30 January 2008
Mukasey’s Malingery
The statement to Senator Leahy on 29 January 2008 by Attorney General Michael Mukasey explaining his refusal to decide on the legality of using waterboarding in federal investigations defines the difference between an official of the executive branch and a judge on the federal bench. He wrote, “I do not believe that it is advisable to address difficult legal questions, about which reasonable minds can and do differ, in the absence of concrete facts and circumstances.”
Perhaps the request for his opinion on the matter from the Senate Judiciary Committee was clumsily phrased. Although the Solicitor General of the U.S., who is nominally on Mukasey’s staff, would argue questions of legality in courts of law, the FBI is also under Mukasey’s control. That puts the Attorney General in an anomalous position, with responsibility not only for making policy, but also for defending policies as an officer of the federal court.
The Senate Judiciary Committee must be aware of that anomaly, and should have directed Mr. Mukasey to wear only his policy-maker hat when responding to its concern over the administration’s authorization of the use of waterboarding. That might have made it more difficult for the Attorney General to hide behind his other, court-officer hat. Apparently, the habits of Mr. Mukasey’s previous career as a federal judge die hard.
The statement to Senator Leahy on 29 January 2008 by Attorney General Michael Mukasey explaining his refusal to decide on the legality of using waterboarding in federal investigations defines the difference between an official of the executive branch and a judge on the federal bench. He wrote, “I do not believe that it is advisable to address difficult legal questions, about which reasonable minds can and do differ, in the absence of concrete facts and circumstances.”
Perhaps the request for his opinion on the matter from the Senate Judiciary Committee was clumsily phrased. Although the Solicitor General of the U.S., who is nominally on Mukasey’s staff, would argue questions of legality in courts of law, the FBI is also under Mukasey’s control. That puts the Attorney General in an anomalous position, with responsibility not only for making policy, but also for defending policies as an officer of the federal court.
The Senate Judiciary Committee must be aware of that anomaly, and should have directed Mr. Mukasey to wear only his policy-maker hat when responding to its concern over the administration’s authorization of the use of waterboarding. That might have made it more difficult for the Attorney General to hide behind his other, court-officer hat. Apparently, the habits of Mr. Mukasey’s previous career as a federal judge die hard.
27 January 2008
Arrogance of a Tired Superpower
In her OpEd in the January 26, 2008 Wall Street Journal, “Don’t Short-Circuit the Surge,” Kimberly Kagan displays the arrogance that characterizes leaders of empires that have shrunk from their predominance in the world. A modern self-confidence to assert their preferences in world order is being felt by the other two superpowers—Europe and China--not to mention the “second world” powers, as Parag Khanna defines them in his article in the January 27, 2008 New York Times Magazine, “Waving Goodbye to Hegemony.” The tendency of the withering hegemon and its apologists to dismiss the status and motivations of rival states and important interest groups elsewhere dies hard.
Why does Ms. Kagan assume that the reduced violence in response to the “surge” was forced and not purposefully chosen by a rational and influential Iraqi interest group? Students of war seem to accept as military doctrine the need to depersonalize the opposition or the indigenous population in a conflict situation. These actors are treated as part of the problem, not the key to its solution. Having introduced its armed forces into Iraq, the U.S. decided that whatever that country’s problem was had a military solution. If we accept the presence of our military there as a fait accompli, we necessarily prejudge the definition of success—the establishment of an American model of civil order by force of arms.
Ms. Kagan’s mistake is to circumscribe the issues in the Iraq War as purely military ones. General Petraeus is right to define his job within the scope of the mission he has been given. It is the responsibility of civilian strategists and the rest of us to instruct the Secretary of
Defense and the President that that mission is wrongly defined.
