taliban which has led to the tactical alliance between the Taliban and Al Quaeda, Al Quaeda being another weapon in the arsenal to fight the "allies". We should leave the Taliban to the Afghanis and just go after Al Quaeda which would force the Taliban to rethink their tactical alliance as one that might take away weapons instead of adding them to their aresenal. As clearly as President Obama has outlines his limited project in Afghanistan, the project is flawed because it is not narrow enough.

The President is right to say that whatever we do of efforts around the world, these efforts should not go beyond our responsibility, our means and our interests. Unforteunately it could be the case that the current strategy, to the extent that it depends upon the Afghans and Pakistanis taking their responsibility puts the end result of a "win" outside our means.

Seven years ago, President Bush declared the war in Afghanistan to be "mission accomplished". President Obabam, tonight, should have declared the war in Afghanistan "mission impossible" and announced a plan to withdraw, as soon as possible from the war in Afghanistan to concentrate our current level of forces or a smaller on a far less ambition and more central mission of disarticulating Al Quaeda. This goal can be accomplished no matter what future the Afghans decide for themselves.

What's In a Name

We should not spend much time debating the various aspects of the new book, Going Rogue, by Sarah Palin. I only want to say that Palin makes the point of all those who believe she was not and is not qualified to be a high level political leader in the nation by the very title of the book. Who is is that wants a Vice President or a President, or even a Governor or Senator to "go rogue"? There are about 6,465 better images than this for someone who was nominated by what was a major political party for the office of president. Enough said and we should forget the whole thing as a bad moment in the life of the nation.

Ft. Hood Violence is No Surprise

There is and will be a raging debate about what lies behind the killings at Ft. Hood. Putting all the specific theories which might turn out to be true, aside – a man who needed therapy, a man converted to radical Islamic Jihad, a man made desperate by both the stories he heard and his own orders to report to duty in Afghanistan – the larger picture is more simple and more scary.

If you train hundreds of thousands of men and women to kill, it is not surprising that they do not always kill who you trained them to kill. Some will kill themselves, some will kill innocent bystanders, some will kill others of their own army. Add to this that these men and women, trained to kill, are asked to fight in wars based on lies or wars without any end in sight, or wars that have no apparent reason for being fought and the odds go up. Add to this that the wars in which these men and women who are trained to killed fight are of the kind that accentuate the normal desentization, alienation, trauma and outright craziness that is necessary to fight a war and to kill other men and women and the odds get even higher that these men and women will kill themselves, innocent bystanders and even their own comrades in arms.
The question is where the madness lies: within these men and women or within the society that invites and pays them to be trained to kill for reasons they do not understand and in wars that, even within what is the craziness of war, are more intense, dangerous and cruel than ever before.
Here is my point. The person who pulls the trigger is responsible for the killings and that point should never be lost because "responsibility" is also the reason not to kill. But, we are also to blame. We pay for, permit and sometimes even encourage our nation to make killers out of these men and women and put them in situations where the violence we have sanctioned has neither moral direction or makes political sense. Eventually, we become the victims of our own sanctioning of the killing. This is another lesson we have not learned from previous wars, the most excrutiating example of which was Vietnam where the damage done to soldiers and, in consequence, to our own society was immense. Thousands of persons destroyed physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually whose illnesses of mind or spirit then cause additional damage upon immediate loved ones and friends and the community at large.
This is the uncounted cost of war: thousands of traumatized persons whose training in violence cannot be controlled by superior officers or higher moralities but explodes against themselves or others with ripples of negative effects traveling out into the community in all cases.
This is not an argument to excuse the actions of Hassan, or to imply that we take less seriously the damage that can be done by religious or ideological fervor that sanctions violence against others. Hasan is responsible. The religious and ideologies that sanction violence are responsible. And, so are we until we tell our government, our leaders to quit condemning us to self destruction by fighting wars based on lies, without reason, without end, without any measurable benefit to human beings. Only Hasan will be held responsible and pay the price for his actions. We will exonerate ourselves, hoping that we can continue to find others to pay the price for our irresponsibility.

Tsunami Recovery

I think it is a sure bet that the way history will record these recent times in our nation and in the world is to say that the eight years of Bush/Cheney was something like an economic, social, political and military tsunami that put our nation, and the rest of the world in a big whole. Now we are digging out. In Iraq, despite the critics who said that a strategy for pulling out would not work, it seems we hare abouthalf dug out of a war tht did not need to be fought, accomplished nothing in the war on terror and empowered Iran for regional hegemony. In the economy it looks like we are about half dug out with unemployment close to peaking, economic indicators on the rise and the banking industry about half healthy. In addressing the pressing social questions within the United States, we have seen some progress on questions related to inclusion of gays and lesbians and we will likely have a health care legislation that will go about half way in solving our health care problem. On immigration we are far away from a solution, not because there is no solution but because all the reasonable ones are opposed by large interests on the right. In terms of restoring the integrity of both our relations with other nations and our integrity on questions of human rights and international treaties we are about half the way bqck from the disastrous last eight years and, the Nobel committee conisdered this such a significant digging out accomplishement that it gave is Peace Prize to President Obama.

