Neoconservatives attack Obama on Iran

         As Iran moves into its second week of unrest stemming from the flawed presidential election, the neoconservatives are still hammering away on President Obama for not being more forceful in defending the rights of the protesters.  Paul Wolfowitz, Charles Krauthammer, Michael Gerson, et al. are trying to portray Obama as a calculating, disinterested, inhumane, inadequate defender of the free world by failing to “harshly criticiz[e] the regime thugs on motorbikes for breaking the heads of women and youth during protests…condemning Internet censorship and the arrest of dissidents.”

            To be clear, the president from the start said that this election was about Iran, and only once it became clear that repression and violence were being carried out at the behest of the regime did he state that, electoral struggles aside, Iran as a civilized nation must respect the rights of its citizens.  Here is the White House statement issued yesterday:

We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.

         I suppose that Obama could have called Iran “evil” as George W. Bush did with Iran, North Korea, and Iraq; or as Ronald Reagan did with the Soviet Union.  Or he could have equated the Iranian government as siding “with the terrorists”, as Bush phrased the terms of engagement after 9/11.  Despite Gerson’s snarky characterization of “President Obama’s snail-mail response to Iran’s Twitter revolution”, Obama can see the many shades of gray between the two caricatures of “good” (i.e. the protestors) and “evil” (the government).  Ahmadinejad has wide support—perhaps even majority support—across the country, and if that be the case, why would we want to acknowledge as sovereign a political movement that seemingly has no desire (yet) to topple the regime?

         Many Arab countries are already suspicious of our presence in the Middle East, from our military bases near Saudi Arabian holy sites to the occupation of Iraq.  If we admit that Iran is in revolution, we acknowledge that the opposition protesters are worthy of military assistance and recognition as a body politic.  It is way too early—and too reckless—to assume that the protesters in Iran want a new government, when they only appear to be asking that their current government live up to its responsibilities of transparency and accountability.

         Gerson also claims that “diplomatic engagement, after a successful repression would not only be difficult but shameful….How could Obama or Hillary Clinton or anyone else shake the bloody hands and walk the bloody streets on the way to some meeting in Tehran?”  Yes, how could a representative of the United States ever legitimately normalize relations with an abusive authoritarian regime…?

            How can any Republican claim—after the Bush administration’s support of corrupt and militant Pakistani general Pervez Musharraf, Hamid Karzai’s deference of authority to warlords in Afghanistan, and his soulful glance into Vladimir Putin’s eyes—that Obama is putting politics before principle?  And the net doesn’t even have to be cast that far: negligence of the residents of New Orleans, ideological hirings and firings at the Justice Department, domestic wiretapping, torture at Guantanamo, failure to expand children’s health insurance, etc. are all the trappings of a presidency that valued political expediency over the obligations of a government to its people.

            Iran is situated in a fishbowl for all the world to watch.  As much as we might be tempted to intervene politically or militarily, we can’t be a crutch to either side because it could be interpreted as an act of war.  Unless the unthinkable happens—anarchy, genocide—the Iranian government must either pacify or crush the rebellion, or bow out due to the pressure of public opinion.  It’s our position to advocate principle, not politics; and the president has done exactly that.

Ask what you can do…

            We are currently fighting three wars—two on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan and a broader, less visible struggle against terrorism.  But America does not, by and large, behave like we are in wartime.  Of course the fighting directly affects soldier and their families; and politicians broach the subject to justify either their indignation at how poorly the war is going or their hopefulness about how well the war is going. 

Still, the fight against terrorism is an ambiguous concept for much of the time.  There is no rationing, no draft, no posters that say “When you ride alone, you ride with Osama bin Laden,” no cheering in the streets with each battle won…there are not even any actual battles, per se.  On top of that, a large percentage of the country believes we never should have gone to war in Iraq in the first place, and is disenchanted with the fact that we have not captured the leader of al Qaeda.

            In an opinion peace entitled “Duties That Are Best Shared,” Col. Matthew Bogdanos argues that there is too much separation between the civilian and military spheres.  While Barack Obama and the overwhelming majority of Americans are able to show deep appreciation for our troops, few of us understand military culture and its particular character of public service.  He mentions that only two of Obama’s Cabinet officials are veterans, whereas only two of John Kennedy’s were not veterans.