In her OpEd in the January 26, 2008 Wall Street Journal, “Don’t Short-Circuit the Surge,” Kimberly Kagan displays the arrogance that characterizes leaders of empires that have shrunk from their predominance in the world. A modern self-confidence to assert their preferences in world order is being felt by the other two superpowers—Europe and China--not to mention the “second world” powers, as Parag Khanna defines them in his article in the January 27, 2008 New York Times Magazine, “Waving Goodbye to Hegemony.” The tendency of the withering hegemon and its apologists to dismiss the status and motivations of rival states and important interest groups elsewhere dies hard.
Why does Ms. Kagan assume that the reduced violence in response to the “surge” was forced and not purposefully chosen by a rational and influential Iraqi interest group? Students of war seem to accept as military doctrine the need to depersonalize the opposition or the indigenous population in a conflict situation. These actors are treated as part of the problem, not the key to its solution. Having introduced its armed forces into Iraq, the U.S. decided that whatever that country’s problem was had a military solution. If we accept the presence of our military there as a fait accompli, we necessarily prejudge the definition of success—the establishment of an American model of civil order by force of arms.
Ms. Kagan’s mistake is to circumscribe the issues in the Iraq War as purely military ones. General Petraeus is right to define his job within the scope of the mission he has been given. It is the responsibility of civilian strategists and the rest of us to instruct the Secretary of
Defense and the President that that mission is wrongly defined.
26 January 2008
Vertical vs. Horizontal Lives
I’m no theologian. Nevertheless, I was surprised by Adam Gopnik’s review in the January 21, 2008, New Yorker of “This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War,” by Drew Gilpin Faust. In it he proposed that ordinary people’s concept of the location of their existence has shifted from between heaven and hell to between the past and the future. This is out of keeping with my understanding of not only Jewish culture, but also Buddhist, Hindu, and animist faiths.
Many in this world have long brought meaning to their lives and deaths in the context of a continuum of human existence. It is an unselfish guide for one’s behavior compared to the individualism of Western Christian tradition. That tradition has produced the most successful economies in history, but at the cost of a firm tether between each person and preceding and succeeding generations. Concern for the environment has led the way towards resurgence of this horizontal metaphysical principle, or perhaps the other way around.
Does violent killing lose its senselessness in the context of the circle of life? Or is it only consequently easier to live with?
I’m no theologian. Nevertheless, I was surprised by Adam Gopnik’s review in the January 21, 2008, New Yorker of “This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War,” by Drew Gilpin Faust. In it he proposed that ordinary people’s concept of the location of their existence has shifted from between heaven and hell to between the past and the future. This is out of keeping with my understanding of not only Jewish culture, but also Buddhist, Hindu, and animist faiths.
Many in this world have long brought meaning to their lives and deaths in the context of a continuum of human existence. It is an unselfish guide for one’s behavior compared to the individualism of Western Christian tradition. That tradition has produced the most successful economies in history, but at the cost of a firm tether between each person and preceding and succeeding generations. Concern for the environment has led the way towards resurgence of this horizontal metaphysical principle, or perhaps the other way around.
Does violent killing lose its senselessness in the context of the circle of life? Or is it only consequently easier to live with?
Vertical vs. Horizontal Lives
I’m no theologian. Nevertheless, I was surprised by Adam Gopnik’s review in the January 21, 2008, New Yorker of “This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War,” by Drew Gilpin Faust. In it he proposed that ordinary people’s concept of the location of their existence has shifted from between heaven and hell to between the past and the future. This is out of keeping with my understanding of not only Jewish culture, but also Buddhist, Hindu, and animist faiths.
Many in this world have long brought meaning to their lives and deaths in the context of a continuum of human existence. It is an unselfish guide for one’s behavior compared to the individualism of Western Christian tradition. That tradition has produced the most successful economies in history, but at the cost of a firm tether between each person and preceding and succeeding generations. Concern for the environment has led the way towards resurgence of this horizontal metaphysical principle, or perhaps the other way around.
Does violent killing lose its senselessness in the context of the circle of life? Or is it only consequently easier to live with?
