Two Errors in Obama's Nobel Speech

“…Perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of a nation in the midst of two wars,” said President Obama, accepting the Nobel Prize for Peace on December 10. That fact was a stark incongruity that framed the speech and which made it an almost impossible situation for him. Yet it is that very incongruity that will make the speech endure. School children will read it for generations precisely because it eloquently addresses the inherent tension between peace and war.

He did far better than could have been expected under the circumstance, and delivered a very articulate speech on the topic of peace while commanding armies at war, still, I thought he said two wrong things.

One was his assertion of the universality of American values, which is a myopic, self-centered view. Obama listed “the” iconic American values as if they were automatically universal human truths: defense of human rights, the ideals of liberty, self-determination, equality and the rule of law, and so forth. In fact, not all people and not all governments embrace these values (obviously) which are very far from being universal human values. They just happen to be things that we believe are good. There are other ways to live. Obama does not try to force these values down the throats of others, as G.W. Bush often did, but to list them as universal virtues without qualification is an error that reveals a surprising blind spot.

The second wrong thing Obama said was that “…Evil does exist in the world.” It is true, as he explained, “A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms.” These “small men with outsize rage,” as he called them, cannot be spoken to. Unfortunately they must be killed, in self-defense. That is the sad reality. But that does not imply they are evil. It just means we are unable to talk with them because of utterly incompatible world views.

If a rabid dog attacks you, you may have to kill it, but that does not make the dog evil. It just means that, regrettably, you have no other method of communication. This is a distinction I thought Obama would be familiar with, and I was surprised to hear him invoke the Manichaeism that G.W. was so fond of. It is an erroneous and dangerous way to characterize your enemy.

Palestine by Fiat?

Late last week, the head Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, announced that Palestinians would ask the U.N. Security council to recognize a Palestinian state on 1967 borders. The chance of that happening is nil, since the U.S. would veto it.

Nevertheless, is it such a bad idea to ask? It would force the U.S. into an awkward position, drawing world attention to its one-sided, pro-Israeli policy. That might dislodge some diplomatic energy that is lacking at the moment.

What would happen if Palestinians were to unilaterally declare such a state? It would be interesting. Israel might acknowledge it, but would seal its borders and shut off the water. Trade and transportation would stop. There would be no effective communication between Gaza and the West Bank. Since Hamas controls Gaza and is against such a declaration, in effect, you would have a Palestine on the West Bank only.

(1967 Borders)

Israel would not give up its settlements without a fight, so the idea of 1967 borders would not be real on the ground. Still, there would be, in fact, a Palestinian state. The Arab world would recognize it and money, goods, and military support would flow in immediately. Palestine would no longer be dependent on Israel, but instead on Jordan, and other neighbors, until it could find its feet.

One can imagine that over time, the new Palestine would develop its own governance and economy and become a functioning state. It would solve the persistent “middle east crisis” by its defacto recognition of Israel. Israel would be hard pressed not to acknowledge the legitimacy of the new state (not necessarily with formal diplomatic recognition). Palestine declared independence once before, in 1988, and many countries recognized that declaration, but for practical reasons, nothing came of it. Is it worth trying again?

On the down side, there is the problem of the illegal settlements. Essentially, there would be an unresolved border issue there. But if the Palestinians were to simply accept the border of The Wall that Israel has built, and give up on land already annexed, they would have stopped that erosion and staked firm borders. They would have to get past wet-eyed talk about historic homelands and all that, and just go for the certainty of statehood.

Gaza would be left to itself. In the long run, it might declare itself the new state of Hamas, or be taken over by Egypt, or if Hamas were to fall, opt to be annexed to Palestine. None of those outcomes is so terrible.

(Original 1947 Borders)

The new Palestine could join the U.N., the Arab League, and whatever other organizations it could. Any hostility between Israel and Palestine would be a matter for U.N. negotiation. Israel would remain secure with U.S. backing. Such an outcome would take much of the ideological wind out of extremists who excuse their militancy on grounds of supporting the struggle of the Palestinian people. That struggle would be over.

The AFPAK Conundrum

President Obama will soon announce whether or not he will agree to General McChrystal’s request to send 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Most pundits agree that 40K would be merely a downpayment; that at least 100,000 would be needed to suppress the Taliban there. So we are looking at a Vietnam-style gradual escalation that slowly bleeds the country (our country) white, whereupon we throw in the towel in defeat. It’s not even clear what these 40K troops would be used for. It’s not even clear what the present troops there are doing. The war in Afghanistan is not popular with Americans, but even allowing for the fact that the American public has a short attention span, sending more troops is a bad idea now and an even worse trend.

