Amen!

Presidents, policies - foreign and domestic - and elections

 

The author of the article linked above has a really good grasp of reality when it comes to the powers of the presidency, to which I add my hearty: Amen! Definitely read the article, it really is good.

You see, contrary to a lot of people’s opinions, the American president ain’t all that powerful. That is malice by design by the people who created this republic 225 years ago.

The so-called “founding fathers” had a really strong dislike for a strong executive authority, which in that time normally was wielded by a monarch of some variety. So, the president was not given all that much authority to do anything, without the advice and consent of Congress, the Supreme Court and the states. Despite the passage of time, the president still finds himself (so far, just hims) very limited in what he actually can accomplish. I think that President Obama probably is getting around to understanding that lesson, but unfortunately, a lot of Americans and very few non-Americans get it.

No matter who wins in November, whoever is sworn in on January 20, 2013, they will find themselves in the same bind.

In addition, as the author pointed out, no matter how much the president wants to control things, he ain’t in control. No one is. That to me is the salient point of the article. People, in their hubris, think we can control events. Well, I have news for you, if you haven’t figured it out already: We don’t, we can’t and we never will.

George W. Bush opposed nation-building and that is just what trapped his administration in Afghanistan and Iraq. Barack Obama was going to step back and let other nations help carry the load, and found out that everybody still looks to the Americans to take the lead.

Whether it is trying to control the weather or stop climate change, or bring global peace to all mankind, or ensure that no one goes hungry or without medical care: It is not going to happen. That may sound like a pretty ugly assessment, but it is facing reality.

The best we all can do is to try to cope with whatever contingencies we are faced with. Rarely will they be the ones we chose and often they will be seemingly overwhelming … and sometimes they might well be. But we can’t delude ourselves into thinking that somehow, someone, somewhere will be able to bring this chaos we see around us under control. It is not going to happen.

Remember the ancient curse – “May you live in interesting times” - well, it may come as a revelation to you, but all times are interesting times.

I don’t have a crystal ball, nor am I clairvoyant, but I can tell you all: BUCKLE UP, we are in for a wild ride.

Blame game?

http://geoimpulse.blogspot.com/2012/04/is-iraq-disintegrating.html?showComment=1334933795169#c7736188547415859602

I have an old high school acquaintance who I have relatively recently (via facebook) have renewed some of the debates with which we enlivened one of our classes our senior year. Debating with him was such fun, even if he had difficulty defending his progressive opinions back then. Come to think of it, he still does, in my humble opinion.

His current jag is that the war in Iraq was a failure and Bush was wrong and so it all was a waste … to the point that a) we should have left Saddam in power and b) the Iranians now are going to control Iraq (as well as Syria and Lebanon, I suppose). Well, with all due respect to the Don, once again I think he is wrong.

First, what were the reasons we and about 40 other nations went into Iraq in 2003 to enforce a host of U.N. resolutions?

Weapons of Mass Destruction? Partly … and yes, despite the conventional wisdom of today: a) the Iraqis did have some WMDs, did have the capability of producing more and did have plans to produce more, if and when the then-in-force sanctions regimen collapsed and was no longer in effect and b) that Saddam’s regime already had demonstrated against the Iranians in the 1980-1988 war that it was willing to use them against external enemies and against the Kurds and the Shi’a that it was willing to use such weapons against internal enemies as well.

The fact that he was a genocidal tyrant who was killing thousands of his people annually as well as torturing thousand upon thousands more.

The fact that he was blatant violation of something like 19 U.N. Security Council resolutions, many of which authorized the use of force to compel compliance.

The fact that he was fostering terrorist actions against not only Israel but other “enemies” (including the United States), including but not limited to training, financing and giving the families of anti-Semitic homicide bombers $25,000 USD if they bomber was successful.

It already was costing the US (and other countries involved, including the Brits), billions of bucks to maintain the U.N.-ordered “No Fly” zones over northern and southern Iraq to protect the indigenous people there (both basically unrepresented in Bathist regime) from military reprisals against them.

