The End of Israel?

Israel’s current attack on Gaza has several objectives, according to news reports:
1. Stop Hamas rockets being fired into Israel.
2. Destroy Hamas as a governing body
3. Get the Kadima party re-elected in Israel.

Of these, only the third is achievable.

The rocket materials and other weapons are coming in from Iran, Syria, and elsewhere via Egypt. It is unclear to me why it is impossible for Israel to seal the borders of Gaza. All they would need is a strip a few kilometers wide on the Gaza side of Egypt. Tunnels could be closed. The rest of the borders are easy. No more rockets.

Border monitoring must be more difficult than I realize. I never could understand why the U.S. did not seal the Iraqi borders early on, either. Sure, it’s expensive; sure it takes a lot of manpower. But it has got to be cheaper than war. Whatever the reasons, it apparently cannot be done so the rockets will continue to come in and be fired into Israel.

It may be possible to disable Hamas in Gaza for a while by disrupting their operations. But already Hamas leaders are pronouncing eternal revenge from Syria and elsewhere. Hamas will be around for a long time.

Israel does have the moral and legal right to defend itself against rocket attacks, of course. If Mexico started lobbing rockets into Texas, there is no question that a vigorous response would follow. It is no different for Israel.

However, bombing Gaza is a knee-jerk reaction. Since Hamas locates its weapons and military centers inside schools, hospitals, and universities (with callous indifference to its own people!), then attacks on Hamas have high collateral civilian damage. Then, since the news media are born to sell news, the desperate plight of the civilians is highlighted without consideration of the underlying causes.

Israel cannot hope to overcome the negative public opinion that results from biased news reporting. They have barred reporters from Gaza for that reason, but it is futile to attempt a news blackout. So they are losing, and will continue to lose international goodwill. Even in the U.S. it is not inconceivable that the “Special Relationship” between the U.S. and Israel could disintegrate rather quickly, due to changing public sentiment, however unjustified it might be in military terms.
(Photo Welt Online)

But let’s just suppose that some kind of ceasefire is called, say around January 20, 2009. Some clever diplomatic language will be found to allow Israel to monitor smuggling into Gaza while declaring that the borders are “open.” Hospitals are rebuilt, bandages changed, food supplies restored.

How long is it going to take for the Palestinians to forget about the attack? How long will it take Gazans and their compatriots in the West Bank to forgive? A couple hundred years might not be enough. Israel should not imagine it could ever achieve peace with the Palestinians after something like this attack. It is self-destructive behavior, no matter how righteous it feels at the moment.

(Photo Welt Online)

Then there is the problem of demographics in Israel. Palestinians out-breed the Israelis, and soon will be a majority of the population, certainly in the West Bank, and probably in most other parts of Israel as well. This could happen within 50 years. What will Israel do? Will it maintain a minority – rule, apartheid government? As we know, that solution has little long term viability. But a fully open democracy would lead to the obvious outcome of Palestinian rule, and it would not take long after that to replace the flag.

The Israelis could establish an iron-fisted dictatorship. That could work for a while, but in the long run, would surely cost the economic support of the U.S. There would be no Israel today without U.S. foreign aid, and that would be withdrawn from a dictatorship. Maybe some other country would be willing to pick up the slack. But it would be the end of Israel, the idea, leaving only Israel, the junta.

There is no apparent scenario under which Israel survives and prospers for another century as a democracy, and perhaps not at all. So maybe we should start adjusting our thinking now.

Maybe it was not such a good idea for the Western powers to arbitrarily carve an artificial country out of Palestine in 1948. It was an experiment; it didn’t work. Maybe the U.S. should start tilting its foreign policy to the Arab/Muslim world, which is the Next Big Thing.

With the demise of Israel as a state, what would become of the 7 million Israelis? Some might choose to live under a benign Palestinian government. It is sort of working like that in South Africa. Some could emigrate to America. Look how enormously we benefitted from the last great Jewish immigration. We could do it again. Some probably would want to set up another theocracy somewhere, like Somalia maybe? They need a government.