Should we pull out then? Let the Taliban take over? An argument could be made for that option, except for one small problem: Pakistan has the atomic bomb. The Taliban are not going to stay in Afghanistan. They have already migrated into Pakistan, which is now their headquarters. We do not need another bunch of nut-case Islamic extremists with nuclear weapons. The consequences are too severe to even consider.

So what is a good strategy? Not that Obama calls me any more, but if he did, I would say, don’t sent any more fighting troops to Afghanistan. It’s a never-ending battle there. No matter how many Taliban we kill, they can easily recruit more. Instead, send 40,000 troops into Pakistan to wipe out the Taliban in the Northwest region, drive them back into Afghanistan. Pakistan is what we need to protect, not Afghanistan.

Granted, the Pakis may not care to have 40,000 American troops barge in. But maybe there is a way around that. Maybe they are 40,000 trainers, advisors, logistics personnel, and whatnot; everything but trigger-pullers.

Once Pakistan is secure, we take these further actions in Afghanistan: We seal the borders of Afghanistan (as much as possible) from the inside with troops, and from the outside with economic and political sanctions. Especially the border with Pakistan. Then we eradicate the poppies, which is the Taliban’s source of income, and we pay farmers a subsidy to grow something more useful to the same profit level. Hey, it works in Wisconsin, it can work in Kandahar. I am sure that farm subsidies are less costly than a war without end. Finally, we spend money, money, money on training and infiltrating human intelligence into Afghanistan, psychological warfare, and on building schools, electric generators, and water systems in villages. We do NOT try to convert the country to democracy, capitalism, or Christianity. I would guess that all these efforts, costly though they might be, would still be less expensive than another eight years of warfare.

So Obama should send in, not 40,000 troops, but 40,000 civil engineers, spies, and micro-diplomats. Troops are not what we need.

Better Than a Poke In The Eye

The recently released “Baucus” senate health care reform plan has the virtue of providing health insurance coverage for a good proportion of the currently uninsured. Everybody will be required to have health insurance, just as we must now have car insurance, but the cost of insurance will be subsidized for the poor and the lower middle class. Those costs will be recovered through “fees” (basically new taxes) on health insurers, pharmaceutical makers, health labs and medical device makers.

Providing health insurance for the poor is a good thing. It could even nominally reduce costs by reducing use of emergency rooms, (which we all pay for in increased costs), the method by which the poor get health care now. It also introduces some slight regulation of the insurance industry, eliminating the more egregious practices, such as denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, and by setting some minimum coverage standards. Regulation like that is badly needed.

However, the plan does not propose to reduce overall health care spending. The high, “unsustainable” cost of health care has been Obama’s main argument for why reform is needed. This plan does not address that argument. There will be non-profit consumer cooperatives established for the purpose of providing health care insurance. These are supposed to provide much-needed price competition, but it is hard to see how they would, unless, over time, they became extremely large and essentially became the “public option” not included in this plan. A small insurance co-op just wouldn’t have enough actuarial muscle to spread the risk.

State-based exchanges, or central markets, would be set up where individuals could easily compare prices and coverage from health insurers. That will help with price transparency, but is not much different than spending a few hours on the internet. You still can only buy insurance from companies licensed in your state, which is a limited choice. And if the pricing information is provided by the industry, it will be about as transparent as mud. Have you ever tried to compare pricing for TV cable services, or wireless services online? There are so many vaguely defined variables, misdirections and subtle subterfuges that a straightforward comparison is impossible. I am not sanguine about the helpfulness of that idea.

We should assume that the taxes levied on the health care industry to pay for the Baucus plan will be passed along to consumers. The companies are not going to just take the hit. They will raise the cost of coverage, probably across the board but mostly on the high end. This will have the effect of employers choosing to offer lower grade coverage or higher prices, and the same for individuals buying their own coverage. There are simply no price controls in this plan. By assigning the new costs disproportionately to higher end consumers, the plan effects a wealth transfer, the rich subsidizing the newly insured poor. That’s not a bad thing in principle, but it does nothing to reduce overall costs, which was the problem to be solved.

So this plan is batting .500. It does address one of the two outstanding problems, health insurance coverage for the 50 million uninsured in this country. But it whiffs the second problem, lowering the overall cost of health care. One out of two is better than none out of two, but it is not the sweeping FDR-like vision many had hoped for. Perhaps it is not the final word.

