Recent foreign policy developments

Cristina y Joe

The big foreign policy news of this past week was the Obama administration's announced plans for escalating the Afghanistan War. I've blogged quite a bit about why I think escalating the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan is a really bad idea. I'll be blogging more about it. And, sadly, it looks like we'll have a long time yet where we have an Afghanistan-Pakistan War to blog about. And for our soldiers and lots of Afghans and Pakistanis to die in.

The rhetoric sounds good: no purely military solutions, working to end corruption, promote development, get close to the people there, get better cooperation from Pakistan, target terrorists, concentrate on the Taliban and Al Qa'ida, and yadda, yadda, yadda. The problem is you can find virtually identical statement from the years of the Vietnam War and from pretty much any time during the Iraq War. One of the lessons that the officer corps and many of our politicians and diplomats (mis)learned from the Vietnam War was that if you could just do slicker PR on the home front, everything would work much better. Many of them have simply never given up the illusion that the US can beat any enemy, any time, anywhere, as long as the Will of the civilians and politicians on the home front holds firm.

Obama is scheduled to sign a joint declaration with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev setting up a framework for new negotiations over nuclear arms reduction. Estados Unidos y Rusia firmarán un acuerdo para reducir sus arsenales nucleares El País 28.03.2009.

Obama has also scheduled a meeting with Spanish President (prime minister) José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero on April 5 in the Czech Republic while Obama is there for the G-20 summit: Obama y Zapatero se reunirá el próximo día 5 en la República Checa por Miguel González 28.03.2009. Joe Biden has just met with Zapatero at the Cumbre de Líderes Progresistas conference in Viña del Mar, Chile and expressed full understanding for Spain's decision to withdraw its troops from Kosovo this year.

Biden is on the road in Latin America in preparation for a Latin American "Summit of the Americas" for April 17-19 in Trinidad and Tobago.: Biden seeks 'new day' in Latin America ties AFP 03/27/09:

The US vice president was due to meet bilaterally with the leaders of Uruguay, Argentina and Chile, as well as Britain, during a Progressive Governance conference in Vina del Mar on Chile's coast, before consulting with Central American presidents in Costa Rica at a gathering hosted by President Oscar Arias.

Biden's visit represents another opportunity for Argentine President Cristina Fernández to raise her country's and her own international profile: Cristina reclamó un rol más activo del Estado y que se estimule la demanda global Clarín 28.03.2009. Fernández, whose "Kirchnerism" represents a distinctly social-democratic variety of the complex Peronism of her Partido Justicialista (PJ), explictly denounced the Washington Consensus which dominated the widely-discredited policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. One of her predecessors, representing what we might call the Washington Consensus wing of the PJ, Carlos Menem, implemented a drastic version of it with major deregulation and privitizations, which led to massive corruption and a new economic and political crisis in 2001, two years after Menem left office, which wound up with Fernández' husband Néstor Kirchner being elected President in 2003. Fernández on the Washington Consensus this week:

Esta crisis de carácter global y mundial revelan que estamos ante una situación de cambio inédito en el mundo y Argentina fue el lugar que experimentó con mayor crudeza la privatización de todos los recursos del Estado y la demonización del Estado como mal administrador y terminó con una implosión de todo el sistema financiero argentino similar al que hoy se vive en las principales economías del mundo.

[This crisis of a general and worldwide character revealed that were face a situation of change new to the world, and Argentina was the place that experimented in a very crude way with privitization of all the resources of the state and the demonization of the state as a bad administrator, and wound up with the implosion of the whole Argentine financial system [in the crisis of 2001] similar to that through which the principle economies of the world are living today.]

The heads of government attending the Cumbre de Líderes Progresistas include Biden, Zapatero, Fernández, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Uruguaian President Tabaré Vázquez,British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the conference hosted by Chilean President Michelle Bachelet.

Fernández also raised the still-unsettled issue of the Malvinas (Falkland) Islands with Gordon Brown: Aún con la mira en el G-20, la Argentina reiteró el reclamo por Malvinas Clarín 28.03.2009; Malvinas, el tema que siempre está Clarín 28.03.2009. Britain took the island in 1833 - actually the Americans seized it and turned it over to Britain - and was the point of contention in Malvinas War of 1982.

Yes, Señor Prime Minister, we're getting back our islands one of these days: Argentine President Cristina Fernández and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown

Britain officially refuses to discuss the sovereignty of the islands. Of course, there are many shades of "refusing to discuss" in diplomacy. In a 1990 agreement between the two countries, Argentina officially recognized that Britain is exercising a custodianship of the disputed islands. Oil is invoved, too. Well into the 18th century, possession of the islands was disputed among Spain, Britain, France, even the Netherlands. Spain based its claim back to 1520 on the legendary voyage of Fernando de Magallanes. Britain's claim dates to 1690.

Spain bought France's portion of the island in 1770 and kicked the British out in 1774. Argentina's formal independence from Spain dates to 1816 and Argentina claimed the Malvinas in 1820. Britain took the islands in 1833 and declared the Falkland Islands a colony in 1890.

Tags: argentina, nuclear nonproliferation, nuclear proliferation, obama administration, spain

Hamiltonian notions of government

Alexander Hamilton: not a Jefferson-Jackson Democrat

One idea that's become a commonplace in American history that has bugged me for a long time is the idea that the "Hamiltonian" notion of government won out over time against the "Jeffersonian" form. In this framework, even the New Deal is presented as "Hamiltonian": the New Deal, a signature accomplishment of the Party founded by Thomas Jefferson.

Historian William Hogeland challenges some more recent hagiography about that old reactionary monarchist Alexander Hamilton in Inventing Alexander Hamilton: The troubling embrace of the founder of American finance Boston Review Nov/Dec 2007. He discusses the "Newburgh Crisis", an effort by Hamilton and his allies to get up a military coup in the 1780s:

Certain aspects of the Newburgh Crisis are worth arguing about. (How willing were the Morrises and Hamilton to support an actual coup? Were they gambling on avoiding one at the last minute? How would they have controlled events if the Gates mutiny had succeeded?) What hasn’t been at issue in any serious way since E.J. Ferguson and Richard Kohn wrote about these events in the 1960s and ’70s is Hamilton’s eagerness to avoid applying the rule of law to his view of what was best for the country. He was developing an urgent desire for authoritarian government, whose well-funded debt, supported by nationally enforced taxes, would increase the wealth of the richest class of Americans and yoke that class to national purpose. He bet everything, including his reputation as a loyal patriot, on forging a common project between the military and the investor classes to override the will of elected governments. [my emphasis]

Jefferson's objections to Hamilton's financial schemes during the Washington administration was not based on some agrarian utopianism. Jefferson objected to the fact that Hamilton wanted to basically award swindlers who had accumulated government bonds from small investors. He also objected to Hamilton's cynical notion of governance. Although Jefferson thought Hamilton himself was personally honest, Hamilton thought that American democracy could only function on the basis of bribing members of Congress.

Hogeland in the quote above touches on the key problem in the notion that "Hamiltonian" government won out over "Jeffersonian". To justify such an argument, one basically has to focus on broad structural issues and ignore the concrete political content of those competing notions. It is Jefferson's notion of broad-based democracy that won out over time, certainly in the perceptions of the public about what democracy means. Unfortunately, we still have our Hamiltonians around. And our system of campaign financing, which Jerry Brown even back in 1992 was calling a system of "bribery", actually does represent a kind of triumph of the dark side of "Hamiltonian" governance.

Hogeland also discusses the issue of the Revolutionary War debt, which is another incident that is often grossly distorted by Hamilton's apologists.

One complaint about Hogeland's piece. He doesn't communicate that the "liberal" Hamiltonian Project that he mentions has actually been an important player in the anti-Social-Security "entitlement reform" scam.

I would also add that Hamilton as the first Secretary of the Treasury under the current Constitution was a key player in establishing the basic American finance system, although the Jefferson administration and Jefferson's Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin should actually be given more credit.

Hamilton's greatest contribution to political theory, and a positive one, was his advocacy of the proposed Constitution, as preserved in his essays in The Federalist Papers. It may be his greatest public contribution overall. In that political fight, he was one the same side as serious democrats like Jefferson and James Madison against the conservatives and reactionaries who opposed the Constitution.