This Gaza war is more than a symptom. It is a signal that we may need to start imagining a world without Israel.

Cheney’s Double Fallacy

Vice President (for another 25 days) Dick Cheney seems suddenly interested in establishing his “legacy.” Normally media-averse, he has unexpectedly appeared on several talk shows to explain how he has been a terrific vice-president and GW Bush just as terrific.

His argument employs two rhetorical fallacies. The first is the fallacy of future history (also called the “knowing the unknowable” fallacy). This is where a person claims to know what future historians will write about the present. Of course nobody knows that. Political predictions are notoriously inaccurate, and of all speculations one might make, what future historians will write is patently unknowable.

The future history fallacy encourages the listener or reader to recontextualize current events into a larger time scale extending into the future. From that imaginary God’s-eye view, it is suggested, the current events will seem more important than they do now. Since it is merely an exercise of fantasy, this argument is invalid.

Political historians do tend to obsess over presidential administrations, so we can be fairly sure that future histories of this one will be written (of which Cheney and Bush memoirs will probably be among the first out of the chute). However my guess is thatmost non-participant observers will evaluate the Bush-Cheney administration as one of the most incompetent and disastrous of its age. And my guess has as much value as Cheney's since the future is unknowable.

The second rhetorical fallacy deployed by Cheney in his recent interviews is a politicians’ favorite, the straw man. With this pseudo-argument one objects to a statement the other side never made or to a position that the other side does not actually hold. The effect of the fallacy is to deceive the uninformed listener or reader into thinking that the other side does hold the incorrect view. Since deception violates the foundation of legitimate discourse, this argument is invalid.

Cheney’s use of the straw man fallacy is reported in the New York Times of 12/22/08 (“Cheney Defends Bush on President’s Role”). Cheney criticized Vice President-elect Joe Biden, who had remarked that Cheney had been “the most dangerous vice president we’ve had in American history.”

Cheney’s dismissive reply was, “If he wants to diminish the office of vice president, that’s obviously his call.” But did Biden attempt to diminish the office of vice president? Not at all. His remark was directed squarely at Dick Cheney, occupant of that office. Cheney’s strategy was to deflect the criticism by pretending it was a different criticism, one that Biden never made. It is a classic maneuver.

Cheney went on to offer many unsound arguments, such as asserting that “the president “doesn’t have to check with anybody” — not Congress, not the courts — before launching a nuclear attack to defend the nation “because of the nature of the world we live in” since the terrorist strikes of Sept. 11, 2001” (NYT). This assertion contradicts the United States Constitution that Cheney and Bush swore to uphold. That contradiction makes it an unsound argument.

But that is not a fallacy, which is an error in reasoning. It is just a weak, unjustified, unconvincing argument based on inadequate evidence.

It is difficult to decide if Cheney simply cannot reason correctly, or if he uses fallacious arguments deliberately to deceive his audience.

Is Deflation Really So Bad?

The U.S. Economic recession is deepening and there is fear now of deflation, a situation where prices fall and so does demand. Normally, if prices fall, people rush in to buy, like the crazy stampedes of shoppers on the day after Thanksgiving.

But now, nobody has enough money, so demand is down. Prices drop, to lure customers and match the lower demand. But that cuts profits so companies slim down, cutting inventory and jobs. Consequently there is less to sell and more people without money. So prices fall further, more jobs are lost, inventory shrinks more. Salaries stagnate because a thousand workers apply for every job, so there is no inflation.

This vicious downward spiral ripples backward through the supply chain to manufacturers and importers, who also slow down, slim down, and lay off workers, further depressing the economy. Deflation ripples out to the housing and credit markets where sellers are under water and buyers can’t get loans. The whole economy comes to a halt and we all die (financially, anyway). That’s the doomsday scenario.

