R.P. Barr

Veterans Day 2009

There are many threads running through this Veterans Day.  One is that the holiday was originally declared to be "a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as 'Armistice Day'."  In 1954 it was altered to be a day of remembrance for all veterans, thus expanded beyond the First World War and narrowed to honoring uniformed service members only.

 The Fort Hood shooting demonstrates how that change has skewed our thinking.  I have been reading some blogs and the comments by readers.  One of the heroes of the shooting was a female federal civilian police sergeant named Kimberly Munley, 34.  She and her partner responded to the shooting.  Sgt. Munley took two bullets, in the hand and in the leg, and took down the assailant with four shots of her own.  Yet, some blog comments complain that she should not be considered a hero because she was only doing what she was paid to do.  She was also a union member, and AFGE was criticized for pointing that out. 

Under the logic of the first argument, we should not give awards to anyone who performs outstandingly well at her or his job.  No medals for soldiers, no Oscars for actors, no bonuses for doing anything.  Pay should be its own reward.

When I lived and worked in New York City, I came in regular contact with the police.  There was a motto among them that “a good cop is never cold or wet.”  I also heard more than one explain that I would never see a cop breaking up a fight.  Why take the risk when the pay was the same for arriving later for clean up?  Which is not to say that there aren’t heroes in the NYPD, but they’re special, like anywhere else.

 The other argument says that no-one should be proud of their association with a hero.  There should not be ticker-tape parades, no-one who sits on the sidelines should cheer on a sports team, even families might want to consider bragging about their kids.

The fact is that some people have already pre-selected their heroes, and a female, civilian cop doesn’t qualify.  How poor we are if our views become so restricted. 

 The other thread I want to discuss is the situation in Afghanistan and what the President should do. 

Too many times, we have sent just enough troops to do the job under optimum circumstances, and then watched it all go wrong.  Somalia is a case in point.  Iraq is another.  Guerrilla wars don’t stop when a conventional army captures the capitol or takes down the leader.  To end a guerrilla war—a people’s war—you have to stomp out all vestiges of the rebellion and replace the old idea with a new, more appealing one.  That takes overwhelming force for the first part and vigorous nation building for the second.

 On the other side of the issue is a barely functioning, corrupt Afghan government that lacks widespread support.  There does not have to be support for the regime in power, only for the institutions of government, together with a reasonable expectation for change.

 As for building up the Afghan army—it takes time.  When I was drafted, I spent 8 weeks in basic training.  Very basic training.  I remember spending more than two hours trying to teach a fellow trainee his left from his right.  He still didn’t get it.  Then, there was another 8 weeks of advanced training—more for the technical jobs like radio operator.  That is just to put a warm body on the field.  You can’t win anything with an army of privates.  It takes years to build a good sergeant or an officer.  Units have to train together to work effectively.

And, if we just go home, al-Qaeda will have a green light to follow us.  Remember that their goal is to show how strong they are in order to gain enough strength to kick the foreigners AND the secular governments out of the Middle East.  The best way to do that is to show that they are not afraid of the most powerful country in the world.  A bomb here and a bomb there is wonderful advertising.

 This is a new world, and a lot more men and women are going to become veterans.  What the rest of us have to remember is that those who serve in the military do not make this a great country.  The country must be made great by the efforts of rest of us to keep it worth their service.  We must work to deserve heroes.

Strict Constitutionalism

Listening to a news commentary the other day, I heard someone say that Glenn Beck and some of his fellow travelers were using the Constitution to condemn Obama’s health care overhaul.  Health care is not mentioned in the Constitution, therefore, the government should not propose it.  These talking heads want us to become a nation of secular Amish.  Anything not specifically mentioned by the founding fathers is heresy.

I don’t consider myself a Constitutional expert, but I have been carrying a copy around with me for the last two or three decades, and have read through it several times.  In fact, on at least three occasions, I have taken an oath to defend and protect the Constitution.  While not everyone who takes that oath honors it, I tend to trust those who have more than those who have not.