As is the case of the war in Iraq, none of this progress is irreversible and, if left to the right wing of the country, it would all be reversed and we could go back into the hole. And there is still much to be done to get back to where we were some years ago in the economy, in the social health of the nation, in relations with other countries, in respecting human rights treaties and agreements, in addressing global warming, etc.

The one place where the hole has gotten deeper is Afghanistan. This should not be a surprise. Despite widespread support even among some who normally oppose military action, the war against Afghanista was the biggest mistake of the Bush/Cheney era which is saying something since Iraq wasa huge mistake. Afghanistan was a mistake because it was the wrong strategy for addressing 9/11, because it failed in both its objectives: disarticulate Al Quaeda and establish a non-Taliban state in Afghanistan. A smart strategy would have been to concentrate on disarticulating Al Quaeda and provide both carrot and stick reasons for the Taliban to help us; surround the country with intelligence and surgically accurate ability to attack Al Quaeda sites; work with Pakistan to remove (ahead of time) the western part of Pakistan as the hideout and safe ground for Al Quaeda and work slowly and surely to destroy the Al Quaeda infrastructure and disarticulate by police action, the organization. As it is, both the Taliban and Al Quaeda have not only survived, but, in the area, enjoy greater strength now than at the close of the offical war. And, cooridnated intelligence with European partners and others has resulted in a greater capacity in the Western world to interupt and avoid terrorist activities on the home ground.

Digging out of Afghanistan is the most difficult task left by Bush/Cheney for the Obama administration. Afghanistan is even less of a nation than Iraq, cobbled together from disparate geographies and tribes and warlord areas that met the criteria of falling, geographically between Pakistan and Iran. Afghanistan, unlike Iraq, has been systematically destroyed in all aspects of life by decades of war with Russia and between its own factions. It has not existing health or educational or public utilities system as did and does Iraq. It has not national culture at all, or national pride and it has no oil, its one economic generator being a product that lucrative but declared unwanted by the rest of the world.

There is only one thing to do in Afghanistan - leave, while maintaining a regional capacity/partnership in addressing the threat of Al Quaeda not only to our security but to the security of the region. how many years does it take to do this? How many troops for how long does it take to do this? What agreements and partnerships with NATO, UN, Pakistan, Russia and Iran do we need to do this? None of the answers seem apparant.

The clearest aspect of answering these questions is that sending 40,000 more troops with the hopes that it will work like the surge in Iraq is not a good idea. What is needed is an exit strategy for the war against the Taliban, a realistic plan for rebuilding the country's infrastructure and health and education systems, and a plan for working with others to continue to monitor and slowly disarticulate the Al Quaeda terror network.

It would appear that the Obama Administration is working exactly in this direction, but, President Obama and the American people should not be surprised that even the best laid plans of mice and men will go awry in Afghanistan. This may be the hole out of which one cannot dig.

NOBEL OBAMA

Those who have expressed doubt about the naming of President Obama as the Nobel Peace Proze for this year have forgotten how dangerously close we came in the previous American administration to undoing the international network of agreements, networks, alliances and understandings that limit war and sometimes can make peace. Those who sit on the Nobel committees to make these decisions surely considered the basic question of who, or what organization made the largest, most important contribution to peacemaking in the past year. President Obama may have not been the only name of the list, but I think it can be argued that he deserved to be at the top of the list. Americans probably do not appreciate how much damage the Bush/Cheney years did to international cooperation and the climate for peace in the rest of the world. It is a symptom of the deep malaise in the right wing of our country that they complain the loudest about the decision to give President Obama the Nobel prize when it is exactly this right wing takeover of the foreign policy of the country that created the conditions in which an Obama could and should have emerged. They just do not get it. There is a huge, important and absolutely critical difference between an America bent on Empire and an America dedicated to leading an international community that pursues, to the extent that such a complicated network of nations, cultures and political interests can be expected to, a coordinated effort to reduce the use of violence to resolve conflicts in the world.

This does not mean that President Obama has done all that he could or will do to reduce the threat of war and the reality of war or to turn around the whole of the foriegn policy apparatus of the United States to a more reasonable and more effective commitment to real statesmanship and diplomacy. And, the Nobel has little ability to really influence the process of resolving the extremely difficult problems on the ground left by the last administration: Afghanistan, Middle East and Iran/North Korea. Nevertheless, the Nobel can give support to a President who seems committed to turning around our approach to the world in a way that benefits both our national interests and peace in the world and, for that, all Americans should be thankful.

Living With Stupidity

Political consultant and TV analyst James Carville hit the nail on the head with a recent comment in response to a CNN question about his thought on the controversy related to President Obama addressing school children. He began his thoughts by saying that the fact is that in America we have a large number of stupid people and we just have to accept that fact and work with it. He was kind enought not to make any analysis of why we have so many stupid people. Let me offer an explanation or explanations.

One reason is that we do not have any profound experience with the world outside America. Only about 11% of our citizens have Passports indicating a decided lack of experience outside our boundaries. We do not have enough experience outside our own to have a sense of the world as it is or to gain the knowledge that exists outside our reality. Another reason would be fear, mostly promoted by politically motivated actors chief of whom would be the radio talk show folks who make a living on spreading lies and generating fear and then anger.