Nouriel Roubini (aka “Doctor Doom”) wrote a column in the Financial Times entitled, “How to Avoid the Horrors of Stagflation.” (FT 12/3/08, p. 13). Stagflation is a paradoxical combination of deflation and inflation. But Roubini does not talk about that, so the headline was probably added by someone who did not get the author’s drift. What he was warning against was spiraling deflation, as described above. He fears that the government’s attempts to inject money into the economy will not be enough, and not soon enough, to avert the horrors of deflation.

But I was thinking (always dangerous). Is deflation really so bad? Okay a lot of jobs would be lost, perhaps millions of them, and that is definitely bad. But let’s put that aside and come back to it in a moment.

People need to buy essentials: Food, medicine, clothing, housing, education. When the price is right, they will buy. When the price is too high they will avoid buying as long as they can and then buy only on the low end. But they will buy. So there will be an economy, even if only at a very low level. Everything cannot stop dead.

What people do not need are jet skis and wide-screen TVs and expensive designer clothes. They do not need expensive food, either restaurant or frozen. People can live without an iPod and they don’t need a vacation in Italy. A family of three does not need a 10,000 square foot home. So people won’t buy those things in a deflationary situation.

Is that so bad? Companies that sell iPods, trips to Italy, fast food and palatial mansions will wither to a fraction of their former size, if they survive at all, to serve a greatly diminished demand.

On the other side, the back of the irrational consumer society would finally be broken. Imagine people spending their time cooking beans in a crock pot, studying for school and dancing at the community center. They do not cruise the malls, which no longer exist anyway. You haven’t had a raise in three years, but on the other hand, your taxes, utilities and rent haven’t increased either, and the price of eggs has dropped by a third. There is less to buy, but there is less you need to buy. Your 401(k) is cut in half, but so is the cost of your retirement, so you are relatively as well-off as you were before the economic collapse.

The whole economy is reset to a slower, lower, more sane level without the frenzy of obsessive consumerism. Prices are stable, wages are stable. Companies grow organically, by innovation and reaching a growing demographic, not by taking on insane amounts of debt to produce products that have to be massively marketed to create artificial demand. We are all rich again, just at a lower absolute number.

What about all those millions who lost jobs back in the grip of the initial deflation (which is now)? The government keeps them afloat until they find their feet. They get other jobs, at a fraction of what they were making before, but they also cut their spending to a fraction, and as prices and demand equilibrate, they become as comfortable as they ever were, without all the “stuff.”

What’s wrong with this vision of economic post-apocalyptic utopia? Only human nature. People want snowmobiles and expensive handbags. It doesn’t make any economic sense, but that’s how it is. If you try to prevent these aspirations, as the communists did, it only postpones the inevitable and makes everyone miserable in the meantime. Human nature is part of Mother Nature, with whom one should not fool.

So frenzied consumerism, entrepreneurial excess, and wallet-busting inflation will be back. There is no chance society will question whether that is what we really want. I look forward to it.

Time to End The Bully Doctrine

The Status of forces agreement (SOFA) between the U.S. and Iraq passed the Iraqi cabinet recently. Passage by the full Iraqi parliament is predicted by the end of November 2008.

An important feature of the SOFA is the promise that the U.S. will no longer attack other countries from Iraq, as it has been doing. That provision goes a long way towards calming Iran, which is worried about a U.S. invasion from Iraq.

The U.S. has been attacking countries all over the world with impunity since at least 2004, when Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld authorized them. We have dropped bombs on Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, Kenya, and many other countries since then (New York Times: “Secret Order Lets U.S. Raid Al Qaeda,” 9 Nov 08).

(Graphic from Mother Jones)

What is the legal or moral justification for such attacks? The same as for the invasion of Iraq in the first place: the Bush Doctrine, which essentially is, “The U.S. has the self-appointed ‘right’ to attack any country in the world, any time we feel like it, for whatever reason we decide.”

How would we feel if Iran declared the “right” to attack Detroit because it perceived a threat there to its national security? I don’t think we would find that acceptable.

What if Russia decided it needed to bomb Anchorage because it believed some oligarch fugitives were hiding out there? Would we be OK with that? I don’t think so.