I’m no theologian. Nevertheless, I was surprised by Adam Gopnik’s review in the January 21, 2008, New Yorker of “This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War,” by Drew Gilpin Faust. In it he proposed that ordinary people’s concept of the location of their existence has shifted from between heaven and hell to between the past and the future. This is out of keeping with my understanding of not only Jewish culture, but also Buddhist, Hindu, and animist faiths.
Many in this world have long brought meaning to their lives and deaths in the context of a continuum of human existence. It is an unselfish guide for one’s behavior compared to the individualism of Western Christian tradition. That tradition has produced the most successful economies in history, but at the cost of a firm tether between each person and preceding and succeeding generations. Concern for the environment has led the way towards resurgence of this horizontal metaphysical principle, or perhaps the other way around.
Does violent killing lose its senselessness in the context of the circle of life? Or is it only consequently easier to live with?
22 January 2008
Bush’s Stimulus Flop
Alan Reynolds’ OpEd in the January 22, 2008 Wall Street Journal may have been made moot by the 75 basis point interest rate decrease by the Fed on the same morning. Nevertheless, his argument would have been clearer if he had said (a) that some business mistakes can only be fixed over time and (b) that those banks that made too many bad loans will in time become more cautious.
Opposing his view that unemployment benefits, home housing subsidies and food stamps do little to correct business cycles, progressive economists (and politicians) believe that the consumption these policies promote will bubble up to the top 20% of taxpayers who account for purchases of recession-prone household goods. Yes, that strategy will favor their constituencies (and keep the progressive politicians in their jobs). But, in the end, the shape of the stimulus package only determines who gets the income boost first—either way it doesn’t risk being any worse than useless.
Alan Reynolds’ OpEd in the January 22, 2008 Wall Street Journal may have been made moot by the 75 basis point interest rate decrease by the Fed on the same morning. Nevertheless, his argument would have been clearer if he had said (a) that some business mistakes can only be fixed over time and (b) that those banks that made too many bad loans will in time become more cautious.
Opposing his view that unemployment benefits, home housing subsidies and food stamps do little to correct business cycles, progressive economists (and politicians) believe that the consumption these policies promote will bubble up to the top 20% of taxpayers who account for purchases of recession-prone household goods. Yes, that strategy will favor their constituencies (and keep the progressive politicians in their jobs). But, in the end, the shape of the stimulus package only determines who gets the income boost first—either way it doesn’t risk being any worse than useless.
21 January 2008
Taxonomy of a Presidential Race
Two kinds of politicians characterize candidates for the race to become President of the U.S.
1) Those who can convince people to advocate what they believe
2) Those who can figure out what people want (or need) and how to get it for them.
The first group, converts who think they have a calling and who are effective at inspiring their followers through their eloquence or the force of their personalities, includes George W. Bush, Barack Obama, John McCain, and other Wilsonians. The second group are more pragmatic managers, like Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Hillary Clinton, and even Mike Huckabee. The latter candidate demonstrates that Christian evangelicals are not necessarily driven by the message they feel they must convey.
The American electorate seems to swing its support from one pole to the other over time. Voters’ fatigue and frustration with the failures of the Bush Administration—including an unnecessary and costly war and its coddling of a corrupt Congress—portends a mood change that will favor ascent to the White House by a doer in the tradition of Jefferson and the Roosevelts.
13 January 2008
Vanishing Excuse in Iraq
I agree with Noah Feldman’s article in the 1.13.08 New York Times Magazine that avoiding the subject of Iraq displays Americans’ embarrassment over our inability to deal heroically with a mistake. We must face the fact that we elected a leader to the Presidency who was unashamed to use the authority of his office to attack another country without provocation. The costs of this escapade in lives and fortune, not to mention its penalties on Iraqis, are the responsibility of all U.S. citizens.