Ideologies create stupidity because they invite those who are true believers to block out all data, reality and experience which does not fit the ideology. Fundamental religion does the same. We have plenty of both.

I think Carville's comments are almost indisputable and the rest of the world would line up behind him in support. Just ask people who have to receive the tourists we do send around the world. Most of the tourists will wise up with some experience and those who are stupid just do not go out again because they are offended that people in other nations do not recognize their inalienable right to consider themselves smarter and better than the rest of the world.

What is disturbing about Carville's comments is that he suggests that we have to begin to factor this stupidity into how we live, work for good government and pursue what is good for the nation. I wonder whay his strategies would be for doing this. Maybe we could go back to a poll tax that would eliminate the stupid people from voting or we could try to make a vaccine against stupidity since there seems to be an epidemic of it, especially since President Obama assumed the office of the presidency. i would suggest that if we could identify the gene that was responsible for people believing the creationist explanation of nature or develop a test that would expose social/political/religous tendencies that lead to such a belief we would have the basis for at least identifying who these stupid people are. But, I would suggest therapy and a good dose of whatever methods work against brainwashing rather then eliminating them from intervention in our political and social processes.

The problem is that there are so many of them. We are, after all, the nation that elected George Bush twice. I am not suggesting that everyone who disagrees with the President..or for that matter, with me...is stupid. Open, informed and critical debate demands that we have differing views and the assumption that none of us has all the wisdom available. We need this debate and we need each other to have the debate. Truth is, that one question can have several good answers. Stupidity of the kind Carville is talking about is exactly the lack of an open mind and and an inquiring spirit. Stupid people do not debate or go into dialogue. Rather, they want to quiet all other voices and suppress the free exchange of ideas. You cannot do this, anymore, by overtly arresting or imprisoning or otherwise physically restraining those who have opposing ideas, at least not, for the moment in our country. So, you just make sure that you don't hear anything - you shout or you pull your child out of school for those sessions which might be presided over by someone you know you don't agree with.

Back to reality, the question remains of what to do. It is a serious question because there is a danger and there is precedent for the fact that occassionally, these stupid people, although I hope they are not in the majority, take control of the country. Even more often they raise enough fuss to keep us from making wise decisions. In a democracy it is possible that the stupid people will control the balance of power to sway decisions or even actually run the country. As power is something of an aphrodisiac, someone will always think of how to put together a winner political coalition like united the stupid with the confused, the fearful and those who are just wrong and those who are mean. Or has somebody already done this?

Anyway, we need some suggestions from Carville on how to develop strategies to ensure that the stupid do not take over the country. I suppose one possible antidote would be to continue good, open, intelligent debate of issues although the current debate on health care in America does not seem to have achieved this goal.

The great American answer to all things is citizen action, so I would suppose that Carville has in mind that we all put a grain of sand on the seashore to build a beach (or a beachead against the debilitating effects of stupidty). For my part I will be producing bumper stickers that say: Combat Stupidity: Don't Send Your Children to School!!!

Have You Been to Europe Recently?

Yesterday, on NPR, I listened to another in the interminable interviews on the current Health Care debate. NPR was interviewing two Republican Congresspersons. I believe they were from Pennsylvania.

The final arguement of one of the Congresspersons against the current Health Care initiative supported by the President was that it intended to make us into European style countries. This, evidently would be something to loathe.

As only about 11% of Americans have passports, I am assuming that the Congressperson imagined that this arguement would hold water because people really have never experienced Europe and only have right wing radio commentators to inform them about life in Europe.

That the current health care reform could make us more like Europe would be something to be hoped for. The mainstay European countries - France, Germany, England, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Austira, Switzerland, Netherlands all enjoy a quality of life, a style of living that is equal to ours, plus many have national health care systems that provide health care services to all citizens. In addition, all enjoy levels of freedom and choice equal or greater than our own.

So, what is the arguement? It is the same "fear" arguement that is always employed with positive change is proposed. To create fear, it is necessary to misrepresent not only the truth. So, there is a persistent campaign in the United States by some sectors to paint Europe as "socialist". It is it, then there is an arguement for Socialism. The Quality of Life, the per capita income, the degree of freedom is excellent in Europe: again, equal to or greater than our own.

In fact, what the current Health Care initiative is threatening to do is to ask the American People to live up to its own best reviews as a nation that cares. The primary purpose of the current legislative initiative is to extend health care insurance (and, therefore, health care itself) to the 45 million Americans who do not have it.

European countries have elections that alternatelly put left/center and then right/center and even further to the right governments in place. But, all of these governments agree that to deisturb the social system that provides health care to the majority of citizens would be to take step back from the quality of care and caring that exempifies the Western world.

We have yet to live up to the high level of social consciousness that the European societies exhibit.

he opponents of health care reform are inviting the nation to take the low road, to give in the worst of human tendencies to covet what we have and not care about what others need. We deserve better than this. If we wanted to live in an advanced society, that new how to care for all its citizens, we would have to move to Europe.