 Once I was asked to respond to a letter sent to my agency by a concerned citizen.  He had just seen one of our forms that referred to him as a “citizen of the United States.”  The writer asserted that he was an “American,” proud of it, and government forms should use the correct term.  In reply, I pointed out that  the Constitution refers three times to the term “citizen of the United States” and not at all to “American” which is a geographical term.  Both Canadians and Mexicans can equally claim to be Americans.  The point being that the people who shout the loudest often know the least.

 Getting back to health care, Beck is right.  Health care is not in the Constitution.  Neither is “corporation.”  Presumably the government has no right to support or protect this unconstitutional entity.   “Czar” is not in the constitutional lexicon, and neither is “bank.”

I am sure that someone has noticed that “gay marriage” in not in our bedrock document.  As a matter of fact, “marriage” is not mentioned in any form.  The founding fathers must have been advocates of free love.  Or, that is what I thought until I realized that “love” and “sex” are also omitted—except for that 19^th Amendment thing about not denying rights due to sex.  (Presumably they were referring to sex as an identifier as opposed to an activity.)  When I found that neither pregnancy nor children were cited, I realized that the intent of the Constitution was to represent a nation of celibates that would not outlast the first generation.  What other explanation is there?

American Values

This past week, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health issued a press release about their recent survey of health care workers [http://www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnews/press_releases/2009/barnett_survey.html]. 

 The headline was that in the event of a pandemic, one in six health care workers would refuse to come to work.  That was the good news.   A 2005 study reported that fully 40% of health care workers would refuse to come to work during a pandemic.  So, we're improving.

The really interesting part came much farther down in the article:  “According to the survey, public health workers who were both 'concerned' about the threat posed by a pandemic, and who were 'confident' that they could fulfill their response roles and that their roles would have a meaningful impact on the situation, were 31 times more likely to respond to work in an emergency than those who perceived the threat low and had low levels of confidence.”

 Note that perception of a low threat level was not enough to pursuade these folks to come to work   The mere risk of contagion would be enough to keep them at home.  But, to be in the most-likely-to-be-truant group, the workers had to see their jobs as not meaningful.

 Where do they get that idea?  Health care is more than doctors and nurses.  Someone has to draw the blood for tests.  Someone has to perform the lab tests.  Someone has to wash and transport the patients.  Someone has to maintain the equipment.  Someone has to take the x-rays.  Someone has to feed hospital patients.  And most important, someone has to mop, scrub and keep the whole place sterile.  The greatest cause of patient death in hospitals is hospital acquired infection. The best surgeons in the world can be undone by sloppy floor mopping.  Everyone is important.

 My own work in medical facilities taught me that some—not all—doctors really look down on all of the other workers, and denigrate their contributions to patient outcomes.  Those who take doctor abuse to heart will be less likely to show up when they are needed the most.

Don't misunderstand and think that I am writing about doctors and medicine and pandemics.  I am writing about workers.  

What makes the United States great (or did) is not that a few people get to be billionaires.  Every totalitarian regime on the planet has wealthy people.  Neither is this country great because we have natural wonders.  Those things are scattered all over.  Our monuments and landmark buildings don’t do it either.  From the time of the pilgrims, ordinary people have been able to make a decent living and achieve respect for doing so.  That is why people still immigrate here.  That is why after more than a century of slavery, the newly freed men and women did not emigrate to other shores.  Those who moved at all, moved within the United States.  However difficult, the opportunity for a better life was here.

 Now we hear those who wave the biggest flags and shout the most about freedom oppose a higher minimum wage.  They oppose insuring workers and their families against the catastrophic expense of illness. It’s okay that 14,000 people a day lose health insurance, which translates to a loss of children, husbands, wives, etc.  And a loss of homes as those without insurance struggle to pay medical bills. The über-patriots also oppose labor unions’ ability to offset the abuses of management. 