That's another of my historical pet peeves, the still-influential notion popularized by "Progressive" historian Charles Beard, who became a rabid isolationist and FDR-hater, that it was conservatives who supported the Constitution and the liberals/progressive/left who opposed it. Not the case. But I'll get into that some other time.

Tags: alexander hamilton, thomas jefferson, william hogeland

What is the world coming to...

... when a liberal Democratic Senator from California won't agree to support union organizing?

Old Hickory would not be pleased

Greg Sargent reports that Feinstein, Who Co-Sponsored EFCA In 2007, May Not Support It This Time Washington Post blog 03/27/09.

This is just pitiful. This is why we need primary challenges to Dems that feel such strong temptation to capitulate on key issues.

It's also a sign of the weaknesses of the Democratic Party that built up over a long time. Somehow the Democrats fastened on the idea that it would be clever to have their majority leaders in Congress be people from more vulnerable electoral districts. The House Dems finally wised up and got Pelosi from San Francisco who doesn't have to worry much about challenges from Republicans but does have to worry about primary challenges from her own Party if she starts going all Joe Lieberman on things.

Speaking of whom, this is also part of the repercussions of welcome Holy Joe back into the fold with open arms even after he actively campaigned for the Republican Presidential candidate even during the primaries.

Then just this past week, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid from purple-state Nevada praised the Blue Dog Democrats who announced a new group of conservative leaning Dems whose purpose is to form alliances with Republicans against the Democratic program. Now, there's nothing wrong with Party diversity. I'd hate to see the Dems turn into an authoritarian group like the Republicans became over the last couple of decades. But it's one thing to have the Congresssional Progressive Caucus whose purpose is to be consistent advocates for basic Democratic issues of peace and realistic diplomacy and support for labor and Social Security. But when a group like Evan Bayh's Blue Dog Dems forms for the purpose of allying with Republicans against the Democrats, what in the name of Andrew Jackson is the Democratic Senate leader doing praising them for that?

In any case, this kind of weak-in-the-knees attitude on issues important to organized labor, which is still the Democrats' most important single constitutency in terms of delivering votes, is part of the result. I don't always approve of Nancy Pelosi's calls in the House. And her public presentation aren't always Oscar quality. But she's a fighting Dem. And that's what we need in the Party leadership in the Senate, too.

And while I'm griping about Democratic problems, this ridiculous business I keep seeing about how the Democrats need to have 60 votes in the Senate to pass anything has gotten to be a real nails-on-the-blackboard thing for me. No, they don't need 60 votes. They just need to get 51 votes to abolish the filibuster rule - which the Republicans effectively abolished anyway in their threats over the "nuclear option" which the "Gang of 14" brokered to basically give the Republicans what they wanted back in 2006.

Tags: democrats, democratic party

Democracy breaks out, Beltway Village is stunned

Some day, we'll look back at this period of time and talk about stages in Obama's Presidency and what various turning points were and so forth. Right now we're just having to wade through what we know as it comes at us day by day.

Digby has a good take on the popular anger over the AIG bonuses that in the media narrative burst forth last week. It was more like it took until last week for the Beltway Village to notice it to the extent they did. And then they hyped it all week while wringing their hands over the terribly disturbing anger at respectable Wall Street investment bankers. Digby's piece is called, Blind to the Zeitgeist 03/24/09:

The AIG bonus scandal was a watershed moment in this crisis. The White House did not handle it well (and should have known it was poison before they put it back in the stimulus in the dead of night in the first place.) The minute it hit, people all over the country viscerally understood what was happening and formed a new definition of the crisis, thus narrowing the options for the president. But the options weren't narrowed the way these insiders think they were. This new populist environment made the plan they already had in the works less politically viable, not more. Doing a giveaway to these hold-up artists now is going to make it much, much harder for them to come back for another bite down the road.

I don't believe the congress is the problem. And let's just say that if it is, if the majorities the Democrats have, the amount of popular outrage and the magnitude of the crisis we face aren't enough to push through real reform of the financial sector in the face of Wall Street screeching, then let's kiss health care and everything else goodbye. If the political will isn't there for something this vital, it's not there for anything and we are simply screwed. [my emphasis]

Good Republicans like Bobo Brooks were puzzled at how a couple of hundred million or so in bonuses could become such an issue even though it's a small part of the ballout bill. Not being a TV Big Pundit, Digby was able to talk about why. It's because financial institutions are being supported by the taxpayers dollars after their management ruined the companies; in AIG's case, the public effectively owns the company though I believe 20% of the stock is still privately owned.

You don't need to be a hot-shot compensation specialist to see that there's something screwy about the kind of incentives involved. Though our pundits memories are re-written almost as quickly as the operatives on Dollhouse, most people with normally functioning minds can remember that just a few weeks ago, the Republican blowhards were in high hissy-fit mode over the need to cut the wages of autoworkers whose companies might need federal assistance. But then investment bankers, apparently including some at AIG in the very division that sank the company, are getting mega-bonuses and they and their executives are downright huffy over the fact that anyone would question that arrangement.

We don't use the word "class" in most respectable political discussion these days, unless we're talking about the latest bogus conservative claims about the alleged failure of public schools. But in this case, the class-based reaction is painfully obvious, in which the workers are expected to take lower wages and layoffs because their bosses ruined their company while wealthy investment bankers feel entitled to take huge rewards from their ruined companies.

In addition, it's not just a matter of fairness or social equity, though it certainly is that, too. The compensation structure at large banks is a real management problem and creates perverse incentives for executives and "star" players to enrich themselves at the expense of the long-term health of their firms. If the corporate ownership system worked in the way that "free market" textbook theory says it should, the stockholders would have restricted these practices long ago. But it doesn't work that way. Now that the public is the majority stockholder in AIG, it's just plain good business to object to this dysfunctional compensation system.

Here's a simplified version of my own understanding of how the Geithner plan would work. Banks like all other businesses have balance sheets based on the accounting equation Assets = Liabilities + Equity [Capital]. Although it may seem counter-intuitive at first, for banks, loans are assets and deposits are liabilities. The problem for what economists are calling "zombie banks" is that some significant part of the assets of big banks like Citigroup and Bank of America are in problem loans directly or in holdings of "derivatives" made up of loans that were bundled together and sold as a security. They are called "derivatives" because the value is not directly in the security being sold, but in some other asset which the security represents, in many cases in this situation, high-risk home mortgages in many of the most toxic assets.

Under the accounting equation, to take sample values for an example, 100 (assets) = 75 (liabilities) + 25 (equity). But if those "toxic assets" held by big banks were valued at what they are really worth, that asset number could go down to, say, 70. But the liabilities don't go down with the new asset valuation. So the equation becomes 70 (assets) = 75 (liabilities) minus 5 (equity). A company with negative equity is bankrupt.

And in our current situation, an accurate market evaluation of bank assets based on looking at the underlying loan tapes could show that some big players like Citigroup and Bank of America are actually bankrupt. That would mean the FDIC would have to put them into receivership, i.e., take them over and reorganize them to later sell off the reorganized pieces. What economists like Paul Krugman and Jamie Galbraith and other want is for such a revaluation to happen so that the underlying problems of the banks can be fixed. And they are worried that the Geitner plan won't do it.

What the Geithner plan does from the banks' point of view to take some of those bad assets off their books and replace them with cash. That replaces some of the toxic assets with solid assets like cash. And that would turn the equity portion of the accounting equation positive. If that were going to make the zombie banks healthy again, that would arguably be the right course.

But there are two things wrong with this notion on the banking side. One is that the result may very well be less "100 (assets) = 75 (liabilities) + 25 (equity)" than "77 (assets) = 75 (liabilities) + 2 (equity)". The example numbers are purely arbitrary. But the point is that the zombie banks may wind up with such a thin equity margin that they will still be near-zombie banks. The other problem is that the same management teams that ran their companies into zombie bank conditions will still be managing them.