In addition, the Coalition had moved thousands of troops, billions of dollars worth of military supplies into the deserts of Kuwait and to a lesser extent eastern Turkey, in an effort to convince the Saddam regime that cooperating with the U.N. mandated inspections for weapons of mass destruction was in its best interest. An effort that was only marginally successful, as the U.N. inspectors complained that the Iraqis were not be cooperative, and were, in fact, being disingenuous.

All those are well documented reasons and really can’t be debated, unless you want just to deny reality.

Still, one has to be a realist and point out that however good the reasons 40-plus nations (for whatever reason you want to attribute) felt compelled to be involved, while the initial operation was a resounding success from a purely military point of view, its implementation and the subsequent efforts to help the Iraqis form a more perfect union definitely screwed the pooch as they say.

First, let me say that Gen. Shinseki was right … and Don Rumsfeld was wrong.  Let me say that the Bush Administration (including POTUS and VPOTUS) made a host of atrocious decisions and assumptions that merely illustrated the American propensity to be extremely ignorant of things non-American.

But let me point out that one cannot just use the American presence as a scapegoat for what has happened over the last 10 years in Iraq. It is not from lack of effort by the Americans that bombs still are going off in Iraq and that much of Iraq’s infrastructure remains damaged. No, most (a vast majority and now all) of that is the result of Iraqi v. Iraqi violence and depredations.

It is, as it always has, been the choice of the Iraqis themselves to choose violence over coexistence and compromise.

Now, as for the point that the U.S. has handed Iraq to the suzerainty of Tehran: Ain’t happening, and ain’t gonna happen.

Why do I say that? How about a little reality check here:

First, Iraq is Arab and Kurdish; Iran is Persian and Kurdish (but dominated by the Persians). There is a reason why that stretch of water between the Arabian peninsula and the coast of Southwest Asia has two names, depending on which side you are on – The Arabian Gulf or the Persian Gulf.

Simply put, Arabs and Persians do not get along and haven’t for about 3,000 years. There is a very, very long history of conflict and conquest here in cultures that have very long memories. So, to expect Baghdad just to march in step with Tehran is to ignore reality.

Secondly, not only is their the Shi’a-Sunni divide (which is another source of conflict that stretches back about 1,700 years) but there is a Shi’a-Shi’a divide between the ayatollahs in Qum and the ayatollahs in Karbala. Needless to say that does not bode all that well for Iranian dominance there.

What is happening in Iraq today is little different that what we saw happen in North Ireland for 20-plus years, Lebanon for at least as long, or Bosnia or Kosovo, or Somalia, or Sudan/Dafur, or Uganda, or Namibia, or host of other places that could be named. It is a civil war between two ethnic/religious groups vying for political power and to dominate the economic pie.

Rather than share either, both sides continue to use whatever means possible to advance their own agenda.

Question: Is that that fault of the Americans? Hell, no. Do the Americans necessarily a responsibility to try to intervene? Well, we tried that with mixed results in various places, but in the end, the responsibility for whatever violence and chaos an area maybe enduring, whether it Afghanistan or Iraq or the Philippines or Sri Lanka or Nigeria or Norway, really is the responsibility of the people who live there. They have to make the decision whether it is better to live under a rule of law where they are essentially equal before the law or to live under some other system.

So, to fault the Americans for failing to create more perfect unions in Iraq and Afghanistan is to ignore reality. The Iraqis and the Afghans are choosing their own fates.

Random thoughts 15

A random rant

I sometimes think if I hear one more time that George W. Bush stole the 2000 election or the 2004 election or that the war in Iraq is illegal or that members of the Bush political administration are guilty of war crimes, that there were no WMDs in Iraq in 2003, that Saddam had no connection with terrorists (including some who did have connections with 9-11 although Saddam was not in on that operation) or that Israel is the source of all the problems in the Middle East, I think I just will go off the deep end.