            Part of the reason why military service is less emphasized—though no less honorable—now than forty years ago is simply that the problems of the twenty-first century are not solely military matters.  The dual “-isms” of the last century, fascism and communism, were ones in which a state was targeted, troops could be marched, towns could be destroyed, missiles could be built and aimed, walls could be torn down, and governments could be restored. 

            But now the bad guy is more nuanced.  It’s not just people who want to destroy us, but people who, in the words of George W. Bush, stand firm against “the non-negotiable demands of human dignity.”  This involves the situation on nearly every continent where people are tormented, killed, imprisoned, or censored due to rogue insurgents or power-hungry governments.  Some of our targets will continue to evade our missiles, and some of them, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton noted, will evade our diplomats.

            It is not enough to roll into a village anymore and claim it for the good guys.  The new war is not for territory, it is for intelligence, information, and ideology.  Building schools, for example, will win the trust of foreigners, provide them with the tools they need to improve their quality of life, and empower them to make their own decisions in the politics of their country.  There are other ways to protect our country other than serving in the military.  Becoming a teacher in rural or urban areas of the U.S. will help combat poverty and ignorance; working at a university to develop new technology for cheap, renewable energy will disentangle us from the oil regimes of Middle Eastern dictators.

            President Obama has made national service and personal responsibility a major selling point.  He plans to double the size of the Peace Corps; he has called for fathers to take a more active role in their children’s lives; and he has equated education with patriotism by saying that “dropping out of high school is no longer an option.  It’s not just quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country”.  What will make us safer years from now is that we will know more about how the world works and will have hopefully dedicated a portion of our lives to making it better.

            It won’t matter that Obama is not a military guy, or that he does not have a military Cabinet.  He does, however, have many women in charge of various compared to JFK’s time.  That itself is a powerful statement about equal opportunity and universal rights in a democratic society.  And it is leverage that can be used in combating our problems through leading by example.  With superior technology to detect threats before they result in disaster and with the superior knowledge and dedication to help decrease suffering around the world, there are many more avenues to service open now than just by learning to fire a gun.

Bush’s tainted legacy

        It is hard to feel sorry for President Bush.  For all of his faith and folksiness, his administration has been plagued by disasters that would rival the tenures of Herbert Hoover, Warren Harding, and Richard Nixon combined.  Some of his administration’s policies were simply wrong, such as the aversion to environmental and financial regulation and the idea of preemptive war.  Others were unethical, like the ideological hiring of Justice Department employees, the mishandling of the Hurricane Katrina response, or torture carried out at Guantanamo Bay.  The bottom line, after eight years, is that George W. Bush, whose only substantive political foray was as the two-term governor of Texas, headed one of the worst presidencies in history.

            Paul O’Neill, Bush’s centrist treasury secretary who was the highest ranking official to be fired first, was profiled in a book by Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty.  In it, he talks about how his 23 months on the job were categorized by purely ideological discourse among Bush’s advisers and a failure to seriously consider the implications of a range of policies—including the refusal to act on global warming or the idea that repeated tax cuts would be the key to economic recovery or the fact that Saddam Hussein’s demise was being plotted from Day Ten of the new presidency.

            In one chapter of the book O’Neill was in a meeting with Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan talking about how CEOs must take full responsibility for the accounting practices of their companies.  This was in the wake of the Enron bankruptcy, when the need for transparency and accountability became clear.  O’Neill shared his thoughts on corporate governance—and whether or not Suskind meant for this to be an allegory for the Bush presidency as a whole, the following passage serves a purpose beyond a casual statement of economic policy:

            If the CEO was to represent an ideal of probity, and guide all those in a company’s orbit to the highest standards of decency, transparency, and disclosure, he’d have to be motivated by fear—fear of the abyss.  Contemplating Greenspan’s sepulchral assessments affirmed for O’Neill that the standard to trigger litigation and censure should no longer be recklessness [with a company's finances].  That was too narrow, too rare—a standard that doubtless would apply to Ken Lay when he was CEO of Enron.  But Lay was one in a thousand.   No, the new standard should be negligence.  If you do not present to investors an accurate picture of the company you run—an illustration that a “reasonable person,” or in this case a “reasonable investor” can understand and, thus, know to be true—you are negligent.