And that's the optimistic view. Although the government is offering investors buying the toxic assets a deal that basically provides them a lot of upside potential but minimizes the downside risk for them. The taxpayers eat the downside. And pumping up the market value of the toxic assets by such arrangements still don't make the underlying mortgage assets on the toxic paper any better. It would artifically boost the book value of toxic assets still held by the banks and thus artifically inflate their equity condition. Krugman thinks this is because of an excessive faith by Obama and his team The Market Mystique (New York Times Online03/27/09):

But it has become increasingly clear over the past few days that top officials in the Obama administration are still in the grip of the market mystique. They still believe in the magic of the financial marketplace and in the prowess of the wizards who perform that magic.

What really needs to happen, even under the Geithner plan, is an honest evaluation of the underlying assets, the loan tapes, as Jamie Galbraith explains in James K. Galbraith Re[s]ponds to Geithner’s Toxic Asset Plan Firedoglake 03/21/09.

I think this piece by Josh Marshall Social Contract Under Strain TPM 03/26/09 does a pretty poor job of analyzing the public criticism of the AIG bonuses. For instance, he writes:

As much as I think some exec paychecks are obscene and point to real imbalances in our economy, I'm really leery of limits on pay levels in private companies. To the extent that executives are paid too much, it seems like a broader issue of poor corporate governance, since shareholders shouldn't be willing to pay executives obscenely more than they're worth. But that's sort of the point: shareholders, in practice, exert little real control over this sort of thing. (And I suspect, though I don't know enough about this stuff to know, that that's the case because in the post-1980 stock market, investors are much less concerned about the functioning of the companies -- in a direct sense -- than their ability to drive stock valuations.)

He seems to be arguing here that because the private corporate governance system doesn't address substantial corporate problems nearly as well as "free market" theory would like us to believe, then it's probably not right for the public to worry about it at the nearly-completely-government-owned AIG.

But that's the point. Those compensation systems are a key problem in corporate governance, whether the big players like pension funds that actually act as stockholder activists are focusing enough on them or not. And it's a problem that creates much broader problems for the economy as a whole. Our democratic government should be acting as responsible stockholders by addressing that problem, however poor a job private stockholders may be doing at it. And the social equity issue is real, however uncomfortable it makes Josh or other reporters to hear people (labor unions, dirty hippie bloggers, etc.) talk about it.

Gene Lyons, on the other hand, gives good marks to Obama's presentation on 60 Minutes this past Sunday in Obama rolls the dice Arkansas Democrat-Gazette 03/26/09 and has a better understanding of why the public objections to the AIG bonuses are significant:

Obama did a decent job explaining why we've got to hold our collective noses and deal with AIG, Citicorp, etc. Basically, it's not possible to invent a new world banking system from scratch without risking a catastrophic depression.

People gripe about, say, Manny Ramirez making $25 million to play left field. But if Manny hits .147, he's out of baseball. These AIG jokers hit a lot worse than that. To put it another way, if a plumber caused a gas leak that burned an AIG aristocrat's Disneyland-sized mansion down, they'd call it criminal negligence.

He also has some harsh words for the shabby attempt by Obama staffers hiding behind anonymity which the New York Times should not be granting for such things to blame Sen. Chris Dodd for the AIG bonuses. Obama's team needs to be building alliances with the fighting Dems in the Congress, not alienating them, because there are plenty of Dems there who would be content to just just serve their favorite corporate lobbyists and not have to worry about all this annoying popular-outrage-by-the-stupid-voters part.

Tags: us economy

Waist deep in the Big (Afghan) Muddy?

The Associated Press is running a story it says is based on multiple sources familiar with the Afghanistan War plan Obama is scheduled to announce Friday. According to those sources, Obama is concerned about the rapid deterioration of the NATO position there and plans to increase the number of troops even beyond the 17,000 he recently decided to add.

I hope they have more in mind that just straight escalation. But it's sounding a lot like that. The story does quote the Secretary of State:

"It is an integrated military-civilian strategy," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters in Monterrey, Mexico. "We are convinced that the most critical underpinning of any success we hope to achieve, along with the people and government of Afghanistan, will be looking at where civilian trainers, aid workers, technical assistance of all kinds can be best utilized."

The problem is that after a year or so in Iraq, everyone learned they had to make at least a rhetorical nod to the idea of a combined civilian-military strategy. It's also a way for our infallible generals to claim they did everything right but those blankety-blank politicians back home screwed things up.

Former diplomat William Polk (a direct descendant of President James K. Polk) spoke to the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) on Afghanistan this week. The Nation's Katrina Vanden Heuvel reports on his presentation:

"I look in vain for a place where we have succeeded militarily against guerilla warfare," he said. "… I think the more people we put in there, the more people are going to get shot at." He said Afghans who help Americans will be viewed in the same way as Loyalists during the American Revolutionary War -- they were despised even more than the British.

Even more powerful, however, were the lessons Polk drew from his experiences with Vietnam. "Always the idea was with a few more troops and a little more time we will solve the problem," he said. "… We were so sure that we knew how to do everything in Vietnam." He said the extent to which we didn't know what we were doing was made abundantly clear when a Marine Corps Colonel informed Polk that one could purchase a tank in the marketplace in downtown Saigon.

"The government that we were trying to promote was so corrupt that they were selling their opponents all the arms to kill us with," Polk said. He noted the corruption today in the Karzai government -- its involvement in the drug trade, for example -- and the consequent willingness of more and more Afghans to once again accept the Taliban as an alternative that "doesn't steal." ...

"We have to recognize that we have inherited an incredibly fragile, fragile position to try to build on…." Polk said. "We have to try to find ways to make that transitional period [of withdrawal] as smooth as we possibly can. But we have to be very straightforward in recognizing it's not going to be easy, and it's not going to be simple. And we're not going to end up with the kind of [government] that we'd like to have theoretically."

The CPC's Web site has Chapter 11 of Polk's book Violent Politics: A History of Insurgency, Terrorism, and Guerrilla War, from the American Revolution to Iraq (2007) available at its Web site, "The Afghan Resistance to the British and the Russians". This is a part of his description of the Soviet war in Afghanistan:

Most of the native opponents of the Russians were Muslim fundamentalists. Some were Sunni Muslims and others were Shiis. While all fought in the name of Islam, they fought separately by village or tribe. They were joined by foreign volunteers from Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and other Muslim areas. Of these volunteers, the best known is Osama bin Ladin, who came from Saudi Arabia. While the fundamentalists took American help and welcomed foreign aid 'workers and particularly doctors - and occasional journalists in the hope of creating favorable comment in the Western press - they made no secret of the fact that they hated with almost equal fervor both the Russians and the Americans. The Americans, in Afghan eyes, were just a new generation of Englishmen, intent on dominating their country and destroying their way of life. ...

Unlike most of the insurgencies I have studied, the Afghan insurgency was motivated neither by nationalism nor by ideology. It defined itself in terms of its enemy. The enemy was not so much Communism as Russia, and not only Russia alone but all foreigners. The Afghans accepted outside help but did so reluctantly and without affection for the donors. Xenophobia must be considered to have been a major motivation. Insofar as it was refined into something like an ideology, it was defined by Islam. But it was not religion, per se, that seems to have most motivated people: it was the Afghan "way," the social code that was encapsulated in Islam that Afghans felt was being attacked and that they determined to protect. As a Hezb-i Islami commander told the English visitor Peregrine Hodson, "It is true that Afghanis is a poor country, but the most precious thing we have is our faith; without it we have nothing. We are fighting to protect our religion." [my emphasis]

The special situation in the world just after the 9/11 attacks may, may have presented an opportunity for foreign forces to accomplish a lot more than they have since then. But that opportunity, if it ever existed, is long past.

Polk also observes of the Russians' treatment of captured fighters, "Prisoners were summarily shot since the Russians claimed that they were illegal enemy combatants not covered by the Geneva Conventions." The mujaheddin followed a similar practice with Russian prisoners.

Tags: afghanistan war, william polk

Is nuclear power the salvation of the Earth?

Stewart Brand

I heard a presentation last week from Stewart Brand, publisher of the legendary Whole Earth Catalog and who ranks as kind of an ur-hippie because of that. But to my surprise, the main part of his presentation was to hype nuclear power as the the solution to climate problems. I don't buy his argument at all. But it did inspire me to start paying more attention to the latest hype from the nuclear lobby.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which became an online-only publication starting this year, is a great source on the topic. Thomas Cochran in this article argues that Safety and carbon mitigation must be top energy priorities, not advanced nuclear energy projects 02/05/09. He defines the key problems as follows: "proliferation; the risk of another catastrophic nuclear plant accident; spent fuel/high-level waste disposal; and poor economics."