The Bush Doctrine is nothing more than the bully’s credo that “might makes right.” It is immoral, illegal, foolish, counterproductive, and extremely dangerous for the whole world.

I think the Bush administration has stepped up its attacks on sovereign nations lately in a desperate hope of landing a bomb on Bin Laden, so GW can claim symbolic revenge for 9-11. Otherwise he must slink out of office a disgraced dog. I really think he would risk the lives of millions for personal aggrandizement.

Will the SOFA put an end to these attacks? I don’t even think the ones originating from Iraq will cease. They will just be smaller scale, under the international radar, maybe run by the CIA using foreign mercenaries. No more ostentatious big bird drones.

But Predators can be launched from almost anywhere, including Turkey, Israel, India – any number of places. So my bet is that attacks will continue, at least until January 20, 2009. After that, I hope Obama does a thorough review of U.S. military policy, and renounces Bush’s Bully Doctrine.

There are at least two good alternatives to the Bully doctrine. One is to revert to self defense and judicial proceedings, as was generally the policy during the Clinton administration (with exceptions), but unlike the Clinton administration, put the proper resources into self-defense and international law enforcement. We can be proactive and internationally aggressive toward anti-American terrorists without arbitrarily blowing up civilians in other countries. It requires good intelligence and police work and a hardened defense perimeter.

Another alternative would be to continue military operations in foreign countries, but with their permission! How do you get permission? You ask. Diplomacy! You might even have to work with a country over the long term, and spend some money on them to garner their cooperation. You convince them that it is in their own best interests to pursue the bad guys in their territory. Maybe you let them execute the operations under your guidance. You make it worth their while. There are many options.

What if the other country won’t agree to allow military operations on their turf? Then we don’t go in!

If they really are harboring terrorists and they don’t care, or do so willfully, then that country is no friend of ours. Cut them off. This is a whole new approach to international diplomacy and alliances that does not require us to be friends with countries that work against our interests just because it is geopolitically “convenient.” Those days should be over. Realpolitik should be Real.

Certainly we can tolerate and work with countries who do not please us in every way. No doubt they feel the same way about us. But if our highest international priorities are such things as terrorism and nonproliferation, then those principles cannot be subordinated to economics or geopolitical chess games. It’s a kind of international toughness to walk your own talk.

I thought Robert Gates would be a good Defense Secretary for Obama, but I am not so sure any more since he re-affirmed Rumsfeld’s bully authorization. Obama needs to have a DoD chief who is on the same page.

Lucky 44

The 44th president is talented and blessed with a silver tongue, but he is also very lucky. He will need that luck to stay with him.

The financial bubble could have burst any time in the last 5 years, or it could have lasted another year or two. The timing was lucky for Obama, who was perceived by voters as more trustworthy on the economy (mainly because the Republicans have been so untrustworthy). The recession is already painful, but we will come out of it in a year.

Corollary luck is for Obama to have a pot of 700 billion dollars already appropriated to work with. I doubt that all of it will be spent. It’s main purpose is already achieved, to provide a backstop of confidence for the financial system. Some will be spent to stanch the home loan foreclosure rate. There will be plenty left over. Opportunity for Lucky 44.

Obama was also lucky to be running at a time when the Republicans were so self-destructive. Right wing extremists had (and have) such a grip on the party that it could not field a strong candidate. McCain was probably the best brand, but his campaign was apparently run by those same extremists and he never had much chance to be himself. Palin is merely a continuation of that same narrow minded extremism (that’s why she was selected, after all). Obama couldn’t have beat a Reagan or a Nixon, or probably even McCain if McCain had actually run as a moderate.

Corollary luck was that McCain’s pandering to the extremists all but broke the bank on his campaign early on, so he had no choice but to accept public financing. Obama promised to do the same, but soon realized that he would not have to, as the money started pouring in. It would have been a very different race if both candidates were limited to public financing. If the money had not started flowing until a few months later, Obama might have actually signed up for public financing. Although he opened up the donation money faucet himself, the timing of its flow was lucky.