First: GWB did not steal the 2000 election. The U.S. Supreme Court did not select him. If anything, it was the Gore campaign that tried to use the judicial system to change the outcome in Florida. I am tired of hearing that all election officials down at the county level are in the hip pocket of this campaign or that political party. In the 30 years I covered elections, the local election officials have done their darndest to be as accurate and accountable as possible. So, when I hear people talk of conspiracies to steal elections, I think of those hard working folks at the local level and just shake my head.

As for Gore and his campaign: They just couldn’t let Bush have in the appearance of a victory, so they tried everything they could to stop the count until they could line up a judge or two to allow manual recounts, but only in areas that favored Gore. The hypocrisy of that just made me sick. For God’s sake, I wanted to scream, just let the process work itself out. There is a procedure for challenging the results of an election and asking for a recount, just follow it. Rather, the Gore campaign had to jump to the courts. And don’t go on about the GOP controlling the Florida secretary of state’s office, that is just hogwash to the extreme. Don’t go on about suppressed votes or butterfly ballots. It is all stuff to obscure the fact that Gore did not win.

Besides, in the ultimate end, after all the dust settled and a coalition of media outlets went back in a recounted the ballots ... guess who was the winner in like all the various scenarios: GWB.

So, if you don’t like the result, get over it.

Also, even if the minority vote was suppressed in some areas of Ohio in 2004, which it apparently didn’t happen but makes a convenient urban fairy tale, the margin of victory for Bush was such that it wouldn’t have mattered ... in other words, Bush-haters, you lost; time to get over it.

Nor was the war in Iraq illegal nor are Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc., guilty of any war crimes.

First, how many U.N. resolutions threatening AND authorizing force does it take to make a war legal? The UN Security Council since 1991 had passed 19 resolutions on Iraq that Saddam supposedly was in violation of. Even Hans Blix admitted that Hussein had violated the last one in November 2002, but he wanted more time.

If you truly believe that Saddam Hussein’s regime had NO WMDs, please read the entire Duelfer Report, http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/duelfer.html , not just cherry picked passages.

Also understand, if I put a bar of soap in my jacket pocket where you can’t see it and tell you it is a gun, you most likely would believe it was a gun. Especially if all my buddies with me are saying it is a gun, because they actually believe it is a gun. And when the cops show up and see me pointing my “gun”, they are not going to assume it is a bar of soap. They are going to assume it is a gun and tell me to put it down. And if I don’t do it immediately, they are liable to open fire and justifiably I might add.

Saddam may have had a bar of soap or he may have really believed he had WMDs, but 45 nations believed he did and formed a coalition (and so what if GWB allegedly coerced most of them, the man is not omnipotent and they still put their people on the line in one way or another) to take Saddam down. It was not something that just the Americans did, or just the Brits did, or the Italians or the Poles or any other of the members of the coalition.

Just because you don’t like George W. Bush does not make him a liar or a criminal.

Bush did not lie. He did follow the law. He got Congressional approval, that in essence (except that it did not have it as its title) was a declaration of war. He had a U.N. resolution to back him up. OK, granted it didn’t specifically authorize the U.S. to invade Iraq, but the November resolution authorized unspecified measures to compel compliance if Saddam’s regime did not satisfy its provisions. It didn’t.

Saddam had no links to terrorists, specifically Al Qaeda. Arrgggghhh. Please read the Iraq Perspectives Report.

http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/iraqi/index.html

And what has been released so far is just the tip of the iceberg.

I also wish people would understand the difference between a lawful and unlawful combatant. Unfortunately, since we have had a slew of bombing over the last 7 years, a lot of people think we can go back to status quo ante 9-11. When will we realize that we really are at war with these hoods and it is an honest to goodness root’n toot’n shooting war?

As for torture: Maybe I have misplaced my faith and trust but I find it difficult to believe that the type of soldiers I have had the pleasure to serve with actually engaged in torture. Of course, your definition of torture and mine differ. I mean, to me torture is like beating somebody with fists or a rubber hose. It is like breaking limbs and dislocating joints. It is like drilling holes in a body or chopping off digits. It is like carving on someone or using them for a human ash tray. Let’s not forget sexually violating someone.