To hear Stewart Brand tell it, none of those are problems worth bothering about. Proliferation? Why, we're dismantling all the nuclear weapons! No proliferation to worry about any more. Waste disposal? Shoot, we've got these super-cool invulnerable storage tanks that will last forever. Poor economics? It's because all these dang environmentalist keep insisting on all these safety regulations and stuff. Chernobyl? Three Mile Island? What kind of superstitious wimps worry about those?

He wasn't quite that crass in expressing it. But close. He's certainly drunk the nuclear lobby's Kool-Aid. And wants the rest of it us to drink it, too. His presentation could have been straight from a nuclear company's PR department.

I got the impression that Brand is impressed by the whiz-bang possibilities of the technology. And maybe if it were all being run by cyborgs like those in the Terminator stories, it would be fine. But then, those cyborgs don't really care about the human race surviving. In fact, they are mostly out to wipe out the human race because their master computer Skynet thinks humans are a threat to the planet. And it kind of has a point, but that's another story.

Terminator cyborg

But until Skynet and the cyborgs take over, those whiz-bang nuclear facilities have to be constructed and operated by human beings. And that's part of the problem. Cochran writes:

The most important factor affecting the safety of existing nuclear power plants isn't their design, but the safety culture at the plant. It's difficult to assess whether any of these nuclear plants is safe enough because the probability of a severe accident depends on many technical and human factors that are difficult to measure. Nevertheless, U.S. nuclear plants on the whole are safer today than they were two decades ago primarily because U.S. nuclear plant safety culture has improved. If another catastrophic nuclear accident occurs, it will likely be in one of several countries with demonstrably poor nuclear safety culture. Also, few, if any, of the states that are planning to construct their first nuclear power plant have adequate nuclear regulatory regimes and in several of these countries there is no evidence that a robust safety culture is in store. Thus, Washington and the nuclear industry should concentrate on improving the regulatory regimes and safety culture in these other countries. [my emphasis]

I accept it as an unfortunately fact that there is going to be an increase in the number of nuclear power plants in the developing world. But I don't want to see additional nuclear plants in the United States. And pretending it's going to be the salvation of the planet is fantasy.

And, oh yeah, it's not only failed banks that have their hands out for federal handouts:

The domestic nuclear power industry is confronting two big economic dilemmas. In the United States, new nuclear power plants are uneconomical when compared to other electricity generating technologies and improvements in end-use efficiency; and the unit costs of new nuclear plants are so high that they cannot be privately financed. It appears likely that construction of new plants will remain cost prohibitive until the price of carbon emissions exceeds $50 per ton of carbon dioxide. The nuclear industry, through its congressional boosters, has already received large federal subsidies and loan guarantees to support the construction of a few new nuclear plants. It has received additional subsidies from states and local governments.

Now the industry is returning to Congress for more taxpayer largess, claiming that it is needed to mitigate climate change and provide for jobs under the economic stimulus plan. We should reject this "lemon socialism" approach. The economically efficient way to mitigate climate change is to internalize the cost of carbon emissions through a cap-and-trade program or by carbon tax. We shouldn't subsidize the construction of new nuclear power plants, thereby penalizing alternatives that can provide climate-change mitigation quicker, safer, and cheaper. Subsidizing new nuclear plants is one of the least productive means to create jobs or to stimulate the economy in the next year or two, a key criterion of the stimulus package. [my emphasis]

Tags: global climate change, nuclear power, nuclear proliferation, stewart brand

Obama and the Establishment press, Week 9

David Gregory worries about the terribly unfair criticism of Wall Street bonuses

This past week, or at least the one that ended on Saturday, may have been a rather historic one media-wise. Bob "The Daily Howler" Somerby wrote in his 03/20/09 column, "Few weeks will show our political culture’s inanity as clearly as this week did."

David "Bobo" Brooks was still hyping the Obama-is-trying-to-do-too-much theme this past week in Perverse Cosmic Myopia New York Times Online 03/19/09. He does praise the administration's position at the G-20 summit. He gripes about European countries not going along. But he notes that some of them "some reject the idea of using fiscal policy to end recessions", which Bobo declares a meritorious position.

And, being a neocon, he can't seem to resist a 1930s/Second World War analogy:

Many people used to wonder how the world’s leaders could be so myopic at various points in history - like during the Versailles Treaty or the turmoil of the 1930s. We don’t have to wonder any more. We get to watch the cosmic myopia replay itself in our own times.

So now the world economic crisis is "Hitler", too?

Meet the Press on Sunday showed our press corps on display in their role of courtiers to private wealth and power. David Gregory's guests were New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Pennsylvania's Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell, and California's Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. These state and local officials have an interest to promote Obama's infrastructure programs, which they did because that was the focus of their interview. They made mostly straightforwardly pragmatic and generally unmemorable comments.

Tom Brokaw and Erin Burnett were on the last hour to discuss economic recovery measures, a painful display. What caught my attention was the priorities and perceptions the Great Pundits there put on display. Boyish-faced David Gregory was concerned that the President isn't doing enough to defend the failed financial geniuses of Wall Street:

MR. GREGORY: ... When this AIG business came along here and it really blew up this week, the response has been taxes. The House has passed a measure to go back and sort of claw back these bonuses, get 90 percent in taxes. Republicans and Democrats have raised their voices to say the tax code should not be used punitively like this. There's talk of trying to publicly out the people who received these bonuses. Is this the right response? ...

MR. GREGORY: David Brooks writes about this in The New York Times on Friday when he talks about the shortsightedness of this outrage over AIG. He writes this: "The Washington political class has spent the past week going into made-for-TV hysterics over $165 million in AIG bonuses. We're in the middle of a multitrillion-dollar crisis, and our political masters...have decided to risk destroying the entire bank-rescue plan because of bonuses that account for 0.001 percent of the annual GDP."

Governor Schwarzenegger, California's harder hit than almost any, any part of the country. Do you think the populism, the populist anger in the country is good or bad for the country at this point? ...

MR. GREGORY: You're talking about being more positive. President Obama faces great leadership challenges with regard to this economic crisis, and he spoke in, in the context of taxpayers' frustration, bailout fatigue and just anger. Back in--during his address to Congress February 24th, this is what he said.

(Videotape, February 24, 2009)

PRES. OBAMA: I also know that in a time of crisis we cannot afford to govern out of anger or yield to the politics of the moment.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY: And yet the politics of the moment this week, all about outrage over AIG. This is what he said Wednesday.

(Videotape, Wednesday)

PRES. OBAMA: I don't want to quell anger. I think people are right to be angry. I'm angry. What I want us to do, though, is channel our anger in a constructive way.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY: Is he keeping his promise of not governing in anger? ...

MR. GREGORY: But, Mayor Bloomberg, you've made the point repeatedly in the course of our conversation. We know about a startling figure, $2 trillion at least is how much the banks have lost on their balance sheets from these impaired assets. The taxpayers have to do something about that. The president has said there's $750 billion in the budget for additional bailout money. He's got a steep hill to climb because of that. AIG makes it worse. A lot of critics say look, if you were opposed to the bonuses several months ago when they came to light, you could've fought to renegotiate those contracts to deny the bonuses. If you think they weren't that big of a deal or you wanted to avoid a lawsuit, then maybe the responsibility now is not to feed the anger, but to try to put it into perspective and say, "Look, we have to make priorities. You can't get so mad about this. We've got to think about the long term." What should he be doing? ...

MR. GREGORY: I understand. But I want to interrupt you because I'm asking you a very direct question about, look, the three of you around this table represent 56 million people. You're leaders, you're communicators. This is a leadership question for the president of the United States. There is rampant anger in the country. We've talked about the fact, I mean, a lot of people have legitimate claims. Is his responsibility now to try to tamp down that anger, or has he allowed himself to get caught up in it for political reasons? [my emphasis]

In his interviews with the officials, Gregory also got to do his usual routines for which he and his compatriots live like the gotcha points and horse-race-type speculation. Having to talk about all this economic policy stuff is just sooo-oooo boring for them. But they do know enough about it to defend the investment bankers from the outrage of having their practices and results questioned by the grubby citizens out there.

