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28 July 2011

Obama’s Iraq Abdication

Yes, President Obama has decided to give up his predecessor’s fool’s game in Iraq. It cost us plenty in blood and treasure, contributing measurably to the near-bankruptcy that menaces our country’s credit rating even now. More significantly, it played into the hand of our nemesis, the Islamic regime in Iran, whose ambitions of regional dominance were being held in check by the perfidious Saddam regime. Sometimes, you have to trade tolerance of one repressive state for control of another.

Marisa Cochrane Sullivan of the Institute for the Study of War, ignores this colossal mistake in her OpEd in the July 28, 2011 Wall Street Journal. It is not surprising that someone who has dedicated her career to analyzing armed conflict would advocate our remaining in Iraq as a solution to difficulties that Iran continues to create for American interests in Iraq and elsewhere. If control of Iran was the real reason for our invasion of Iraq in the first place, the U.S. should have invaded the Islamic Republic and overthrown its theocracy instead. The Study of War should teach us that proxy wars are often ineffective, wasteful, and beneficial mainly to arms suppliers.

14 July 2011

McConnell’s Plan

Senator Mitch McConnell has shown a cleverness that belies his usual behavior as a stubborn politician only interested in preserving his own job. His proposal turns Congressional rules on their head by allowing the President to use his veto power to circumvent the Republican strategy for reducing federal budget deficits by leveraging its control over enacting a national debt increase.

Of course, that federal budget deficit is due in large part to the past profligacy of the Republican Bush Administration and its Congressional phalanx in undertaking a costly war of choice. Let us not forget, either, their glee in adopting pork-barrel programs after years of conceding that pleasure to Democratic rivals.

Nevertheless, as Speaker Boehner has admitted, McConnell and/or someone with a good head on his shoulders, seems to have come up with a plan that he believes sets a trap for President Obama that will make it easy to defeat him in the 2012 elections. The President could do worse than accept that bargain. Moreover, there really is no good reason to think that the voting public cannot be convinced that the penalties that failure to would make the nation pay in international creditworthiness tip the scale in favor of softening Republicans’ terms. That statesmanship could actually turn out to be a more effective GOP election strategy for next year. Wouldn’t that be a refreshing change—replacing angry Tea-Partiers at the head of its campaign tickets with smart legislators?

09 July 2011

Obama Wants Innovative Solutions

Paul Krugman, in his OpEd in the 7/7/11 NYT, “What Obama Wants,” ignores the fact that the trouble the nation’s economy is in today follows an unprecedented succession of bubbles. In fact, as a result of the world’s quickening pace of information exchange, bubbles have become the main driver of economic growth in Western economies. Just to take the last two booms—both the Internet-related investment spree of the late-nineties and the real estate-related consumption expansion of the 2000s were illusions that led the public and their supposedly smart financial advisers alike into unsustainable patterns of spending and leverage.

Each time the whirling stops, the dervishes take longer to recover their senses. The question is how long the slow restoration of normal growth in the economy will forestall the next cycle of boom and bust. Economists like Krugman, of course, maintain that equilibrium will eventually be reached. After all, their profession depends on there being a rational order to human activity.

On the other hand, all economic activity can be interpreted as nothing but a global Ponzi scheme—we only produce what others consume in order that they can produce what we need in order to remain in their supply chain, etc. Inevitably, weak links break and forging replacements more and more requires the intervention of irrational, innovative solutions.

03 July 2011

Politicians Aren’t Gonna Lead Until Forced

It is indeed naïve for President Obama to believe, as he said in his June 29, 2011, White House press conference, “that leaders are gonna lead.” The elected representatives of the people in Congress are more interested in keeping their jobs. They know that the people who elected them are like putty in the hands of persuaders like cable television broadcasters, corporate employer communicators, and their comparatively wealthy clients, customers, or hiring parties. All of these partisans pay for the campaigns that keep Senators and House Members in office until they are rewarded with lucrative consulting and lobbying contracts afterwards.

The voting public doesn’t make up its mind on the basis of “what’s right.” They are more interested in the constant entertainment provided by television news as well as by the income from their jobs and enterprises that finance the other diversions they pursue. Desperate politicians understand that. They also know that the key to their own success is following the money and catering to the self-interest of those partisans, whose largest concerns with the government are how much it buys from them and how much it costs them, i.e. taxes.

Government officials don’t lead when they fear for their jobs; they pander. Moreover, they are not elected to “do the right thing.” Prosecutors are. Politicians do the right thing only when they have no choice—when the whole house of cards is about to collapse. Until then, voters will put up with politicians who take advantage of them, who act with their own short-term reelection goals in mind until they are faced with the reality that the creditworthiness of their employer, the U.S. government, ultimately depends on their making far-sighted decisions. The CEO’s of the country’s major financial institutions had to learn a similar lesson in the sub-prime mortgage debacle. Now it’s the turn of our politicians.

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