Obama was also lucky that the war in Iraq took a positive turn when it did. Had it not, he would have been facing McCain the soldier in every speech, and been on the defensive. The situation is far from stable in Iraq and fast approaching disaster in Afghanistan, but Lucky 44 found a calm in the storm at just the right moment.

Corollary luck was that there was no spectacular terrorist incident in the past two years. Some of that can be credited to the hard work of the intelligence agencies, the military, and Homeland Security. Still, we all know that cloak of protection is full of holes and Obama was lucky.

There is a lot of trouble ahead. Let’s hope Lucky 44 continues to have the magic.

Three Reasons Why I Support Obama

1. I support Obama because I believe in the centrality of the common good. Nobody succeeds until we all succeed. We are all just people; no one is better than anyone else; we all want the same things. Democrats have that point of view. I don't think it is a Republican’s highest value. Therefore I support Obama because he represents the values of the Democratic party.

Believing in the common good leads to compassion, and that makes me adamant about equal justice under the law, economic fairness and cultural diversity. It also means I expect the government to have a major role in such things as universal health care, affordable education, industry regulation, environmental stewardship, and so on. A compassionate government smoothes the spikes and troughs of wild and woolly free market capitalism.

The Republican idea that we need to radically shrink government is out of step with reality. Every American depends on the federal government, including John McCain, whose campaign uses public financing, and whose salary, health care, pension and entire career have all come from the federal government.

2. The second reason I support Obama is for character and personality. He believes in rationality and has the ability to think on his feet. He is creative and strategic in problem-solving and shrewd in assessment of others. I admire those qualities. It is possible to over-think things, and that could be an Obama weakness. Sometimes you have to go with your gut. But intellectual overdrive is a way smaller risk than the shoot-from the hip mentality of Bush and McCain.

In the debate last night, I wished Obama had used the questioners' first name more often to signal that he was making the personal connection. He didn't (nor did McCain). Bill Clinton would have. Obama would have changed more minds if he had put the ideas aside long enough to at least smile at the person. It's his weakness, but less dangerous than the undisciplined emotional reactivity of the other side. Obama’s thoughtfulness is far more likely to lead to domestic and international solutions that work for most people.

3. Finally, I support Obama because of his global, international vision. I studied his "manifesto" (and McCain's too) in Foreign Affairs magazine. (You can see my reviews at http://political-innocence.blogspot.com/2007/07/obama-in-foreign-affairs.html and http://political-innocence.blogspot.com/2007/11/mccain-on-foreign-affairs.html ).

Obama understands the value of international diplomacy while McCain is dangerously bellicose. McCain must talk tough to keep the support of his party, but the same pressures would be on him in the White House, and I think he would reach for the trigger too quickly. His military mind frightens me. I've had enough war.

Obama's Foreign Affairs article was long on strategic "vision" and short on specifics, but at least he understands that we have allies. Nobody succeeds unless we all succeed.

On the down side, the Democrats will probably control both houses of congress and if Obama is in the White House, it would be easy for Democrats to act without adequate pushback, leading to changes that might not be for the best. On the other hand, the government will be so totally broke because of the wars and the financial bailouts that there simply won't be any money to do anything significant for a very long time.

The Slippery Slope to Socialism

Capital must be made to flow, rather soon, or the whole economy will seize up like an engine running without oil. Farmers need credit to buy seed, small business needs credit to buy materials, and homebuyers need credit to buy homes. If everything stops, how will we ever get it started again?

The Paulsen proposal started out by saying, Hey, we’ll just inject some billions into the financial system. Democrats cried moral hazard. The compromise was strong oversight. (As Wanda Sykes says, “Oversight? I want receipts!”). But that was not enough for some apparently and the idea of government equity (ownership) was proposed as a condition of the financial aid. But that amounts to nationalization of the company.

Republicans have scuttled the Paulsen bailout plan, at least for now, because it goes against their genetically fixed instincts for wild and woolly, free-market enterprise, and their equally inborn revulsion of government regulation and intervention. The bailout plan is nothing less than a “slippery slope to socialism,” I heard a Republican lawmaker say on television recently.