One pundit theme that stands out from that Meet the Press episode is that the issue AIG bonuses is trivial, not for Serious People to be bothered about, nothing to see here, folks, move right along. Gregory made the point repeatedly in the bolded passage above during the first half of the program, and quoted Bobo Brooks making the same point. This anger is just so inappropriate in the eyes of our media princes and princesses. During the second half, the pod pundits continued to make that point:

MR. GREGORY: And yet the leadership question for the president of the United States boils down to how do you try to lead people out of this under such difficult circumstance? The president said a couple of weeks ago, "We can't govern in anger," and yet again this week, on Monday, he was talking about AIG specifically. Listen to this.

(Videotape, Monday)

PRES. OBAMA: In the last six months AIG has received substantial sums from the U.S. Treasury, and I've asked Secretary Geithner to use that leverage and pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses and make the American taxpayers whole.

Everybody involved needs to understand this is not just a matter of dollars and sense. It's about our fundamental values.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY: So the question then, Tom, if it's a question of fundamental values, then why, when the bonuses came up several months ago, did the government not say, "Hold on. We're going to renegotiate the terms of the deal here if we're going to give you an additional $30 billion"?

MR. BROKAW: I don't have an answer for that, and neither do the people who didn't do that at that time. I'm also struck by how many members of Congress who now have all the outrage that we see in these public hearings, Democrats and Republicans alike, who are up shaking the money tree every opportunity they got for campaign contributions. We don't hear a lot of them talking about, "I'm going to send that money back," by the way. So I think everybody is at fault here. And what we need is some statesmanship on both sides. I think we need the president to step up his game, but we also need on the Republican side for people to say, "Look, we made some mistakes when we were in power, as well." We had that enormous deficit projected by the Congressional Budget Office last week, which is going to have our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren paying it off for a long time. We're all in this together. One of the things that helped Franklin Roosevelt in the first 100 days is that some really hardback Republicans said, "The president wants this. I think we have to go forward and get it to get the country out of this." You don't see very much of that going on in Washington now. [my emphasis]

Brokaw's response didn't make much sense. But then neither did Gregory's question. Brokaw seemed to be trying to direct the conversation onto the Holy Grail of the Big Pundits, that sacred bipartisanship. And, according to him, the problem why the silly citizens are focusing on the AIG bonuses - which the press merrily hyped all week, of course - is because of the deficit of "statesmanship on both sides".

Gregory's gotcha point against Obama, which was essentially the same one he used in the first segment, was so weak one would think the average high school student could see the fault in it. Governing in anger and recognizing the public's anger over and issue are obviously two different things. That segment showed Obama saying, " I don't want to quell anger. I think people are right to be angry. I'm angry. What I want us to do, though, is channel our anger in a constructive way." And Gov. Rendell explained the obvious point to Great Pundit Gregory:

Well, I think he said to channel our anger in a constructive way. Look, I think it's a bigger issue than the momentary anger, and God knows we all have to understand what people are feeling. We've got to change the corporate culture in this country.

It was hard to tell how much the chatter among the three pundits in the second segment was direct recitation of Republican talking points, which seemed to the case with Erin Burnett especially, or just a mentality of deference to private wealth and power that makes them react to even the most obviously sensible measures proposed by Democrats to restrain the blundering banks in our failed financial system right now as the storming of the Bastille.

Salon's invaluable Glenn Greenwald discusses this set of concerns by our Beltway pundits The virtues of public anger and the need for more 03/21/09.

But the idea of buying up the toxic assets from the banks who created them, a measure of highly questionable benefit to the economy but one which will reward the banks at the expense of the public, now that idea they find all warm and fuzzy:

MS. ERIN BURNETT: As you said, at long last, finally, and we hope it works. Basically you could say this is just a return to what Hank Paulson had proposed last fall when he originally said, "Give me the money, we're going to buy these assets from the banks." Now they're trying to be a little bit more sophisticated about it, but the bottom line is this: they're going to try to get investors to come in, put in a little bit of money, put in some taxpayer money, give some inexpensive loans to those investors and buy the loans from the banks. And if it works, that would mean the banks have some freed up space to make more loans. And that's if it works. I don't think you should expect it to be a mammoth endeavor at first.

None of them showed evidence of being aware of the greatest risk of the proposal, which is that the assets have to be valued at some price for a sale. If they are set at market value, i.e., close to zero, then several major banks like Citigroup and Bank of America would be shown to be technically insolvent, requiring the federal government to take them over as failed companies. And the whole point of buying bad assets is really to avoid that eventuality.

On the other hand, if the government values the "toxic assets" at higher than market value, they will be essentially giving most of that money to the banks holding the toxic assets. It will allow the banks to stay technically solvent longer without resolving the problems that have made them "zombie banks".

And one of those problems is the compensation structure of which those controversial bonuses are a major part. Not only does the legal structure for the stock market create an incentive for public companies to boost short-term stock prices at the expense of longer-term investments. But the current laws and corporate practices create an incentive for senior executives to effectively loot their own companies (though normally by legal means) for their own benefit and even more severely ignore the company's long-term needs.

Brokaw again seems in his response to ignore Gregory's follow-up question to Burnett's comment and go in a different direction:

MR. GREGORY: The reality though, Tom, is that if the banks do this at a lower cost, what they think it's worth, they're going to lose some money. So taxpayers have to wonder, will there have to be additional capital provided by the government to keep the banks afloat?

MR. TOM BROKAW: Well, I think we're dealing with two elements here. First of all, politically the secretary of the Treasury, Tim Geithner, needs to get on the board. He needs to have a victory. And speak in March Madness terms, you know, he needs to move to the next round. And the president's going to have to help him more than he has in the past. When it comes to how the banks respond to this and how the country responds to it, a Wall Street friend of mine who is very friendly to this administration sent me an e-mail over the weekend and said, "Look, we didn't have a good sign last week when the Federal Reserve came out with that is called TALF." Now, this sounds like hieroglyphics, but they were making money available, backing it up with student loans and other things, and there was a kind of an anemic response to that.

MS. BURNETT: Mm-hmm.

MR. BROKAW: And what has happened is a lot of these financial institutions, David, are saying, "I'm not sure I want to go there. Because if Congress is going to tee me up two days later..."

MR. GREGORY: Right.

MR. BROKAW: "...and add additional conditions to it, that's not something I want to do."

MR. GREGORY: You've said before, Erin, what the market wants, what Wall Street wants, what investors want is clarity.

MS. BURNETT: Mm-hmm.

MR. GREGORY: And that's what the intervention by Congress has taken away when you change the rules of the road down the line. It's also important to remember there's a lot of money in this economy, but it's on the sidelines because people don't want the risk. But this is a real factor.

MS. BURNETT: It is. And by the way, in terms of money on the sidelines, there's a record. I mean, everyone watching has probably been, whatever money they have, putting it in their bank account as opposed to investing it. That is money on the sidelines. It, it's at a record. But in terms of the rules, this week I think the thing that was most frightening for these potential investors was the retroactivity of the House bill.

MR. BROKAW: Mm-hmm.

MS. BURNETT: That they could say, "Not just are we going to change the rules on you today as opposed to what we promised yesterday, but we can go back and say we're going to tax you on what you earned last year or the year before." And that is a risk that just is unacceptable and would prevent the private capital from coming in. [my emphasis]

I'm not sure how it's "retroactive" if we're talking about taxes on current year's income, which is what the AIG bonuses that were paid out about a week ago are. But no need for a Big Pundit to explain when reciting Republican talking points.

