In Defense of Bonuses!

I suspect the people who are enraged about the AIG bonus scandal are people who don’t leave tips for wait staff in restaurants. Hey, they already get paid a salary, right, so why leave a tip? This is such a non-issue, I can hardly believe it is still in the news.

The common sense meaning of a “bonus” is something that is over and above what is normally expected in a situation. So it sounds like these AIG employees were showered with gratuitous money on the basis of greed alone.

But that is not what a “bonus” means in many industries, including the financial industry. Your bonus is a normal, expected part of your compensation. In the case of AIG it was written into the employment contract over a year ago. There was nothing unexpected, unusual, or gratuitous about it. Some employees could have a salary of $1 per year and a large “bonus” at the end of the year. Remove the bonus and they have worked a year for one dollar. That’s not fair.

Another reason people get tied in a knot over this incident is that the bonuses are very large, compared to what most people earn in a year. Many bonuses were a million dollars or more. But so what? That’s what people make in that industry. If you don’t make that much, maybe you went into the wrong business. Get over it. Resentment over the size of somebody else’s pay package is just unconscionable envy.

The argument has been made that the people who got these bonuses were undeserving. They were the very people who got AIG into so much financial trouble that it required taxpayer bailout. Since a bonus is contingent on performance, it seems inconceivable to many, including those in congress, that these employees could have earned any bonus.

But congresspersons are in no position to judge what is satisfactory performance at a firm like AIG. If the job is to bring in revenues by writing contracts of a certain kind, and you do that well, you get paid. That’s what the employment contract said and that’s what they did, so they got paid. Fair’s fair. It is an incorrect presumption to think that somebody in congress is a better judge of of the employees' performance.

Admittedly, the criterion performance to be rewarded should have been quality, not quantity. That is a common difficulty in any behavior management scheme – specifying the desired behavior with precision. But the employees did not specify the behavior to be rewarded, the bosses did. It is called a labor contract because you exchange your labor for cash payment. So the government would do better to replace the worthless executives in charge and retain the employees who proved so capable of performing the work required!

I did not even bother to write to my congresspersons about the idiotic house proposal to tax the bonuses at 90%. It was so stupid on the face of it that I did not think it had a chance of passing. Was I wrong about that! The legislation was not only a knee-jerk reflex, based on irrational emotion rather than reason, but it is almost certainly unconstitutional. (It is illegal to use tax law to punish individuals or selected groups). I now believe that rationality will prevail in the senate, but I am writing to my senators just in case. You just never know with politicians.

Reincarnation at Treasury?

Reincarnated? These two fellows must be karmically related.

Although Ludwig was never much for economics, Tim isn't strong on language games, either.

Still, you have to wonder.



(Ludwig Wittgenstein) ..................................................... (Timothy Geithner)

Propping Up Versus Fixing

“We had no choice” but to prop up AIG, said Fed Chairman Bernanke (foxnews.com/politics, 3/3/09), as the government dumped another $30 billion into the insurance giant, bringing the taxpayer onus to over $200 billion so far on just that one black hole.

He is right, sickening though it is. And more billions will be probably be needed. The trouble is that AIG insures against default of credit-backed securities for dozens of banks worldwide. If AIG defaulted on its insurance contracts, all those banks would collapse and we would indeed be back to The Great Depression.

So why not fix the problem rather than continual “propping up”? What we do NOT need is a Potemkin banking system.

Whatever happened to the plan for the government to buy the toxic assets? Whatever happened to the “bad bank” strategy? Where the hell is Geithner? I’m starting to get the sinking feeling that nobody is in charge.

The New Hillary

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Asia this week on her first outing as a member of the Obama Administration. She talked with leaders in Myanmar (Burma), Japan, South Korea, China, and Malaysia, and according to news reports, some of her comments were unusually candid. She emphasized economics and climate change, not human rights with China. She talked about North Korean regime change in Seoul, and wondered aloud if sanctions against Burma were useful. There’s nothing wrong with saying what’s obvious, she told reporters (Kessler, G.: Washington Post.com, 22 Feb 09).
(Clinton in China Feb 09 LA Times Photo)

But that is exactly what is not obvious. As she herself has said, diplomacy is a head game. Stating the obvious may not be to one’s advantage. Human rights organizations are furious with her for not emphasizing human rights issues in China. Others wonder if she is just trying to be well-liked or if she has any policy in mind, and if it is a policy, since when did the US no longer care about human rights?