 During the American Revolution, fewer than two-thirds of the colonists supported the rebellion.  There have, ever since, been those who seek to return to an authoritarian society with privileges for a few, redistributing the wealth of labor upwards to those who do not labor.  The assertion that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights has never been fully accepted.  Look around at those today who shout against social progress, the new tories.

 The great American experiment of empowering the masses and trusting the judgement of the majority has been under assault for the last few decades.  And now, with the results of tory influence planting foreclosure signs in every neighborhood, destroying jobs, and downgrading the American dream, it is time to point out that the United States is not about flags, it is about people.

And, people who are valued will show up when they’re needed.

Flashback: Defining the D in D-Day

 During President Obama’s D-Day anniversary visit to Normandy, nobody talked about the havoc wreaked on French civilians by the Allied invasion.  According to the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8084210.stm) some 20,000 French civilians were killed during the 75 days that followed D-Day.  Roughly 3,000 civilians were killed during the invasion itself.  Among other devastating events, the city of Caen--where Obama met the French President--was bombed into oblivion while the Germans who were the intended target were encamped north of the city and went unscathed.

Since the war liberated France in the end, the official view was that the invasion was a good thing, and the casualties, including the war crimes committed by maurading troops were downplayed.  Wartime correspondents were censored in those days, not least by themselves.  Today, such things would be much more prominent. 

Although the stories of the dark side of this “good war” are beginning to come to light, it is doubtful that the lives saved by Marshal Pétain will now be appreciated.

 Henri Phillippe Benoni Omer Joseph Pétain was the hero who saved France during the First World War, and the old soldier was called back when the Germans invaded again.  Unfortunately, the French military had not modernized in the meantime, and were no match for Hitler’s crack troops. Pétain surrendered France in 1940 (or the northern 3/5ths of it anyway) in order to spare his country the ruin that a hopeless war would bring.  During the balance of his career as head of the Vichy government, he continued to placate the Germans publicly while supporting the underground and Free French Army in secret.

 These new revelations should demonstrate the wisdom of his approach.  Fighting is sometimes the only alternative, but it is often an emotional reaction that disregards the cost.  There is no virtue in destruction. 

There are also no classes of dead. When the vital spark is extinguished there is no longer a difference between hero, villain and victim.

 Hitler needed to be stopped.  He could not be stopped without force.  But, war is always a monster that maims all it touches.  The Allies did not liberate those 30,000 French men, women and children.

 This year, I propose that we permanently retire terms like “ultimate sacrifice.”  Sacrifice implies a voluntary act.  Those young men—on both sides—did not choose to die any more than the civilians did.  That only happened in very rare instances.  Their lives and health were ripped from them while they attempted to do something for the benefit of others.  Often they did very ugly things that haunted the rest of their lives.  That they took the risk at all may be celebrated.  That they were killed or damaged should be a burden of shame for the rest of us.  And a lesson.

When pain is a bad thing

 Once again the use of torture is in the news.  Dick Cheney is claiming that waterboarding enabled intelligence officers to obtain “actionable” information, and that lives were saved.

 If you have seen 24,  you have seen Jack Bauer torture baddies to get vital information.  These were Hollywood moments, to be sure, but every instance had two things in common:  first, Bauer knew that his victims had important information about an impending attack, and second that the information he wanted was extremely time-sensitive (everything had to be completed within 24 hours after all).

 My question, as yet unanswered, is how many of the Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib prisoners fit that profile?  In the absence of hard information, I suspect that much of the enhanced questioning was done on speculation.  The hypothesis was that each subject probably knew something that we would like to know.

Sometimes the questioning paid off, sometimes it didn’t.  Sometimes the information was current, sometimes it was just background, or nice-to-know.

 Since the Second World War and the growth of interrogation science, there have been many techniques developed that are effective, and humane.  The people who would cast aside that science in favor of 12^th Century brutality are non-professionals, whose motivations are political or emotional or both. 