That is a rhetorical fallacy of course called, aptly, the “slippery slope fallacy,” also known as the “continuum fallacy.” You can Wikipedia it.

A Republican may say that the bailout plan is just one step along the path to full socialist government, but maybe it is just a particular course of action designed to address a particular problem.

Socialism is not a bad thing. Insurance is socialism: it transfers wealth from the healthy to the sick. We need insurance, just as we need Medicare, Social Security, and progressive taxation. The U.S. military is about as pure a model of a socialist government as you could hope to find. The government takes care of the soldier’s every need, in exchange for service, while the rest of us pay. There is nothing wrong with some socialism in a market economy. Some transfer of wealth from richer to poorer is necessary to offset unrelenting transfer of wealth from poor to rich in the free market economy. No reasonable person could be opposed to a little bit of balance like that.

Still, I balk at nationalizing the financial industry, or major parts of it, and here I am in sympathy with the Republicans. Strong regulation is one thing, which I favor, but when the government starts owning the means of production, we have indeed taken radical action.

Why would the government want to be in a position of owning major stakes in financial companies? Do we seriously believe that the government, as a major shareholder, would be utterly passive, never exercising its owner’s right to meddle? That is inconceivable. Is the government even competent to direct that much money? The evidence of recent history would argue against it.

Financial institutions do not have enough operating capital, because it is all sunk into worthless mortgage-backed bonds. Instead of buying the worthless bonds at inflated prices, which is effectively a giveaway, why doesn’t the government simply loan the money to the companies? They can keep their stinking bonds and if they turn out to have some value in the future, they can count their lucky stars. If not, they can at least use the loan to right the ship, and pay it back with interest as time permits. The alternative is to cease to exist.

Republican representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, has suggested government-backed insurance for the troubled firms as an alternative. He apparently does not realize that insurance is a type of socialism. It’s a bad idea anyway. It didn’t work for Fannie and Freddie, and it doesn’t correct the fundamental lack of capital in the system.

One could argue that cash for an equity stake is really just a loan with equity collateral. The trouble is that the equity owners have a tendency to want to run the show, and that’s the flaw of any nationally owned company. Government does not have the requisite skill to run the show, but will surely try to do it anyway.

It needs to be a clean loan, collateralized by a creditor’s right to be paid by a bankruptcy court.

Alas, nobody in government listens to me as they should!

Medvedev: Why I Did It

In the Financial Times of 27 Aug 08, Russian President Medvedev explains why “he” (actually Putin, the power behind the throne, as we know), invaded Georgia, pried loose the two territories of South Ossetia, and Abkhazia, then, alone among leaders in the world, recognized them as independent states.

He says that the people of those two regions freely expressed their desire for independence from Georgia in the past, although that hardly justifies an invasion.

The Russian Federation, he explains, "is a harmonious coexistence of many dozens of nations and nationalities, not all of which have their own statehood." “After the collapse of communism, Russia reconciled itself to the loss of 14 former Soviet republics, which became states in their own right, even though some 25 million Russians were left stranded in countries no longer their own.”

But were they ever “their own” if they were republics in the Soviet Union? It is a little slippery to speak in one breath of “republics” (constitutional governments) and of “countries” (not defined), and of “nations” (not defined), and to suggest that their "federation" with the Soviets was ever voluntary.

“Georgia “stripped” the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia of their autonomy,” he says. But isn’t that just another way of saying they were no longer part of the Soviet Union? Medvedev implies that these were formerly autonomous countries under the Soviets, although the extent of their autonomy during those times is suspect. Was Hungary "autonomous" in 1956?

However, it is true that in repossessing these regions from Soviets after 1989, the Georgians have acted with a heavy hand, treating the ethnic Russians as second class citizens, outlawing their language, cultural traditions, schools, etc. (exactly as the Soviets had treated the Georgians for 70 years).