Burnett also seems to think that it's a shocking concept that a mere Secretary of the Treasury should tell some Wall Street titan that a suggestion of the titan's might not work:

MS. BURNETT: Yes, there is. And it was interesting watching your roundtable before, how the governors, all of whom are very respected in financial circles, were, were defending him. I, I spent a lot of time this weekend talking to Wall Street CEOs and executives. All of them supported Tim Geithner and all of them still say this is a man who understands what he's doing. They respect his intelligence and his knowledge of the complexity. They don't want someone in there who doesn't have those characteristics. That being said, some of them said they are very disappointed not just with the--some of the charisma challenges that he has had, but with this specifically, which is he asks for them to bring plans. You know, "Show me some ideas," and then sort of says, "Hey, they may not work." What they miss is the proactivity and the creativity of a Hank Paulson, where he said, "Here's an idea, take a look at it," and sort of, "Let's get this done." There is some real criticism on that, and that is a new thing from those executives. [my emphasis]

In this part, the defenders of exorbitant Wall Street bonuses remind us that they are in touch with the regular people at the same moment they cite their own corporate CEO as though he were uttering the wisdom of the ages:

MR. BROKAW: Well, it's not just the psychology, but how businesses are responding to these circumstances that they find themselves in. Not just how they're downsizing, but how they're positioning themselves for the new economy. Not just because he's my boss, but Jeff Immelt of GE has had the best single line that I know: "It's not a cycle," he says, "it's a reset." And it's a reset not just economically, it's a reset culturally, it's a reset politically, it's a reset in terms of our expectations. So Highway 50 goes from eastern Maryland all the way out to the California coast, touches most of the political bases in this country, and I've always believed as long as I've been a journalist, and I've been covering Washington for 40 years now, that we don't hear enough from there back this way. That it's always, "We talk, you listen," in Washington. People want to be heard now. They've got something to say, they're tuned in and they've said, in effect, to people in Washington and Wall Street, "You've had your turn..."

MR. GREGORY: Hm.

MR. BROKAW: "...and look where we are."

MR. GREGORY: And the reality is that whatever recovery looks like...

MS. BURNETT: Mm-hmm.

MR. GREGORY: ...it's going to be a lot different. The notion that wealth comes back, that it's a return to where we were is simply fiction.

MS. BURNETT: It is. I mean, you say Route 50, by the way, I grew up on Route 50.

MR. BROKAW: Yeah. You did?

MS. BURNETT: Actually in eastern Maryland. So that was--when you say that, oh, yeah. [my emphasis]

"It's not a cycle, it's a reset" is the best line Tom Brokaw knows? Burnett continues immediately to explain how here down-home, in-touch-with-her-roots outlook lets her sees that the pitifull masses are going to have to stop living so extravangently:

It is, though, a complete reset, and I think Jeff Immelt's right in saying that. When we're trying to talk about can we get lending--all of these acronym plans we're talking about are trying to reinflate the economy. And the question is, can it be reinflated? We had expectations that we were going to have three cars in every driveway. Well, we're probably not going to have three cars in every driveway. We might have two cars, we might even have one car. There's going to be a different standard of living. And how much lower will that be than where we were a year ago? Fundamentally nobody knows, and that is the uncertainty that you see. And in these little specific fights we see over bonus compensation or over a Treasury plan or--that's what all of these fights are about, is about that bigger question and the uncertainty we all feel. [my emphasis]

In the Web-only Take Two segment, of which there doesn't seem to be a transcript available at the MSNBC site, the three pundits came about as close as their crew ever come to admitting that they don't really understand the economic issues on which they are pretending to report:

GREGORY: Well, there's also an aspect of this that I think is important, also a challenge for the news media, but it's a challenge for everybody. And that is that the, the carnage that you're talking about, Tom, is so complex that people who are in don't understand the full range of the complexity but certainly a lot of Americans simply don't understand the complexity of what led us to this point or necessarily how we get out of it.

BURNETT: I think that's true. And what has amazed me is that even on Wall Street don't understand it. People who you think should, because they were creating because they were creating a lot of the complexity themselves, really don't.

BROKAW: ... liquidity puts [chuckles]

BURNETT: I'm mean, right, well, they have all these, all these words. But, but I would say this, that, that, that, how we get out of this from here is actually an interesting point, that, the areas where it is worse, and the areas that are creating the carnage, as you say, still remain focused in the areas where housing prices surged the most.

But Gregory doesn't seem to take it as a factor in the public's understaning of these issues the job that the news media on which most of us rely to try to understand these things do such a poor job explaining it. So, for instance, we have the humiliated stock-market-hype cable channel CNBC being praised by Brokaw in this Take Two segment. (CNBC is Burnett's regular gig!) We have three Big Pundits - Gregory, Brokaw and Burnett - who all but admit they don't know what they're talking about on economic policy, spending 30 minutes on the lead Sunday morning news program talking about it instead of bringing on some economists, finance experts, or financial writers who actually might be able to explain some of it. Instead, we get Brokaw quoting an inane saying from Chairman Immelt as the core of wisdom on the economic crisis.

Tags: establishment press, mainstream media, mainstream press

Afghanistan War

I know I'm starting to sound dogmatically grumpy about the American press. Maybe I should stop reading the Daily Howler for a couple of weeks.

But the fact is that our corporate news media are becoming a bigger and bigger problem for the functioning of democracy. Democracy really does require an informed voting population. And our news reporting is at times downright strange.

I've been following the issue of Spain's planned withdrawal from Kosovo. You can find it in the American news but you kind of have to know that it happened to be able to find it. And, come to think of it, the English-language reporting I've seen on it came from Reuters.

It's become a bit of a flap in Spain's internal daily politics. The opposition conservatives complain that the Socialist President (prime minister) José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and Carme Chacón, Spain's first female Defense Minister, handled the announcement poorly by not giving the proper notification to the US and the other NATO countries. A State Department spokesman slapped their hands in a public statement the other day, though not mentioning any Spanish officials by name.

As I've said before, it's hard to know exactly what's behind it. There may have just been a bit of a diplomatic goof. But the basic issue is that Cheney and Bush insisted on pushing for formal Kosovo independence against the official United Nations status of Kosovo as part of Serbia and against the not insignificant opposition of Russia. One consequence is that Spain has not recognized Kosovo and decided that it wasn't appropriate to have troops there under those conditions. The timing of the announcement was awkward from some points of view. It comes a few days before an official visit from Serbia. And also just before Obama's first in-person European conference.

Spain has been an active part of NATO's KFOR mission in Kosovo. And also plays a significant role in the Afghanistan War. Which may be one reason why their news actually focused on what Obama said this weekend about that war. This editorial, Viraje estratégico El País 24.03.2009, discusses the war with a different set of facts, or at least a different framing of them, than I recall hearing from the American mainstream press.

Maybe that's because our media is more interested in manufacturing non-existent Obama "gaffes" than in reporting a war in which American troops are fighting and dying: Eric Boehlert at the County Fair blog discusses what our sad media focused on in Obama's interview Sunday in Who wouldn't have laughed at Steve Kroft's absurd question? 03/23/09.

The El País editorial not only discusses Obama's statement in that interview that we need an exit strategy from the Afghanistan War. It also makes the interpretation that Obama has in fact already reduced the scope of American goals in Afghanistan. Or, more specifically, it says that Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced a change in the mission this past January by saying that democratizing Afghanistan would no longer be a goal, and that the mission would instead concentrate on fighting "Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations" along the Pakistani border.

The editorial also points out that the increase in the number of US troops already announced isn't necessarily inconsistent with a narrower mission. If Obama were to announce a firm deadline for something like full US military withdrawal in, say, two years, that could conceivably require a short-term increase in troops, as well.

The Spanish flap over the Kosovo withdrawal is relevant here. Because, whether Zapatero's government intended it that way or not, it's a reminder that the US is dependent on NATO allies including Spain in the Afghanistan War (which I notice the press and expert commentators are starting to call the Afghan War now). And that the patience of European publics for endless and hopeless warfare there may not be great as that of the Beltway Village.

The nature of the mission is a more important point than one would gather from the skimpy US reporting on the war. Former CBS star Dan Rather has a Daily Beast column called What Obama Doesn't Know About Afghanistan 03/23/09. It doesn't inspire the greatest confidence in his analysis that he opens by saying that the more times he visits Afghanistan, the less he knows about it. Or, more specifically, "The more you go there, the more you know how much you don’t know."