 The Inquisition proved how inefficient and ineffective torture can be—unless, the purpose is to terrorize and not to gather information.  Grab someone from the street and accuse them of witchcraft and secret pacts with the devil.  Inflict sufficient pain for the person to break down and confess.  Then ask who his associates are.  Then repeat the process with the associates.  Swap the word “witchcraft” for any other offence you like and the results are the same.

 I was once involved in a case in which a Louisiana man’s name popped up in the federal computers as an associate of drug dealers.  If that happened to you, how would you clear yourself?  This man had no idea how his name gained that  association.  It turned out that when another individual was arrested with drugs,  promises of a reduced sentence were made to him if he named his druggie business contacts.  So, he provided the investigators with a list of names.  The investigation of the Louisiana man came up negative, but the stigma remained.  And, this was for a reduced sentence.  Imagine if the druggie had been waterboarded!

 A second issue is the safety of apprehending officials, whether law enforcement, military or intel operatives.  I go back to my stint as a store detective for a major retailer in New York City when I picked up a teenager who had taken something.  He had never been in the store before, but on the way up tp the security office, he bragged about his knowledge of our operations.  He described all of our detectives, where they were likely to be stationed, and how they treated the people they apprehended. 

In Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, I led a training team to provide classes at the police academy to their customs and police.  On a Thursday, one of my colleagues taught a session in martial arts.  On Saturday, he went for a jog near our hotel on the other side of the city from the academy.  Along the way, three different people called out to him with references to his prowess: a guard at a movie theater, a taxi driver, and someone I’ve forgotten.  The word gets around.

 Terrorists and criminals share a small community.  They know what happens to their colleagues who are captured, and then act appropriately when someone comes for them.  If they believe that they will be tortured, they have nothing to lose by fighting to the death.  And, that means that they will take down some of the good guys with them.

 If the detainees are spirited away and held incommunicado, then imaginations take hold.  “Suppose they do this” becomes “did you hear what they did?”

I treated my prisoners with respect, because the next time I went after someone I wanted that person to know that his or her safety was only at risk during the flight-or-fight stage.  I wanted the suspect to know that surrender was much the better choice.

 

Quote: Warren on regulation

I admit that I watch too much television. On the other hand, everytime I leave the house, it costs me money. I have the computer for information plus my wife for conversation, recreation and aggravation. With the television for entertainment and occasional enlightenment, who needs to go out? Well, I do have to make a living—the perennial dark cloud. 

On April 15th, TV provided one of those moments of enlightenment. The venue was Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, the guest was Elizabeth Warren, Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel on TARP. Among other things, she explained how the U.S. economy got into this mess. 

Warren: Okay, so what you’re asking is if we can get this bus pulled out of the ditch—the economy—what does the road look like going forward? Because this really is the big question. 

Let me start that question in 1792. Okay, young country—George Washington’s first term and we had a credit freeze, a financial panic. Every ten—fifteen years there’s a financial panic in our history. You just look at it. And there’s a big collapse, big trouble. People lose their farms –wiped out. Until we hit the Great Depression. 

We come out of the Great Depression saying, “You know, we can do better than this. We don’t have to have to go back to this kind of boom and bust cycle.” We come out of the Great Depression with three regulations: FDIC insurance that makes it safe to put your money into banks, Glass-Steagall (banks won’t do crazy things), and some SEC regulations. We go fifty years without a financial panic, without a crisis. Some recessions, but no crisis, no banks failing, no big crisis.

 …But, then what happens? We say, “Ahh, regulation is a pain. We don’t need it.”  So, we start pulling the threads out of the regulatory fabric and what’s the first thing we get? The S&L crisis: 700 financial institutions fail. Ten years later, what do we get? Long term capital management, when we learn that when something collapses in one place in the world that it collapses everywhere else. Early 2000’s we get Enron which tells us the books are dirty.   And what is our repeated response?  We just keep pulling the threads out of the regulatory fabric. 