            A moment had arrived.  Historic events had created a sudden, stark recognition of what had slowly and steadily been going away in corporate America for twenty years.  Pin a negligence standard to the CEO, who would be kept honest by the “reasonable investor,” and the tide would turn.  Profits for the boss and the shareholder would flow from a new standard, a kind of integrity competition-rather than what my company and I can get away with.  As for the negligent CEO, O’Neill thought, settling into the role of scourge, watch out!

           

      As the country’s CEO, Bush was both negligent and reckless.  Negligence took the form of a failure to recognize the economy could topple at any moment thanks to years of risky trading.  Recklessness by invading a sovereign country with very little evidence of an imminent threat.  Negligence such as failing to discipline subordinates who leaked the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame after her husband openly disagreed with Bush policy.  Recklessness in sanctioning the use of waterboarding on suspected (though not convicted) terrorists.  The list goes on.  And Congress has meted out very little in terms of punishment.

            How can we, as a country, hold Bush accountable for a lack of transparency and obvious malpractice?  Impeachment was never an option—since there was no sex or money involved—and a criminal trial does not seem to be forthcoming.  In the short term, there is no way to punish this man and his associates, short of throwing all of our shoes at him.  But we can take small pride in knowing that now that he and his party are out of power, they will have very little relevance in the new paradigm that starts on January 20.

            Perhaps the sharpest sting is in knowing that in the coming years, more people like Paul O’Neill will step forward and complete the picture of an administration marred in ideological guidance at the expense of science, inquiry, and sound judgment.  Their stories will become part of history, and history alone will be the most damning judge and executioner of the presidency of George W. Bush.

Phunny Fotos

(Now part of the main page)

Week of June 16 — Thriller Night

On Sunday’s 60 Minutes, Lesley Stahl profiled the phenomenon known as “sleep”–chiefly how much we need and the effects of not getting enough.  In 1960, Americans were getting a median of eight hours of sleep each night; now the median is 6.7.  Less sleep leads to more eating, reduced brain activity, moodiness, and development of signs of diabetes.  In fact, research showed that lack of sleep contributed to the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island nuclear disasters, the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and a Staten Island ferry crash that killed 11.  Though it seems shocking, sleep deprivation has actually been the cause of a number of catastrophes, including the examples below.

Week of June 9 — Situation Normal

Police in Washington, D.C. have set up checkpoints in the Trinidad neighborhood now that 22 murders have occurred there this year to date, a handful of which happened just one weekend ago.  Although people are allowed to enter if they have a “legitimate purpose,” civil rights groups are complaining that “Trinidad should not be treated like Baghdad.”  In response, Congressman Mike Pence (R-IN) asserted that  the District was as safe as “any Indiana market in the summertime” and Senator John McCain (R-AZ) pointed out that he was able to walk unmolested through certain areas of the city with merely a 100-soldier security team and surveillance helicopters for company.

Week of June 2 — School Scandal

A St. Lucie County, FL kindergarten teacher is being investigated because she made her students each tell a five-year-old with behavior problems and autism what they did not like about him.  Then they voted him Survivor-style out of the classroom, 14-2, because the class was studying votes and tallies.  The mother is calling the action emotionally-damaging but upon closer look, the class’s complaints against the boy seem to legitimize his expulsion.

Week of May 26 — Gay Marriage

On May 15, the California State Supreme Court affirmed same-sex couples’ right to be granted marriage lisences, citing a 1948 case that struck down a ban on interracial marriage.  Conservatives are fighting the decision, although it has come as no surprise to many, given the Court’s notoriously activist stance on gay rights and equal opportunity Y.M.C.A. usage.

From left to right: Justice Military Man, Justice Construction Worker, Justice Leatherman, Justice Indian Chief, and Justice Police Officer