With that ambiguous declaration of authority, Rather makes a set of recommendations, the first of which sounds like sober Realism, at least at first glance:

In pursuing this war, the U.S. needs to go big and go long or go home. To succeed within the parameters we have laid out for ourselves in Afghanistan will take a much longer military commitment and the spending of a lot more money over greater time than most people have been led to believe. Consider, for example, a report in the New York Times that even members of President Obama’s national-security team were taken aback by the projected cost of expanding the Afghan army.

Making a strong and enduring commitment in blood and money may be worth it - what we have done in and for South Korea, where we have been engaged militarily and financially for more than 60 years, is one starting point for consideration. But we can have no illusions, and we have not yet had a candid and meaningful national debate about what it may take to achieve our goals in Afghanistan. We have not thoughtfully considered, as a nation, whether we want to do this and whether we can do it even if we choose to. [my emphasis]

The problem with the "first glance" impression is that this was very current and relevant advice for 2001, when the Cheney-Bush administration was making the original decision to go to war there. (Back around that time, newsman Dan Rather was saying, "When my country's at war, I'm at war.") We're now in our eighth year of war in Afghanistan, and the friendly government we installed barely controls the capital city. And there have been press rumors that the new administration would like to dump Hamid Karzai as the President there.

In those circumstance, the circumstances in which we actually find ourselves right now, to say that "we have not yet had a candid and meaningful national debate about what it may take to achieve our goals in Afghanistan" is not so much a challenge to careful thinking as it is an admission that all we can do is salvage something from a mostly wasteful war with dubious practical results, at least since the initial strikes on actual Al Qa'ida trooop/cadre concentrations.

The final of Rather's four recomendations on that war is this:

Finally, we need to better utilize the resources we have in Afghanistan. Women are the group that suffered the most under Taliban rule and, if enough of their voices can be heard and they can be empowered to matter, they could provide an invaluable bulwark against the Taliban's return. Putting a heavy emphasis on improving conditions for women, children, and families is imperative. Some will say this can’t be done in an Islamic society as deeply traditional as that of Afghanistan. But where there’s a will there’s a way.

This is, frankly, a colonialist way of thinking, that we can simply impose our ideas of culture, no matter how transcendentally valuable they may be, on an unwilling and hostile population. It is just another variation of the same foolish arrogance of power that made Rummy think that after the Taliban government was chased out of Kabul that the war was pretty much over and we could move on to new blitzkrieg regime-change strikes in Iraq, Iran and Syria.

The idea that we are going to radically improve conditions for Afghan women and children by bombing their villages for 10 more years (with our smart bombs that never kill innocents, of course) is an invitation to new disasters. And, honestly, is a country that allowed Cheney and Bush to get away with an eight-year political jihad against Constitutional government in the US actually capable of installing a democracy in Afghanistan? Much less raising the status of women to the Western level?

What Rather recommends would be a huge expansion of the NATO mission there. And, as enlightened as it sounds in his formulation, several real-world experiences are relevant. One is that American politicians normally show a pointed interest in the conditions of women in Muslim countries only when we are getting ready to go to war against them. The Republican administration for the previous eight years voted consistently with the Vatican and conservative Muslim countries on international issues related to women's rights, AIDS prevention, birth control and abortion.

Iraq prior to the current war was known for having the highest relative status of women in any Arab country; it would take blind faith to imagine that between the destruction of their country and the religious sectarianizing of the country's politics that Iraqi women on the whole are better off now, or will be for decades to come. Finally, in Afghanistan in the 1980s, that Soviet Russian Commie Evil Empire did seriously try to improve the condition of women in that country. And that became one of the main grievances against the USSR that motivated Afghan men to join the Muslim terrorist groups fighting the Soviets. Although back then the US supported the Muslim terrorist groups opposing women's rights and secular government, greatly boosting their military capabilities and spawning a new kind of Muslim Terrorist International. But we did give those groups a nicer name back then. We called them brave, independent mujahideen freedom fighters instead of evil Muslim terrorists.

Tags: barack obama

Obama, the Afghanistan War and Cheney's "movement"

The President gave an interview to 60 Minutes last night. So the beings who make up our "press corps" focused on what was important and significant in it: Following Politico's lead, media fixate on Obama's "awkward laughter" in 60 Minutes interview Media Matters 03/23/09. The transcript is available here.

But there were a couple of things Obama said that caught my attention in particular. One was when he was talking about the Afghanistan War he said, "And there's gotta be an exit strategy. There - there's gotta be a sense that this is not perpetual drift."

That was the story from the interview as reported by the Vienna paper Der Standard Online, Obama will Exit-Strategie 23.03.2009 and in Spain's El País, Obama propondrá una estrategia de salida para la guerra afgana de Yolanda Monge 24.03.2009.

We'll see what the strategy is that he settles on soon. I expect him to continue a policy of escalation, which I think is a major mistake. But I'm still hoping to be pleasantly surprised.

The other thing that particularly caught my attention was this:

STEVE KROFT:A week ago Vice President Cheney-- said essentially that your willingness to shut down Guantanamo and to change the way prisoners are treated and interrogator-- interrogated-- was making America weaker and more vulnerable to another attack. And that-- the interrogation techniques that were used at Guantanamo were essential in preventing another attack against the United States.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I fundamentally disagree with Dick Cheney. Not surprisingly. You know, I think that-- Vice President Cheney has been-- at the head of a-- movement whose notion is somehow that we can't reconcile our core values, our Constitution, our belief that we don't torture, with our national security interests. I think he's drawing the l-- wrong lesson from history.

The facts don't bear him out. I think he is-- that attitude, that philosophy has done incredible damage-- to our image and position in the world. I mean, the fact of the matter is after all these years how many convictions actually came out of Guantanamo? How many-- how many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney? It hasn't made us safer. What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment. Which means that there is constant effective recruitment of-- Arab fighters and Muslim fighters against U.S. interests all around the world. [my emphasis]

Obama was ambiguous on the status of "terrorist" suspects, for which dday rightly criticizes him in ... Hullabaloo blog 03/23/09. On the one hand, I hope Obama's formulation on that is part of a continuing move away from the Bush approach. But seeing is believing. The Geneva Convention distinctions between prisoners of war and criminal suspects should be enough.

But Obama made a definite case against the Cheney torture policy:

Well, I think we're going to have to figure out a mechanism to make sure that they not released and do us harm. But-- do so in a way that is consistent with both our traditions, sense of due process, international law. But this is-- this is the legacy that's been left behind. And, you know, I'm surprised that-- the Vice President is eager-- to defend-- a legacy that was unsustainable[.]

[L]et's assume that we didn't change these practices. How-- how long are we going to go? Are we going to just keep on going until-- you know, the entire Muslim world and Arab world-- despises us? Do we think that's really going to make us safer? I-- I don't know-- a lot of thoughtful thinkers, liberal or conservative-- who think that that was the right approach.

I was particularly struck by Obama's comment that "Cheney has been - at the head of a - movement whose notion is somehow that we can't reconcile our core values, our Constitution, our belief that we don't torture, with our national security interests."

I think there's some real significance to Obama's formulation. For one, he's saying that Dick Cheney, not Shrub Bush, was the head of this "movement". And he not only calls it a "movement", but a movement that opposes core American values and the Constitution itself.

I don't want to minimize Bush's responsibility for what happened, because after all he was the Decider. But it certainly seems to be the case that Cheney, not Bush, was the driving ideological and organizing force behind the authoritarian Unilateral Executive policies and foreign policy in general.

There's nothing extraordinary about the factual description that Obama gave there. It's a statement of the plain truth. But the fact that the President and the head of the Democratic Party is willing to formulate it this way does strike me as significant.

Tags: afghanistan+war, cheney, obama administration, torture

State Department unhappy about Spain withdrawing from Kosovo

Spain's announcement on Thursday that it was withdrawing its remaining troops from the NATO contingent known as KFOR later this year drew public criticism not only from NATO's Secretary-General but also from the US State Department: U.S. surprised by Spain troop decision on Kosovo Reuters 03/20/09; EEUU dice estar 'muy decepcionado' por la decisión de España de irse de Kosovo El Mundo 20.03.2009; Primer encontronazo con Obama de A. Caño y M. González El País 21.03.2009

Caño and González note that the State Department used "términos inusualmente duros en el lenguaje entre aliados" (terminology unusually harsh in the language among allies). Here was what State Department spokesman Robert Wood said about the matter in his press briefing of 03/20/09:

QUESTION: Any comment or reaction to Spain’s indication it’s going to pull its troops out of the Kosovo peacekeeping force?