So, we have two choices. We’re going to make a big decision, probably over about the next six months. And, the big decision we’re going to make is that it’s going to go one way or the other.  We’re going to decide basically that, hey, we don’t need regulation. You know, it’s fine: boom and bust, boom and bust, boom and bust--and, good luck with your 401K. Or, alternatively, we’re going to say, "You know, we’re going to put in some smart regulations that adapt to the fact that we have those products."  And what we’re going to have going forward is we’re going to have some stability and we’re going to have some real prosperity for ordinary folks."  

Stewart: …And you know, that is the first time in six months to a year that I’ve felt better.

Cartoons and buffoons

By now you’ve probably heard of, or seen, the New York Post cartoon of the dead chimpanzee and the policemen who say that now someone else will have to write the stimulus legislation. The Rev. Al Sharpton has led the charge that the chimpanzee represents Barak Obama and the cartoon is racially offensive. 

I find the cartoon to be tasteless, but not racist. The chimp is clearly a chimp. And, only a fool would think that Barak Obama wrote the stimulus package. He has people who do that, anonymous colorless people. 

In my life, I have been called an ape, a babboon, a monkey and a number of other creatures. Abraham Lincoln was also called an ape. In one of the few areas where I can compare myself with the 16th president, we both have taken our insults in stride. Personally, I have been insulted by more ethnic groups than I care to count—it comes with enforcing laws and regulations. My philosophy was always that the speaker can call me whatever he (or she) likes as long as he keeps his hands to himself. 

Personally, I prefer insults to compliments. When someone calls me a dirty name, I know that whatever lies or misconceptions are behind the insult, this person doesn’t like me. I know where I stand, and that is reassuring. When someone smiles and tells me something sweet, I don’t know the underlying motives. It makes me uncomfortable. 

As far as race goes, there are so many legitimate grievances out there—many of them as hard as the edge between life and death. Why dilute strong arguments over vital matters with trivial, questionable grandstanding? 

I can’t tell people not to feel offended. Feelings are beyond control. But, actions are not. We can choose our battles, and a person is no larger than the fights he chooses. 

There is something else. None of us, regardless of lineage, can achieve anything without the complicity or tolerance of others. Lincoln the ape, described the strategy, “If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend.” Constant bluster and bashing are not the tools of success. 

Cartoonists should take care to avoid inadvertant offence, and social activists should avoid arguments that trivialize their causes.

Was the economy that good before the crash?

A couple weeks ago, I sought to reduce my automobile insurance bill by changing companies. Among the companies that promised hundreds of dollars in savings, I found one whose rates seemed the most attractive. I should not have been surprised when the policy arrived with all sorts of little penalties that raised the rate to what my old company charged. I argued several points and won on the biggest one—an accident they claimed was “at fault” when it clearly wasn’t. (Getting rear-ended at a stop light by someone talking on a cell phone is not usually open for debate.) 

In search of other ways to get closer to the quoted price, I took a “mature driver” safety program. My first reaction was that this was the wrong class for me. I have had a driver’s license for 40-plus years: I know how to drive. However, I’ve only been old for a little while, I don’t know how to do that. Further evidence was that everyone else in my class was sent there by the court, and all of them were at least 30 years younger—except for two steel-haired men who apparently hadn’t shaved or combed in the past 30 years. 

Anyway, as I mentally compared the new lessons in how to drive with what I had learned over my lifetime, I became reflective. And, with all the blather about the crumbling economy, I became reflective about that, too. 

When I was a boy, milk was delivered to our front door. If we wrote a check for more than was in our account, someone from the bank would telephone to ask what we wanted done with it. The banks also encouraged children to open accounts by offering metal banks as premiums. I got a bronze bust of Benjamin Franklin with a slot underneath from one bank, and from another, a hockey-puck shaped device that mechanically measured and added the coins that I put into it, showing the total on top. 