However, it is not torture to subject someone to loud music that they dislike for 24/7 or to put them in a cold room with little clothes on. It is not forcing them to stand for hours, or squat for hours or keeping them under a bright light for hours. Those psychological pressures do not meet the standard for torture in my book. Nor does the Good Cop-Bad Cop routine.

My personal jury is still out on waterboarding. I don’t know enough about the procedure to know if it qualifies as torture. Drowning some one is, but then they would be dead. I do think that keel-hauling would qualify as torture, but that is primarily due to the barnacles, plus ships’ keels are much longer than they used to be. We could be back the cat-o-nine-tails, but they flogging really is more than punishment. It is torture.

Still, I am not sure humiliation is torture. It is humiliation and torture is more physical.

One thing I do wonder is that when did combatants (whether lawful or unlawful) get rights other than those laid down by the Hague and Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war. Remember, we are in a war. Oops, I forgot ... we aren’t, even if Congress authorized the use of military force to resolve the problem.

Finally, for all those who hate GWB so much that they lose all sense of proportion. Understand this, in a few months on Jan. 20, 2009, at noon, a new president will be sworn in. This person will be the winner of a national ballot held on Nov. 4 (and days preceding in some jurisdictions) and your long nightmare will be over. I wonder what you will say if your preferred candidate doesn’t get elected this time. What excuse are you going to trot out this time.

Ok, I have vented enough for today.

Random Thoughts 2

There are a few words I would like to share, not my own, but I will add my thoughts.

Supposedly, in like 1803, there was this New York State Superior Court Judge who said:

"No man's life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature sits."

I find that thought chillingly true two centuries later while our national (U.S.) legislature sits in Washington, D.C.

An editorialist for many years, I often have been driven to comment on the workings of Congress, as well as the executive and judicial branches. Today, the Congressional leadership drives me to distraction. They speak as demigods who have lost touch with reality and offer no coherent plan or program that is both intellectually and emotionally consistent.

What probably distresses me the most is that it seems that we Americans seem to have lost all perspective and no longer think beyond the next quarter's bottom line. We must, and we must come up with cogent and coherent plans to deal with not just the next quarter but the next 100 quarters.

My Canadian relatives sometimes ask me my views of the current political landscape in my country and I always seem to speak with tones of anguish and disappointment. Not only in our leadership but also in the body politic at large. It truly is distressing that there seems to be a large body of people out there who have little to no understanding of the American system of governance. The United States is not a pure democracy but it is a democratic republic (if, as Ben Franklin was quoted as saying, we "can keep it."). It is not a parliamentary democracy but rather a federal republic with a written constitution that means what it says and often not what a lot of people think it says. It is designed (with malice aforethought, me thinks) to be inefficient and unwieldy, so its integral checks and balances have time to play out. But today, in an era of instant gratification and amusement, there are those who tolerances for delay have never been developed. I am reminded of two quotes from my childhood -- "Patience is a learned virtue" and "If it is good, then it is worth waiting for." Patience is a virtue we seem in desperately short supply of.

As a nation, we also seem to have this perverse habit of looking back on things we can not change and probably do not accept and lay it at the feet of some grand conspiracy.

For example, to those whose view of George W. Bush is so slanted that they still accuse him of stealing the 2000 election, I find that -- like those of us in the South who still view the Confederacy as something to venerate -- I want to tell them that (a) that battle is over and (b) the point is now moot, so it is time to get over it. Of course, like I sometimes point out to my Southern brethren, that any way you want to look at it -- slavery was at the bottom of the reasons that prompted the War of Yankee Aggression. To those who still accuse Bush of stealing the election, it is uncomfortable to remind them that a recount conducted by the leading outlets of what is now called the MSM (main stream media) in 2001 found that in just about all the scenarios, Bush still won by small numbers of votes. So, in a way, it could be argued that Gore was attempting to steal the election in Florida by way of the judicial branch. The end result of the first Tuesday in November 2000 found three days later being the same as the one that was found in May and June of 2001.

I won't go into my dissertation on the rationale and reasons for the electoral college and the wisdom of the founding fathers in establishing it today but will save that for a later post.