It's the Insurance, Stupid

President Obama will soon give a big speech to congress (mostly to the Democrats) about health care reform. He needs to right the ship of discussion quickly. It has been listing badly under the weight of irrational and malicious propaganda from the right and petty bickering on the left.

The plain fact is that the current health care system is financially unsustainable. Three quarters of Americans will simply have to go broke from health care costs if it continues on the present course. Or, more likely, premiums will rise sharply and benefits will be cut to keep it going, leaving more of us out in the cold. None of these is a desirable outcome. Ergo, we need to reform the health care system.

Obama has at least identified the problem correctly as an insurance problem. The problem is not that doctors are price gouging. The problem is not that hospital profits are too high. The problem is not that the quality of health care is low. The problem is not fraud (although there is some of that, to be sure). The problem is not frivolous use of medical services. The problem is cost, cost cost. Why are the costs so high? Because the insurance companies charge too much for the services they render. The problem is with the insurance companies.

I am very satisfied with my health insurance just the way it is. It is comprehensive and low cost. I fork over a $15 copay every time I visit the doctor, and that’s it. I don’t even know what the true cost is of the medical services I receive. As far as I know, anything I want costs $15.

What do I pay for this fabulous level of care? Thousands and thousands of dollars! I pay about $6,432 annually for basic health insurance (including wife). My employer pays at least that much, probably double that amount. I also pay $624 per year for dental insurance (employer pays the rest) and $3,214 a year to medicare, a service I do not use, so I am donating that amount to “the system” so others can benefit.

But just looking at basic health insurance, Aetna gets $6432 annually from me and let’s assume $12, 864 annually from my employer, for a total of $19, 296 per year in premiums. And this has been going on for the past 40 years, at ever increasing rates. I can guarantee that I do not consume $20K worth of medical services in a year and never have. So Aetna has literally, made a fortune on just me and my employer!

Now, granted, my employer can deduct some of their portion of the insurance payments from their taxes, which amounts to a government subsidy (a partial “single-payer” system). And granted, I paid less for insurance in the distant past. And granted, when I get really old, it is not inconceivable that I might blow through $20K in medical services in a year. But I have been paying in for a long time, and I am just one person! Millions upon millions of people have been paying these same premiums into Aetna and the other insurance companies for years. Who is getting rich?

Does the “free-market” system of insurance work? It works for me. I have no motivation to change anything. But in two years, my employer-subsidised medical insurance runs out. Then what will I do? Will I be able to come up with private insurance? Preliminary research shows that I will have to pay at least $1500 a month, or about $27,000 a year for private coverage that includes only the most catastrophic medical events, with a high copay and a high deductible. That is nasty. No more annual physicals. No more lab tests that detect potentially serious conditions before they occur. No more going to the doctor every time there is an infection, rash, or pain that is not life-threatening.

I simply cannot not afford the level of coverage I have now once I separate from my employer. It is no wonder that nearly 50 million Americans have no medical coverage at all. It's expensive! I will just chance it for a few more years until I qualify for medicare.

Obama has suggested that the government should offer public insurance to compete with the private companies, like Aetna. Presumably, it would be cheaper than Aetna’s and just as good. That would force Aetna to lower their prices (and take a lower profit, poor babies.)

Critics object that if there were a public option, many small to medium employers (and maybe the large employers too) would simply stop offering health benefits. Why should they, when the public option is available to anyone? So, the complaint goes, the public option would force out the private option.

That objection is nonsense, borne of either ignorance or malicious disinformation. Why would private employers continue to offer health coverage? For the same reason they offer salary: to compensate employees! Health insurance is part of the compensation package. If my employer stopped offering health care coverage, that would be equivalent to a $12,000 per year pay cut. Forget that. I would look to a more generous employer rather quickly.

Secondly, if the public option is cheaper and just as good, and let’s say employers do stop offering private coverage, and workers move in throngs to the public option, what is Aetna going to do? Will they say, “Oh well, it was good while it lasted, but now we’re out of business. Too bad?” Of course not. They are not going out of business. They will fight back, and that is the whole point. They will lower premiums and improve services and do whatever it takes to be competitive and stay in business. And that is exactly the desired outcome.

Who could be against lower costs for health care at the same high level? Only a few groups. The insurance companies are against it, of course. And the politicians they support are against it. And all the lawyers, accountants, adjustors, clerks and millions of others who feed off the insurance industry would be against it. But those are all greedy self-interests. It is perfectly clear that health insurance reform is in the best interest of the public.