Clerks in stores often worked there for decades. They remembered who you were and set things aside if they knew you were interested in them. Stores also offered credit to regular customers without the intervention of credit card companies. There was no health insurance as I recall. Doctor and dentist visits were paid in cash and were affordable for the most part. Hospital stays, could and did bankrupt people, but payment plans could be worked out if the disability was temporary. 

Across the country there were pockets of crushing poverty, and discrimination was commonplace, but middle-class consumers got more service than we we get today.  

So, I look back at the last 50 years and wonder if the economy has improved. Chain and franchise stores didn’t just standardize products and services, they bled off profits from the point of sale. In a mom-and-pop, you paid for the product and the profit went to the pockets of the people in that store. With multi-store companies, the profits had to include distict managers, and buyers, and corporate executives with all of their support people, not to mention the cost of office space and utilities for buildings hundreds of miles from the store where you shopped. No wonder that many products are less durable than in the past, and that retail workers are the most exploited class in America after farm workers. 

Computers also helped ruin service. Don’t brand me as a Luddite; everyone in my house has at least one computer. In addition, I use a network-linked PC at work. The internet is the wonder of the age, more important to our society than the pyramids of Egypt or the Great Wall of China were to their’s. Computers, however, are not forgiving or understanding. If they are not programmed for your problem, then your problem will not be addressed. The employees who work in this new world are often told to defer to the decisions of the computer. I remember once trying to explain that the monthly electric bill for my five-room apartment could not possibly be more than $3,000 as their statement stated, and another time trying to convince the DMV that a check my bank showed as cleared could not have bounced as their screen claimed. In neither case were the employees allowed to correct or even address my complaints. Final resolution took months. I could go on, but you undoubtedly have your own stories. 

My point is that if our economy is better than it was 50 years ago (current recession/depression aside), then why has service deteriorated? Why is everyone and his shadow afraid of litigation to the extent that it paralyzes humane responses to situations larges and small? Most important, if the stimulus package works, why do we want to go back to the way it was two years ago?

War-go-round

A few months ago, I learned that an artist had been so moved by the stories of Vietnam veterans throwing their medals over the White House fence in protest of the war in which they had participated that he created a tile representation of one of these vets and was sending these tiles to like minded veterans.  The purpose, as I understood it was not merely to make and distribute his art, but to create a community and achieve an understanding of these veterans.  Well, as a veteran myself and former veterans counselor, I was touched by what he was trying to do and wrote a blog entry about it. [“Medals” June 15, 2008]

This past week, Alex Irvine, the artist, send me a tile.  I am honored and appreciative.  [Take a look at http://alexirvineceramics.blogspot.com/]

When I was in basic training, back in the hot summer of 1968, I remember the company being seated in a Fort Jackson classroom.  A drill sergeant stepped in front of us and announced that he was going to surprise us.  “You all want to go to Vietnam.”  There were no shouts or applause.  Vietnam was the last place we wanted to find ourselves.  He continued, “Think about it.  Deep down, you all want to test yourselves, to see how you will react.  You want to know what it is like.”

He hit on a major reason why young men go to war. 

Another is that war is simple.  Consider this passage from John Steinbecks’ The Grapes of Wrath:

            And now the squatting men stood up angrily.

            Grampa took up the land, and he had to kill the In­dians and drive them away.  And Pa was bom here, and he killed weeds and snakes. Then a bad year came and he had to borrow a little money.  An' we was bom here.  There in the door—our children born here.  And Pa had to borrow money. The bank owned the land then, but we stayed and we got a little bit of what we raised.

            We know that—all that. [said the men who drove the bulldozers] It's not us, it's the bank. A bank isn't like a man. Or an owner with fifty thousand acres, he isn't like a man either. That's the monster. 