But I think she is doing the right thing, and I confess I did not realize she had the flexibility to think in a different way, whether directed by Obama or not. Her comments show a subtlety of mind I did not know lurked there.

Her comments mark a sharp break with the Bush foreign policy. She is saying, we are no longer going to throw our weight around like the bullies we have been. We are now willing to talk plainly and listen with an open mind. That is a fundamental change in direction for US diplomacy and it is important to indicate to all, that is what is happening.

She is also saying, especially by choosing Asia for her maiden voyage, that our important future allies are not necessarily going to be in Europe but in Asia. That’s the truth, and it is smart to signal that, to both Asia and Europe. So there is a policy behind her remarks and it is much larger and more important than whether Tibetans should be allowed more autonomy.

The Chinese can be harsh in dealing with their own citizens, but so can we. They have a billion people to keep in check, three times what we have, with much more diversity in culture and language, and with with a fraction of the wealth and education we enjoy. “Human Rights” should be re-thought in less absolute terms. What do we know about how China works? We barely know how the US works.

The US has been the world leader in promoting human rights since the Carter presidency, and that should continue, but perhaps, in view of our abominable performance in the last eight years, with a bit more humility.

I am impressed with Clinton’s comments. If she continues in such a candid and yet subtly strategic way, she might well be the best secretary of state we have had in living memory. I never saw that coming.

Do Republicans Have Any Ideas?

President Obama’s economic stimulus package passed the House today, 244 to 188, without a single Republican vote. Not one.

I find that remarkable. The president has openly talked up his desire for more bipartisan government, and he made a big display of going up to the Hill to jawbone the Republicans.

Yet the Republicans all, to a person, essentially said, “Go soak your head.” They appear as juvenile, spiteful, self-destructive poseurs obsessed with game-playing, all while the American economy goes down the tubes. How can the whole batch of them be so consistently small, mean-spirited, selfish, and immature? Isn’t there a single statesman among them?

I try to stick to rational analysis of the facts, but these people make it very difficult to remain unemotional.

“Principles!” the Republicans cry. "Of course we want to do what’s best for America, but this stimulus package is so worthless, if not downright harmful or evil, that no conscionable person could vote for it."

That is an implausible argument under the circumstances, but at least conceivable. Is there any truth behind it? I can’t find it.

Republicans have only a single concept of governance: elimination of taxes. It does not seem to bother them, or occur to them, that if we were to eliminate taxes, there would be no government and no Republicans either. But they apparently get a “tax-cut” chip implanted in their brain as a condition of joining the party. Anything other than massive tax cuts, especially those that benefit the wealthy, is considered utterly unacceptable to them.

This is notwithstanding actual facts, such as,

1. The economic stimulus package is made up of about 1/3 tax cuts and 2/3 new spending. So it is simply not the case that the legislation does not accommodate the Republican desire for tax cuts. One third of 800 billion dollars is $260 billion in tax cuts, not a trivial amount. The Republicans’ “principled” objection to the legislation rings hollow.

2. Tax cuts don’t do much good for individuals or business that aren’t paying much in taxes. Especially for small businesses (under 100 employees), projected near-term profits are expected to be small to zero, so tax cuts on nonexistent profits wouldn't be much of an economic stimulus.

3. The Republicans had eight years to play around with tax cuts, which they did, and the result has not turned out well. The “trickle-down” mythology has been thoroughly repudiated in fact and theory. What legitimate justification could there be for clinging to the tax-cut mantra in the face of evidence? One is tempted to suspect that the motivations are less than noble.

Try this simple test. Watch any television news show that interviews a Republican about the stimulus package. Clock how much time passes before the Republican says the phrase “tax cuts.” I have done this and the mean elapsed time is 15 seconds. These people must be possessed by an evil spirit. Or have a brain implant. I am not aware of any alternative economic stimulus proposal from the Republicans that involves anything other than “Tax cuts!”

Another Republican criticism of the stimulus package is that it spends too much on non-economic items, such as health, education, and safety. In what alternate universe is education NOT the basic engine of economic growth? For a Republican, economic growth apparently only means more cash, today! No doubt there are some stupid or irrelevant line items buried in the package and I'm sure we will hear all about them soon. That kind of idiocy is not a particularly Democratic problem. If we look at the largest 80% of the stimulus package, not the 20% chaff, it looks eminently reasonable.