Finally, says Medvedev, the newly independent Georgia “inflicted a vicious war on its minority nations.” Russian peacekeepers tried to keep things calm, he says, but Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili “made no secret of his intention to squash the Ossetians and Abkhazians.” ("Squash"?) Finally on August 7, Saakashvili invaded south Ossetia. “Only a madman could have taken such a gamble,” says Medvedev.

“Russia had no option but to crush the attack to save lives. This was not a war of our choice,” he says. “We have no designs on Georgian territory.”

(Click to enlarge this ethnic map).

Then he claims that “The presidents of the two republics appealed to Russia to recognize their independence.” There is no evidence of that beyond his word. And how is it that these territories are once again “republics” in his mind, since he said earlier that they had been “stripped” of their autonomy by the Georgians? And anyway, what sort of political standing does the leader of a province of Georgia have to request a foreign country to recognize its independence?

If the governor of Louisiana, for example, appealed to France to “recognize” its independence from the U.S., would that have any force in international law?

But “based on [unspecified] documents of international law,” he says, Medvedev reluctantly (he would have us believe) agreed to recognize the two regions’ independence from Georgia.

In justification, he notes that just a few years ago, “ignoring Russia’s warnings, western countries rushed to recognize Kosovo’s illegal declaration of independence from Serbia.” Is it tit for tat then? Medvedev conveniently overlooks the fact that the Kosovar Albanians were being slaughtered by the Serbs.

Today, the Christian Science Monitor (www.csmonitor.com/2008/0829/p08s01-comv.html) reports that according to Medvedev, the Georgians were slaughtering ethnic Russians in an equivalent genocide. But there is simply no evidence of that.

It seems pretty obvious that the real reasons for the invasion and re-annexation of these two regions to Russia were 1. Longtime personal enmity between Putin and Shaakashvili (if you don’t think that’s a good enough reason to invade, look at the US in Iraq), 2. Russia’s desire to control the oil and gas resources in the breakaway regions, especially the pipelines to Europe, and 3. Petulant retaliation for the expansion of NATO and the installation of anti-missile sites in Poland.

What perplexes me is why Medvedev felt he must weave an elaborate story that pretends to some high moral ground, when the motivation for the Russian action was plain thuggery. Why couldn’t Medvedev just say, “We wanted those regions; we had the power to take them, so we did.” And he could add, “Neener, neener!” if he wanted to.

Who is fooled by his transparent self-justification?

Was Hillary Right?

I am surprised to see recent polls showing McCain and Obama going into their conventions virtually tied among the voting public (NY Times.com 8/20, Fox News.com 8/21). How can that be possible? When I see the candidates on the evening news, I see one man as the picture of Enlightenment clear thinking, rationality, sincerity, and compassion; the other a grotesque self-caricature sputtering empty slogans.

McCain yesterday vowed that he would bring the troops home from Iraq “with honor and victory,” while, he said, Obama prefers forfeiture. Does McCain think the war is an Olympic event? What is “victory?” Didn’t we achieve victory 24 hours after invading the country in 2003? What is forfeiture? Returning a sovereign country to its rightful owners? I cannot fathom how his mind works when he talks like that.

Voters polled said McCain was more prepared to be commander in chief. But why? Haven’t they read his Foreign Affairs article? (http://political-innocence.blogspot.com/2007/11/mccain-on-foreign-affairs.html). It is frightening. Wouldn’t we rather have a pro-peace president?

Of course voters have not read McCain’s Foreign Affairs article, or much of anything else either, and that’s the problem. Obama may be too far out in front of the crowd to be a natural leader. You can’t lead from a mountaintop; only from five paces ahead. And maybe Hillary was that leader. Maybe I was wrong about her. I have a long history of being a contrary indicator.

The Demo convention will be a tragedy if the pro-Clinton forces and the roll call vote turn into an anti-Obama self-indulgence. I think “Barry” (as Maureen Dowd calls him) could overcome such a fiasco and go on to win in November because the choice is so stark that I do not believe many voters will change sides. This is rural vs urban, educated vs uneducated, and that’s not going to change. But it could hurt turnout, which Obama must have oceans of.