I hope Obama addresses the health insurance issue head on and does not get drawn into peripheral or nonexistent issues such as “unnecessary lab tests” fraud, paperwork reduction, tort reform, health rationing, “death panels”, and so on. None of that is keeping his eye on the ball. Insurance is the ball.

Cheney Offended by Rule of Law

Former vice-president Dick Cheney said on Fox News that the Attorney General’s probe into CIA torture under the Bush-Cheney administration “offends the Hell out of me.”

(http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/30/cheney-slams-obamas-politicized-probe-cia-interrogations/ 8/30/09. )

(Fox News Graphic)

Cheney has “serious doubts,” he said, about whether President Obama “understands and is prepared to do what needs to be done to defend the nation."

But what “nation” is Cheney talking about? A democratic America that operates by the will of the people, under the rule of law, or some other nation, in which an autocratic ruler (or a pair of them) decide arbitrarily “what needs to be done” regardless of the law?

Torture of prisoners is illegal. It is illegal now, and it was illegal when Cheney was vice-president. Since credible evidence has emerged that the CIA engaged in systematic torture with at least tacit, and probably explicit approval of Cheney, then what is the attorney general supposed to do? Ignore it? He can’t. It would be illegal for him to ignore it.

The attorney general swore in his oath of office to protect and uphold the constitution, and unlike Cheney, who also took that oath, the attorney general apparently is a man of his word.

The new policy (of upholding the law), will be, according to Cheney, "very, very devastating, I think, … on morale inside the intelligence community." That is probably correct. No criminal likes to be caught and punished. It understandably deflates morale.

The trail of crumbs might lead straight back to Cheney’s office, whereupon he would be, we can guess, extremely, extremely offended all to Hell that his criminal behavior was exposed.

R2P: Is there a Right to Protect?

R2P stands for “Responsibility to Protect,” a phrase and an idea tirelessly promoted by Gareth Evans, a former Australian foreign minister. The United Nations has been debating the idea this week in the General Assembly.

What is it? Four years ago a meeting of more than 150 world leaders issued a declaration asserting that the “international community” (however that is defined) has a “right” and a duty to protect people from genocide and mass killings, especially when their own government will not or cannot protect them. The situation everyone probably had in mind was the mass murders in Rwanda and in Bosnia in the 1990’s. The world mostly stood by and watched, saying “What can we do? It is an internal affair of that country.”

The declaration says, no, mass atrocities and genocide are not internal political affairs, but moral issues that concern all civilized people. It is seen as a small extension to widely accepted international principles of human rights.

According to the R2P principle, if the government of a country could not or would not protect its own people from mass slaughter, then, if the security council of the United Nations agreed, the U.N. could intervene by providing advice and mediation. If that did not work, then in an extreme case, armed intervention would be justified to protect the afflicted population. The proposal has been endorsed by U.N. Secretary Ban Ki Moon.

Who could be against this? Surely we do not want to sit by and watch another slaughter like we saw in Rwanda?

The question is, who defines what counts as “atrocity” or “genocide”? Is the killing in Darfur a genocide? The leaders in Khartoum don’t say so. They are just fighting rebels, they say. The U.N. has no right to interfere.

According to Miguel D’Escoto, the U.N. General Assembly president, R2P is just a disguised form of neo-colonialism to be used by big Western powers to impose their will on the weak. It is a fig leaf for a big country to wear as it invades a smaller one.

Recently, Russia appealed to the R2P principle as a reason it “had to” invade Georgia. Is that wrong? Hitler used the R2P argument to invade Czechoslovakia before World War II. Japan claimed it “had to” invade Manchuria in 1931 to end the slaughter of its citizens there. So clearly the principle can be used for various ends.

Nevertheless, it seems that if the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, and China, the members of the U.N. security council who rarely agree on anything, all agreed that invocation of R2P was appropriate, that would seem to be an adequate judicial opinion. But some countries who are not members of that club disagree.

Not everyone in the U.S. is sold on the idea of R2P either. The GW Bush administration was worried that a vote could be taken against US actions around the world, such as in Iraq or Afghanistan, in the name of preventing inhuman slaughter of innocents. Obama’s government has supported the idea.

If we were not a permanent member of the security council, how would we feel about this principle, having no veto over its execution? Would we be fearless? Surely we know genocide when we see it, and we ourselves would never commit genocide! No? We have in the past. We wiped out the American Indians. We wiped out two Japanese cities with nuclear bombs. We killed an awful lot of Vietnamese for no obvious reason. There is just no reason to think that any particular country could be immune from a U.N. resolution to invade on grounds of R2P. Nobody wants to be in that position.