MR. WOOD: Yeah, Lach. We are deeply disappointed by this decision taken by Spain. If you recall, in 1999, NATO allies agreed on the principle of “in together, out together.” And so we were surprised by this decision. And we learned of this decision just before it was announced publicly. And so again, deeply disappointed in this decision.

QUESTION: Do you share their view that the mission is essentially over – the Spanish view?

MR. WOOD: Not at all. Not at all.

QUESTION: Have they conveyed their reasoning for doing that?

MR. WOOD: I’d have to refer you to the Government of Spain for the reasoning behind this decision. But again, as I said, it’s deeply disappointing, and no more I can say about it.

Yes, Lach.

QUESTION: How reliable an ally are they if they’ve pulled out of Kosovo and, of course, they’ve pulled out of Iraq after an election, if I remember?

MR. WOOD: Well, Spain is a partner of ours. But this particular decision, as I said, it doesn’t help what we’ve been trying to do in Kosovo. And we regret it. It’s obviously a decision that the Spanish Government made, but nonetheless, we are deeply disappointed in it.

The EU Foreign Affairs Chief Javier Solana, himself a former Foreign Minister of Spain, also criticized the decision publicly, saying a collective decision among the allies involved would have been preferable. (Solana's full title is High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union; he also serves as the Secretary-General of the Council of the European Union.)

Spain's responses have been varied. The Spanish President (prime minister) José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero essentially said that Spain made an individual national decision to join the NATO force and is making an independent national decision to leave. Vice President María Teresa Fernández de la Vega said that the other allies had known for months that Spain was considering leaving.

It's hard to say how significant this is, or even what's going on with the public dispute, which doesn't seem to make much sense of face of it. I take the dispute as it's being publicly stated to mean that Spain decided to pull its troops this year, and the other NATO allies didn't want them to. In other words, a "collective" decision would have meant that Spain wouldn't be pulling out all its troops. And there seems to have been an agreement involved to leave them there a couple of months longer than Spain initially intended to when they made the decision.

Is more than that involved? It's entirely feasible to me that the Spanish government just decided that after 10 years, the NATO commitment was beginning to look like a permanent arrangement and they weren't interested in being part of it. There's also the fact that diplomatically, Spain is not in agreement with most of its EU partners and the US on recognition of Kosovo's independence. It would be kind of awkward on the face of it to have troops in a Kosovo defending a country and government that Spain doesn't recognize as a separate country and doesn't acknowledge the government as being the government of a sovereign nation.

I do wonder if part of this is a diplomatic signal to the US and other NATO countries that Spain - and other European countries - are willing to go along with the United States in an open-ended escalation of military operations in Afghanistan. The relative harshness of the official US reaction may be a way of putting pressure on Spain to maintain or increase its commitments to the Afghanistan War.

Tags: kosovo, spain

Helmut Zilk's dark side?

The Austrian weekly Profil is reporting that Helmut Zilk, the popular Social Democratic mayor of Vienna 1984-1994 who passed away in 2008, worked as a paid informant for the Czechoslovakian spy agency from 1965 to 1968: Helmut Zilk, Spion: Zilk war jahrelang Informant des CSSR-Geheimdienstes von Herbert Lackner 21.03.09. See also "Helmut Zilk war ein Ostspion": Eine Prager Zeitung besudelt den verstorbenen Wiener Bürgermeister Oe24.at 15.03.09.

Tags: austrian politics, helmut zilk, österreich

Watching what's happening (1934 version)

Der Jüdische Arbeiter 09.02.1934, a Zionist weekly newspaper published in Vienna, ran this short piece:

Die Gefahr des Hitlerismus und des Krieges

In einer gefahrerfüllten Stunde hat unsere Bewegung eine schwere Verantwortung für das Schicksal des Zionismus übernommen, schwerer als jede zuvor. Das Ungluck, das das deutsche Judentum betroffen hat, macht nicht Halt an den deutschen Grenzen[.] Hitlers Macht bringt das ganze jüdische Volk und nicht nur dieses in Gefahr.

Der Nationalsozialismus kampft nicht nur gegen die deutschen Juden, sondern gegen die Juden der ganzen Welt. Hitler breitet ein Netz von Agenten aus, um in allen Ländern das antisemitische Gift zu verbreiten.

Aber Hitler attackiert nicht nur die Juden. Das Hakenkreuzregime kann nicht lange bestehen, ohne Revanchekrieg gegen Frankreich und die übrigen Nachbarländer, oder ohne Krieg gegen Sowjetrussland. Heute wird Deutschland keinen Krieg beginnen, da es ungerüstet ist — aber es rüstet fur morgen.

[In an hour full of danger, our movement has taken upon ourselves a heavy responsibility for the fate of Zionism, heavier than ever before. The misfortune that has struck German Judaism, doesn't stop at the German borders. Hitler's power brings the entire Jewish people in danger, and not only they.

National Socialism [Nazism] doesn't fight only against the German Jews but also against the Jews of the entire world. Hitler is unfolding a net of agents to spread the anti-Semitic poison to all countries.

But Hitler will attack not only the Jews. The swastika regime cannot long survive without a revanchist war against France and the other neighboring countires, or without a war against Soviet Russia. Today German will not start a war because it is unarmed - but it is arming itself for tomorrow.]

Tags: anti-semitism, austria, germany, national socialism,, nazism, third reich

Which is worse?

I don't know which is worse in Sunday's New York Times. Maureen Dowd ranting about Michelle Obama's arms and arugula. Or Tom "Suck.On.This." Friedman writing this sentence: "There don’t seem to be any adults at the top - nobody acting larger than the moment, nobody being impelled by anything deeper than the last news cycle."

It's worth recalling what very adult things America's supposedly most influential columnist was saying about the Iraq War not so long ago:



(Update 10/02/2011: The video is now available from John Amato, Thomas Friedman and Iraq: Suck on This!: UPDATED with Video 11/18/2007)

With "adults" like Friedman and MoDo counting as two of our most prestigious, high-end pundits, predator CEOs are not the only danger to the country's future. As Bob Somerby likes to say, "A modern nation can’t run on dumb." And promoting dumb is what these two characters do.

Just to be clear about Sunday's columns. Both of them could be nominally taken to support Democratic positions, though MoDo seems to be desperately grabbing phrases from the economic news and trying to fit them into her frenzy about Michele's organic garden. And Friedman seems to think that if Obama talked nice to those AIG players getting mega-bonuses, they would just give the money back!

Tom Friedman must be one of the least self-reflective individuals on the planet. He writes, apparently offering us a Deep Thought, "I’ve never talked to more people in one week who told me, 'You know, I listen to the news, and I get really depressed'." It doesn't seem to have occurred to him as even a dim possibility that one or two of those people might have meant, "I listen to the news and I get really depressed because our press corps is so pitiful and our pod pundits so useless."

MoDo seems to be giving what she imagines to be a "populist" indictment of Obama's bailout plan, though it's not at all clear she understands what's she's talking about on that topic. And her version of Beltway Village populism comes out in head-scratchers like this: "Now that Mr. Obama has made $8,605,429 on his books — including $500,000 for letting his memoir be condensed into a kids' book — maybe he’s lost touch with his hole-in-the-shoe, hole-in-the-Datsun, have-not roots."

I guess I've missed something in life by not knowing what "hole-in-the-Datsun" means. A damaged muffler? Also, in the alternative Village reality, pundits like MoDo consider themselves firmly in touch with their own humble roots and uniquely entitled to declare what the humble masses want. But for MoDo, as is often the case, the problem comes down to her weird gender obsessions and her image of wimpy Democratic men being emasculated by their manly wimmin:

The tableau of Michelle Obama hoisting a pitchfork on Friday with her sinewy arms and warning that the commander in chief would be commandeered into yard work left me wondering if the wrong Obama is in the Oval.

Such are the images that haunt her evidently disintegrating mind.

And Friedman and MoDo are two of the highest-profile, high-end pundits in our "quality press"!

Tags: maureen dowd, thomas friedman