Now we want to extricate ourselves and cover over the mess we made as much as we can. The reduction in the violence in Iraq since the “surge” may give such an exit strategy a convenient rationale; but instead of Professor Feldman’s suggested interpretations, I would suggest another alternative. The decreased number of killings may reflect the realization by Sunni Arab leaders that “their goose is cooked” if the U.S. were to leave Iraq. With a militant Iran across the border and a self-confident Kurdish minority in the North, their best hope to preserve their own influence over civil affairs and the distribution of oil revenues is protection by a powerful third party. Therefore, it behooves them to make the continued occupation as painless as possible for the Americans.
Thus the challenge our next President is likely to face will not be how to stop a genocide. Instead he or she will have to broker and enforce a peaceful division of the country and its resources between Iraq’s three rival factions.
I agree with Noah Feldman’s article in the 1.13.08 New York Times Magazine that avoiding the subject of Iraq displays Americans’ embarrassment over our inability to deal heroically with a mistake. We must face the fact that we elected a leader to the Presidency who was unashamed to use the authority of his office to attack another country without provocation. The costs of this escapade in lives and fortune, not to mention its penalties on Iraqis, are the responsibility of all U.S. citizens.
Now we want to extricate ourselves and cover over the mess we made as much as we can. The reduction in the violence in Iraq since the “surge” may give such an exit strategy a convenient rationale; but instead of Professor Feldman’s suggested interpretations, I would suggest another alternative. The decreased number of killings may reflect the realization by Sunni Arab leaders that “their goose is cooked” if the U.S. were to leave Iraq. With a militant Iran across the border and a self-confident Kurdish minority in the North, their best hope to preserve their own influence over civil affairs and the distribution of oil revenues is protection by a powerful third party. Therefore, it behooves them to make the continued occupation as painless as possible for the Americans.
Thus the challenge our next President is likely to face will not be how to stop a genocide. Instead he or she will have to broker and enforce a peaceful division of the country and its resources between Iraq’s three rival factions.
06 January 2008
The Maliki Government and Post-WWI Realpolitik
The Democrats vying for the 2008 presidential nomination of their party should be careful when they lay blame for the lack of progress towards the establishment of democracy and order in Iraq. They should not accept the Bush Administration’s identification of the future of that country with the survival of the Maliki government.
If it weren’t for the American invasion of Iraq there would be no Maliki government. As soon as the U.S. withdraws its troops from Iraq, the Shiite-dominated central government of Iraq will fall. If and when the Democrats win the presidential election and they complete a withdrawal of the U.S. military, as all of the candidates promise, a bloodbath and ethnic cleansing that will surely follow. That disaster will be the direct consequence of the Bush Administration’s overthrow of Saddam Hussein and its presumptive occupation of a territory that had never achieved a national reconciliation.
The Democrats can be sure, however, that responsibility for the humanitarian disaster in post-invasion Iraq will be laid at their feet by Republicans aiming to recapture control of the Congress and the White House. One way for Democrats to prevent this turnabout in their political fortunes is to concede the impossible position into which the Bush Administration has thrust Prime Minister Maliki. He is a puppet head of a contentious shell federation where the only real powers of order are the ethnic Kurdish community in the North, the American military under General Petraeus and its Sunni allies, and the neighboring mullahs of Iran. The Democrats must form a foundation now for the international intervention that will be needed to sort out the ethnic, religious, and economic rivalries that bedevil this forsaken artifact of post-WWI realpolitik, otherwise known as Iraq.
The Democrats vying for the 2008 presidential nomination of their party should be careful when they lay blame for the lack of progress towards the establishment of democracy and order in Iraq. They should not accept the Bush Administration’s identification of the future of that country with the survival of the Maliki government.
If it weren’t for the American invasion of Iraq there would be no Maliki government. As soon as the U.S. withdraws its troops from Iraq, the Shiite-dominated central government of Iraq will fall. If and when the Democrats win the presidential election and they complete a withdrawal of the U.S. military, as all of the candidates promise, a bloodbath and ethnic cleansing that will surely follow. That disaster will be the direct consequence of the Bush Administration’s overthrow of Saddam Hussein and its presumptive occupation of a territory that had never achieved a national reconciliation.