Yet another Republican criticism is that they did not have sufficient “input” to the drafting of the legislation. From what I can gather, that is because they declined to participate when invited. Their complaint is at best disingenuous, more likely, misdirection and petulant whining.

Finally, consider that even if the economic stimulus package was a bitter pill for any Republican to swallow, on principle, why not support it anyway, for Heaven’s sake? The country is going down! What kind of high and mighty “principles of governance” are so sacred that you would choose ashes in everyone’s mouth instead of compromise? I think “principles” are not the issue here at all. Republican behavior points to psychological immaturity and a paucity of ideas badly papered over by tawdry egos.

Maybe I was wrong in my criticism of Krugman’s book, “The Conscience of a Liberal.” (Halfway down the page at www.waadams.net/2194.html).

I said Krugman was unjustifiably hostile toward conservatives and had devolved to mere name-calling. But maybe he was more perceptive than I realized. Unless the Republicans come up with some reasoned, evidence-based explanations for their behavior, I think the Democrats should just ignore them because they can’t be spoken to.

The Inaugural Address

The Inaugural Address

It almost didn’t matter what he said. The very fact of him, a young African-American, standing there, said it all. The speech was a success before he opened his mouth.

Nevertheless, I was disappointed. I wanted the soaring rhetoric he is famous for, something that acknowledged the significance of the moment. Instead, we got a fairly pedestrian speech, albeit finely crafted.

Mr. Obama opened with thinly veiled words of criticism for G.W. Bush’s administration, as if he, Obama had been holding back a steaming kettle of Pelosi-esque disgust and derision until the very first moment when he could let the whistle sound without being inappropriate. He emphasized that his administration, only minutes old, was an about face. “From this moment on,” he would reject the idea that our ideals (e.g., constitutional rights) must be sacrificed for safety. He would replace the politics of fear-mongering with the politics of hope. He pointed a blaming finger at the "greed and irresponsibility of some" and said that a free market economy must be well-regulated if there is to be prosperity for more than the prosperous few. He will "restore science to its rightful place." And so on. It was a scathing indictment delivered with feeling.

Abruptly, Mr. Obama changed direction and spoke about his awareness of the many sacrifices that have gone before us. He spoke of George Washington, our forefathers, the defenders of American freedom through history, and so on. It was standard history book stuff, although he alluded to the fact that our history has a dark side too. Slavery and the civil war were mentioned. He asked us to choose “our better history,” a strange request. Wouldn't that be intentional biasing of the facts?

He paused to issue a statement to worldwide Islamist extremists: “You can’t outlast us and we will get you,” he averred. I am young but no milquetoast.

Then he segued into the need for personal responsibility among all Americans. But this was an unclear admonition. We should all work at a soup kitchen once in a while? Ok, fine, but what is the political point? People should be nicer? Of course they should. It was a nonspecific argument he was trying to sell. We should drive smaller cars? Maybe, but also, he said “Americans do not apologize for our way of life.” So I guess SUVs are ok after all. I thought the implication might have been, if you want to partake of the forthcoming government largesse, you must sacrifice something, in some unspecified way. But what? How? That part of the speech went past me.

Just as vaguely, Mr. Obama emphasized that we are now in the era of post-partisan politics. It does not matter whether you think government is too big or too small, he said, only what actually works. Well, sure. But “what works” is as much a matter of ideology as of empiricism. Do massive government bureaucracies, such as government-sponsored health care, “work,” or do they only lead to involuted “big gummint”? Do large, permanent tax cuts “work” or are they only subsidies for the rich? Obama cannot be described as naïve, so his rhetoric of post-partisan politics must be seen as partisan populist positioning ahead of what he knows are going to be tough ideological battles.

Taken as a whole, the speech seemed flat to me, full of platitudes, and maybe even a little dishonest in the sense that it was ostensibly addressed to the 2 million people standing in front of him, but actually addressed to the politicians sitting near him, and listening to him around the world.

On the other hand, the speech had the artistic quality of deicticism, meaning it demonstrated in fact what it was about in content. The speech began with burning criticism of the past administration and arced forward to glowing terms of hope and bipartisanship. That verbal change of scenery echoed the transition between the two administrations in front of our eyes, and the facticity of Obama standing there, confidently addressing millions of screaming followers, while G.W. Bush sat beside him with a blank expression. So the speech expressed its own gesture.

Nevertheless, I thought I could read the thoughts on Bush’s forehead: “He has no idea. A rude shock awaits.”

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.