Sure, cried the tenant men, but it's our land.  We measured it and broke it up.  We were bom on it, and we got killed on it, died on it.  Even if it's no good, its still ours.  That's what makes it ours—being bom on it, working it, dying on it.  That makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it.                     

            We're sorry.  It’s not us. It’ s the monster.  The bank isn't like a man.

            Yes, but the bank is only made of men.

            No, you're wrong there—quite wrong there.  The bank is something else than men.  It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it.  The bank is something more than men, I tell you.  It’s the monster.  Men made it, but they can't control it.

 

War gives a man someone to shoot.  It may not fix any of the ills of the world, but it solves the immediate problem of survival. 

I tried to be a pacifist back in my pre-draft youth.  I could not understand killing somebody half a world away whose only interest in killing me was because I was in his country uninvited.  After much soul searching, I failed the test for pacifism.  I don’t believe in killing strangers, and that’s not enough.  If someone tries to do violence in my presence, that makes it personal and its enough of an introduction for me do whatever harm it takes to stop him.  I just don’t believe in seeking out these opportunities.

Even in the days when my profession was pursuing bad guys, there was risk, but deadly force situations did not come up.  Life is more complex.

I remember being an MP at an anti-war demonstration when a Vietnam vet, still in the service, looked out at the hundreds of demonstrators and moaned that “We killed women and children in Vietnam, why can’t we do it here?  Just shoot ‘em down.”  The tear in his voice told me that he didn’t want to kill anyone, but coming home had made his life much more complicated.

This past week, figures were released that show the number of suicides by active duty troops is at another record high. 

Coincidentally, I just saw a documentary on the disaster at Chernobyl in 1986.  Soviet soldiers, miners and firemen were sent to bury the radioactive mass.  They had no protective suits and some 20,000 are estimated to have died.  But they saved millions.

The last time that American servicemen and women defended the United States was in 1945.  If we had let North Korea overrun the south, would it have threatened anyone here?  What about Vietnam, Panama, Grenada, Somalia, Kosovo…?  I am not passing judgements on any of the post-WWII conflicts, but they were extentions of U.S. foreign policy, not defence of our freedom or our lives.  Yet, the toll on the fighter is no less.  They battle fear and fatigue, bear the agony of their comrades falling, the helplessness of being separated from family crises, while the rest of us watch the Superbowl and complain about the economy.

Once upon a time, a handful of Vietnam vets returned the medals they earned in combat.  Their gesture may not have changed anything, but at least they tried.

A foreign affairs agenda for the new administration

At the top of the Obama’s foreign affairs to-do list should be 1) the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; 2) Israel and the Palestinians; 3) the rise of totalitarianism in Russia; 4) corruption and the Mexican drug wars. 

From Iraq to a hard place 

Iraq is or should be winding down. The Iraqi military is attaining adequacy. I don’t have a great deal of faith in the Baghdad government’s prospects for long term survival, but they may hold it together long enough for us to draw down our forces. 

Afghanistan, on the other hand, has defeated the best armies in the world, from Alexander the Great, to the British at the height of their powers, to the Soviet Union. It is true that we are there in support of the Karzai government, but there are Afghans (especially the Taliban), who do not recognize that regime. To date, the technology of modern warfare has not tipped the scales in our favor. I was impressed by a program that teamed a U.S. Marine Corps officer with a State Department official to provide cows to widows in Fallujah [NPR January 4, 2009]. Programs like that in Afghanistan, properly funded, may accomplish something that guns and bombs cannot. There are some projects there already, such as a soap factory in Kandahar that buys materials from local farmers, but more of these need visible military partners to improve the image of our forces. We also need to stop bombing weddings, etc. 

Another initiative would be to buy up opium from farmers and pay more than the Taliban-linked traffickers do. This would choke off a major source of Taliban and al-Qaeda income as well as give the Afghan farmers a more favorable view of the U.S. Once we have achieved our objectives in Afghanistan, we could offer alternatives to the farmers and wean them away from opium poppies. Meanwhile, we will have reduced the amount of heroin in the world more than any destination-country enforcement has done. 