To the great conspiracy theorists: I wish they knew the government like I know the government. To this day, I remain surprised that anything classified remains a secret.

As for the Iraq War, the great issue of the current generation: It is a just cause and a noble effort. It is still ours to lose ... or win, although, like Vietnam, I believe we lack the political will to do so. That is unfortunate, for all the soldiers I know who have been over there want and think we can achieve victory, if we keep at it.

To those who subscribe to the view that "Bush lied, people died!" perspective: I view these people with great sadness. There was no grand neo-conservative conspiracy to take the U.S. to war in Iraq. What there was was an effort by essentially well-meaning people, doing what they thought was correct, acting on imperfect and often inaccurate information, trying to build the broadest coalition possible, who made less that perfect decisions.

HELLO, WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD.

Don't view me as a defender of Dubya. I don't agree with him on a host of issues (although I voted for him twice, that was a matter of my judgement of the lesser of two evils -- id est: voting less for someone as against the other person who had more faults). And his abilities as a communicator and a leader leave a lot to be desired. However, he has earned my grudging respect. In the wake of 9/11, he chose to do something proactive and actively respond to those who wish all Americans ill. This was new, in my life time.

Did Dubya pick the right fights? I don't know. I do know that the sanctions regime against Saddam Hussein was unsustainable and would have collapsed. The sustainment of the no fly zones was costly in both lives and treasury and dispatching thousands of troops to sit in the sand while the U.N. arms inspectors were piddled and diddled was unworkable solution. Like those today who augur for the withdrawal from Iraq, I heard no coherent or cogent explanation of what to do after. What is your plan after the sanctions regime collapsed or the troops were withdrawn? What is your plan for the day after today? Under what contingencies are you willing to act? Under what circumstances would you deploy U.S. service members and under what rules of engagement?

Am I only among a few who view this current conflict from an historical perspective and realize that it truly has been fought on the cheap from beginning to end (and that is one of its major problems -- opting for doing it on the cheap). And yes, it is about OIL, but not for us as much as for our trading partners which in the end benefits us. Still, if it wasn't for oil, then we would not be trying to create an oasis of stability, democracy and hopefully tolerance in a region that such concepts seem as alien as something from outer space. It may be a utopian dream but I for one would rather believe that it is a universal dream.

Am I among the few who take people at their word? I don't try to parse what they are saying, but accept their words at face value. If the jihadiis say they want to kill Americans and destroy America, then I don't try to analyze the underlying problems they have or why they think that way ... I take them at face value. There are people out there who hate America, its way of life, its political and economic system and want to destroy it. I take them at their word.

Such as if the president of Iran says Israel should be wiped off the map ... I don't take it as a rhetorical device ... I take it that he means exactly that and if he can find a way to do it, will endeavor to accomplish that act.

And for those who babble about impeachment ... why waste our energy. Bush will be gone in less that 18 months and Dick Cheney along with him. Besides, impeachment would never get 67 votes in the Senate, so it is bound to fail. It really would a major waste of time, money and energy. Is this payback for the Republican effort in 1998 to remove Clinton? Let us not be so petty and have a little faith and patience in the American system of governence.

And another canard repeated by some who seem to be devoting their lives to hating GWB, I have yet to see how Bush has acted as a tyrant ... unless it is his failure the heed to advice of the progressive side of the body politic. I know not where he has violated with intent any law or criminal statute. Granted that he has done many things, advocated many policies that are actively opposed by many of different political perspectives, but he has not confiscated the property of any class of citizens without following the proscriptions of the law. He has not jailed his political opponents or seized their communications outlets as say has Hugo Chavez has in Venezuela. Chavez's latest thing is to expell all outspoken foreign critics. Those seem more the actions of a tyrant. Nor have I seen any effort by Dubya to change the constitution in order to stay in office.

I may be a simple man at heart, but I do judge people by their actions and their rhetoric. And if their rhetoric fails to match the observeable world, then their credibility is suspect.

Tis a strange world we live in ... and I only hope that we will survive.