It may be that Hillary was right insisting that she was the “electable” candidate. Looking back at the primaries now, where she won big, she may have been right.

I still believe Obama would be a president of a higher order, like this country has not seen in two or three generations; while another self-obsessed Clinton White House would be excruciating and dangerous for America. But the first step in the recipe for making rabbit stew is 1: Catch a rabbit.

Obama Gets Oily

According to the Los Angeles Times, (http://www.latimes.com/news/ politics/la-na-campaign5-2008aug05, 0,4069072.story), Barack Obama said today that the nation should draw down its strategic oil reserves to lower the price of gasoline, and that he has also recently agreed that some offshore drilling might be acceptable.

He will surely get the flip-flop badge of the week.

Historically, every time the strategic oil reserves have been tapped, gasoline prices have dropped soon thereafter. Voters want lower gasoline prices, so it would seem to be an easy, cheap palliative gesture, with the added virtues that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been calling for such a move, and President Bush is against it. Points are scored all around.

But releasing strategic oil is not an energy strategy, only a symbolic gesture. Gasoline prices are falling anyway. A little more relief would be welcome, but the oil-reserves effect would be a blip, and do nothing for the strategic problem. The same can be said for “drilling on the beaches.”

According to the San Francisco Chronicle (http://www.sfgate.com/ cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/ 2008/07/22/MN6M11SN60.DTL) there might be 11 years worth of oil on the US continental shelf, based on federal government estimates, 12% of it off the coast of California, the rest in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska. But since offshore drilling has been banned since 1982, in memory of the horrible oil spill at Santa Barbara in 1969, the estimates are not solid.

The compromise energy proposal released by the "Gang of 10" senators just before the summer recess would allow drilling off Virginia and other areas of the southeast (with states' permission), and provide substantial funding for alternative energy and conservation. Obama favors this proposal.

It is widely acknowledged by everyone, even drill nuts and oil companies, that opening the shorelines to drilling could not possibly have any effect on gasoline prices before 2030. To call for offshore drilling “to lower prices at the pump,” during an election campaign, is nothing but poll-driven pandering. So what is Obama up to?

I think he is up to poll-driven pandering. I hate to see him do it. If he really was determined that America “break its addiction to oil,” as he says on his web site, he would be content to leave the price of gasoline high and instead, emphasize a rehabilitation plan. But American voters are not strategic. They are “all me, right now.”

The good news is that Obama is getting some political experience. My greatest doubt about him is whether he actually realizes that not everyone is rational. In fact, most people are not. It is futile, actually counterproductive, possibly dangerous, to confront irrationality with reason. Most people react on the basis of emotion, habit, tradition, and superstition. Obama’s recent policy shift is a sign that if he did not know that before, he is learning it now.

I have the same doubts about him in the foreign policy arena, when he sometimes talks as if he thinks he can sit down and work out international differences over a cup of coffee. Does he really not understand that there are people who cannot be spoken to? I worry that he suffers from the delusion that most people will respect evidence and reason. That would make for a disastrous presidency.

Obama’s campaign may be stalled. He still trails the Democratic Party in the polls by double digits, which means he is not really seen as the leader of the Democratic party. And the reason, I think, is that voters keep him at emotional arm’s length. Sure, he is likeable and smart, that is obvious. But only when he responds to popular concerns with political gestures that directly acknowledge and meet those concerns, voters can believe, “he gets it.”

Obama's new policy tack is not even about oil. It has nothing to do with gasoline prices. It’s about demonstrating, showing, not just saying, “I feel your pain.”

Obama needs to do more of that. He needs to show that he is not a Promethean god who would bestow wisdom, but a normal man who sometimes acts from fear, pride, pain, anxiety, and other irrational motives, “like me.”

Look how far irrational reactivity got George W. Bush. Irrationality often leads to heartbreak, of course, but Obama needs to let just a little of it leak out in a controlled way. His recent shifts in energy policy, superficial though they are, may be just the prescription.