Lessons from the ghetto 

Meanwhile, we have to tell the Israelis that they are behaving like Nazis. Of course, since they equate Nazism with extermination camps, they would object. However, they have seized property from Palestinians with no compensation, relegated Palestinians to perptual limbo in refugee camps, denied them the right of free travel and commerce, and periodically raided and terrorized Palestinians in their homes actions similar to what were once called “pogroms.” The totality resembles Nazi Germany in the years before their “final solution” was initiated. 

On CNN a week or so ago, an anchorperson asked a Palestinian spokeswoman for her take on the recent Gaza incursion. Among her charges was one that I regard as key. The Israelis did not support moderate Palestinians by allowing them to achieve anything in negotiations, thereby pushing Palestinian public opinion in favor of radicals like Hamas. When the anchorperson turned to an Israeli diplomat for his response, he said that Israel allowed protests over the incursion which made them a more moral regime than Hamas. He did not address the underlying problem of denying concessions in peaceful negotiations. 

The Israeli government has never seriously addressed the return of Palestinians to their ancestral homes or compensation to them for their property as Germany finally did for the Jews who were expelled by the Nazis. Although the settlements in Gaza were dismantled—unilaterally, not in response to negotiations—the settlements in the West Bank have increased. I propose that Israel simply tell the West Bank settlers that Israel is withdrawing all support in two weeks. The settlers can remain by pledging allegiance to the Palestinian state or they can come back to Israel. Of course Israel is going to do no such thing, because the ultimate goal is to insert so many settlers into the West Bank that becomes a de facto Israeli province. Since the state of Israel is the premiere example of successful illegal immigration, hard line planners see the ultimate ejection of Palestinians as do-able. 

Meanwhile, if negotiation and moderate Palestinians are able to show results, then Hamas and other extremists will lose support, and ultimately be reduced to a nuisance status. Indeed the rise of a moderate Palestinian government supported by free trade will transform the extremists into a Palestinian police problem. 

Neo-Stalinism 

Did you see where Russian television held a poll to name the most popular historic figures? Josef Stalin came in third. That was after they redrew the rules and urged voters to consider literary and scientific luminaries. Did you happen to note in December that the Dumas passed new legislation that makes any demonstration against the government treason? Passing any information of any sort to any non-governmental orgainzation that has offices outside of Russia is also treason. Charges of treason no longer qualify for a jury trial either. Add to that the use of gas supplies to bludgeon Russia’s neighbors, plus the invasion of Georgia in order to seize the enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and the rise of a new totalitarianism is hard to escape. 

We need to help both Western and Eastern Europe find alternatives to Russian gas, or we will be sucked into a greater confrontation in the near future. 

Mexican refugees 

During 2008, the casualties of the drug wars in Mexico exceeded U. S. casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. The cities just below our border have the highest murder rates in the world. The Mexican government has not demonstrated an ability to control the criminality and corruption. If the U.S. does not provide real help, we will see a flood of refugees on top of the current illegal immigration flow. And we will be stuck with people who legitimately fear for their lives if they are returned home. 

Some people say that we should slam the door in the faces of Mexican refugees and insist that they manage their own affairs. The United States has not taken that position with any other nation on earth and we cannot do it with one of our two nearest neighbors. Besides that, the violence has already spilled over into cities on this side of the border. 

One move that could improve the situation would be to examine all exports and visitors to Mexico with the intensity that we examine imports and incoming visitors. Why? Where do you think Mexican gangs get their guns? Most are purchased here and then smuggled into Mexico. The Mexican government can’t control the influx of illegal weapons, and it is in our best interests to see it controlled. 

Let’s see how the new administration deals with these four hot points. The ones that Obama misses are sure to come round and bite him on the ass.