So despite what seems to be a no-brainer extension to the basic principles of human rights, the U.N. will not endorse the R2P idea this week. Fear for self-preservation is much stronger than any noble impulse to help nameless foreigners in some god-forsaken corner of the globe. It’s a pity. We have not really come so far from the big monkeys we started out as.

Peace, Inshallah

President Obama’s speech in Cairo last week is generally regarded as a success. He did reach out to the Islamic world, hoping, as he said, for “a new beginning.” But very early in the speech, he started with an untrue premise. He stated that Christianity and Islam have much in common, shared values and interests. In the most abstract sense that is correct, as all religions have in common acknowledgment of a supreme God. But a very large difference between Christianity and Islam is captured in the single Arab word, “inshallah,” meaning “God willing.”

“Inshallah” peppers every conversation, almost every statement, in Arabic, and for good reason. Many Muslims take a passive attitude toward life that moves by the hand of God, not by their own hand. There is not the sense we have in the West of “doing” one’s life, building one’s career, striving for success, and so on. All those things are in God’s hands. What happens is not up to me. Inshallah.

In Christianity there is a similar theme of submission to God’s will in all things. Yet somehow that does not come at the expense of individual ego. Christians talk about God intervening in human affairs from time to time, making things turn out well or badly, but there is not a pervasive feeling that every minute of every day is controlled by the hand of God, individuals mere corks bobbing on the sea of divine events. It’s a fundamental difference in psychology that must underly any attempts at reconciliation of the cultures, and any political dialog. By suggesting otherwise, Obama started on shaky ground.

Christians do not prostrate themselves five times a day and pray in public. Our relationship with God is very private, very inner. Yet in one sense, Muslims practice inner mindfulness far more intensely than Christians, for that. Praying ostensibly five times a day would necessarily make you more mindful of God’s presence. That is the whole point of the practice. They are not praying to ask god to intervene so that their favorite sports team will win the playoffs. No. Each Muslim is reminding himself, “My life is not my life. My life is God’s life. Inshallah.

(Image: Reuters)

Vive La France

The big news today is not the appointment of a new Supreme Court judge, and not North Korea’s underground nuclear test. The real news is that France opened its first foreign military base in 50 years, in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/26/france-military-base-uae ).

Why would France do that? Oil is one obvious answer. France needs to protect a future supply of oil just as the US has military bases in the Middle East for the same reason.

Secondly, the new base is a mere 137 miles from Iran, and that is surely no accident. That delightfully tweaks the Iranian nose, but also stands as a serious warning, by the UAE, and by implication, from other Arab states, that they are prepared to confront an aggressive Iran, even a nuclear Iran. France is a nuclear power, of course.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy highlighted the new base’s ability to fight pirates in the shipping lanes, but that is more misdirection than motivation.

The longer term strategic interest is that France wants to project its foreign policy into the Middle East to compete for military, economic, and cultural influence in the Arab world. That is a competition the U.S. would love to lose. We want out, not in. Let France strut its stuff for a while. We would pay them to open that base! (Maybe we did, who knows?).

The history of the Middle East is the history of Western meddling, especially by Britain, France, Russia, and the U.S. There is almost no other history to tell since before World War I. The uncertainty and latent instability in the region today is legacy of that sordid modern history. If we did not need the oil, we could let the devil take the hindmost. As it is, we should be grateful to France for providing some backbone while we are otherwise occupied. We have indeed come a long way from "Freedom Fries."

Pakistan Vs. Taliban

A million people are displaced from the fighting in the Swat valley in northwest Pakistan as the Pakistani army attempts to rout the Taliban. According to sketchy press reports “hundreds” of Taliban fighters have been killed and the army controls the valley again.

It is a worthy show of force that convinces the West that Pakistan is serious about fighting the Taliban. But is the army going to stay? Surely there are thousands, not merely hundreds of Taliban fighters. They are not going to retire. They will lie low until the Pakistan army retreats.
(Image: Huffington Post.com)

Blowing up villages is dramatic and accomplishes several objectives. It drives the enemy out, asserts the government’s authority, and assures continuing aid from the west. However it also creates millions of refugees and does nothing to solve the long term problem of Islamic radicalism in Pakistan. In the absence of a strategy, this may be the best that can be attained right now.