The Democrats can be sure, however, that responsibility for the humanitarian disaster in post-invasion Iraq will be laid at their feet by Republicans aiming to recapture control of the Congress and the White House. One way for Democrats to prevent this turnabout in their political fortunes is to concede the impossible position into which the Bush Administration has thrust Prime Minister Maliki. He is a puppet head of a contentious shell federation where the only real powers of order are the ethnic Kurdish community in the North, the American military under General Petraeus and its Sunni allies, and the neighboring mullahs of Iran. The Democrats must form a foundation now for the international intervention that will be needed to sort out the ethnic, religious, and economic rivalries that bedevil this forsaken artifact of post-WWI realpolitik, otherwise known as Iraq.
04 January 2008
Rights of Americans Abroad
If Americans abroad don’t enjoy the same freedoms and rights they do at home, how can they be expected to represent our country’s values in foreign societies? It is disturbing to hear reports that the U.S. government has acted in spite of the Constitution to suspend certain of its guarantees to the country’s citizens, such as the Writ of Habeas Corpus and Fourth Amendment privacy rights.
This threat of unfettered surveillance and constraint by our own state apparatus sets a bad model for the behavior of American citizens and corporations abroad. On the other hand, it could be used to moderate the behavior of citizens and corporations in other countries so as not to create animosity toward the U.S. (In that case, a consensus must still be sought in America to authorize the government to prevent activities by its citizens abroad that may jeopardize their welfare and security.)
For example, the self-interested actions of U.S. corporations in the Middle East make them and Americans a target for misguided Islamic fundamentalists who seek to purify their own societies. The “struggle” within Islam that Stephen Gale writes about in his January 2, 2008 letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal includes attempts by the members of the Islamic world to determine for themselves the features of their culture, even eliminating Western influence.
Attacking the seat of commercial predators on their countries, however, is not a good way to achieve the goal of restoring the Caliphate. It only invites retaliatory domination of the kind that led to the invasion of Iraq.
Our strategy in dealing with the terrorist attacks on our homeland should be to punish those responsible and to change our own behavior that provokes them to lash out at us. If it requires government regulation, so be it. We may have a free market at home, but most other countries where we try to make money and extract resources do not subscribe to that libertarian philosophy. Circumspection in our private and business actions in the Middle East will honor our hosts’ rights and protect our own welfare.
If Americans abroad don’t enjoy the same freedoms and rights they do at home, how can they be expected to represent our country’s values in foreign societies? It is disturbing to hear reports that the U.S. government has acted in spite of the Constitution to suspend certain of its guarantees to the country’s citizens, such as the Writ of Habeas Corpus and Fourth Amendment privacy rights.
This threat of unfettered surveillance and constraint by our own state apparatus sets a bad model for the behavior of American citizens and corporations abroad. On the other hand, it could be used to moderate the behavior of citizens and corporations in other countries so as not to create animosity toward the U.S. (In that case, a consensus must still be sought in America to authorize the government to prevent activities by its citizens abroad that may jeopardize their welfare and security.)
For example, the self-interested actions of U.S. corporations in the Middle East make them and Americans a target for misguided Islamic fundamentalists who seek to purify their own societies. The “struggle” within Islam that Stephen Gale writes about in his January 2, 2008 letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal includes attempts by the members of the Islamic world to determine for themselves the features of their culture, even eliminating Western influence.
Attacking the seat of commercial predators on their countries, however, is not a good way to achieve the goal of restoring the Caliphate. It only invites retaliatory domination of the kind that led to the invasion of Iraq.
Our strategy in dealing with the terrorist attacks on our homeland should be to punish those responsible and to change our own behavior that provokes them to lash out at us. If it requires government regulation, so be it. We may have a free market at home, but most other countries where we try to make money and extract resources do not subscribe to that libertarian philosophy. Circumspection in our private and business actions in the Middle East will honor our hosts’ rights and protect our own welfare.
