Month: November 2008

Tim Lambert counters Eric Posner’s post on deaths in Iraq. Posner responds:

A number of people think that my post was meant as a defense of the Iraq war. I have long criticized the idea of humanitarian intervention and have never defended the Iraq war, which was certainly a mistake on the basis of national-interest considerations. But many people, including likely members of the Obama administration (such as Susan Rice, who has advocated a military intervention in Sudan), believe that humanitarian wars are justified. The humanitarian effect of a particular war is an empirical question. The answer in the Iraq case will help determine the Obama administration’s ability and willingness to launch humanitarian interventions in places like Sudan.

(Ethnic cleansing in Baquba, Iraq, under US occupation, by Ali Yussef/AFP/Getty.)

So this is what a democracy is like. Remember?

Steve Clemons has a theory:

He wants to try and push Iran-US relations into a constructive direction. He wants to change the game in Afghanistan — and the answer will not be a military-dominant strategy. He wants to try and stabilize Iraq in a negotiated, confidence building process that includes Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey and other regional forces. And he wants to support a big push on Israel-Palestine peace and reconfigure relations between much of the Arab League and Israel.

And Obama asked him. And trusts him. There will be more Scowcroft under Obama than under Bush.

Fly On The Wall explains:

Keeping Bob Gates as Secretary of Defense was the most dramatic signal Barack Obama could have sent that he intends to implement major changes in defense policy. That may sound counterintuitive, but it has the virtue of being true.

As Josh noted this morning, "cabinet appointees execute policy. They work for the president." So if Gates is tasked to take us out of Iraq and to redouble our efforts in Afghanistan, we can expect him to carry out both tasks with the same degree of competence he’s exhibited thus far in his tenure. In a properly functioning administration, the Secretary of Defense is one of several key voices advising the president on where and how to exercise military force. But he possesses primary responsibility for deciding how that force should be structured, staffed, equipped, and supplied. Those are decisions the president largely delegates, and thus where the secretary exercises his greatest degree of autonomy. And it is in those realms of defense policy that Gates has most distinguished himself. In retaining Gates, Obama is sending a clear signal to the Pentagon bureaucracy that their usual strategy of stalling and out-lasting civilian appointees is going to fail; that he intends to pursue Gates’ key reforms. And that’s a decision which should make us all stand and cheer."

Boris Johnson’s novelist sister Rachel has won the prize:

Johnson was singled out for her novel’s slew of animal metaphors, including comparing her male protagonist’s "light fingers" to "a moth caught inside a lampshade", and his tongue to "a cat lapping up a dish of cream so as not to miss a single drop". Literary Review deputy editor Tom Fleming was also disturbed by the heroine’s "grab, to put him, now angrily slapping against both our bellies, inside".

"You sort of think it might be a typo, but she is actually referring to his penis as him. It’s a mixture of cliché and euphemism, but it’s also very spirited – A plus for effort," he said. "All the entries were equally awful this year, but Rachel Johnson had the worst metaphors, and the worst animal metaphors."

Read more submissions here.

I hope Obama’s advisers read this excellent and balanced piece by Melinda Henneberger on the need to protect Catholic hospitals from being forced to provide abortion services by the Freedom of Choice Act. It’s not clear FOCA has a chance of becoming law, but I share Melinda’s worries:

At the very moment when Obama and his party have won the trust of so many Catholics who favor at least some limits on abortion, I hope he does not prove them wrong. I hope he does not make a fool out of that nice Doug Kmiec, who led the pro-life charge on his behalf. I hope he does not spit on the rest of us—though I don’t take him for the spitting sort—on his way in the door. I hope that his appointment of Ellen Moran, formerly of EMILY’s List, as his communications director is followed by the appointment of some equally good Democrats who hold pro-life views. By supporting and signing the current version of FOCA, Obama would reignite the culture war he so deftly sidestepped throughout this campaign. This is a fight he just doesn’t need at a moment when there is no shortage of other crises to manage.

What Obama needs is to find a way to champion an aggressive policy of reducing the number of abortions. Each and every one is a tragedy.

Why do I keep seeing those first whisps as sub-prime mortgages? Anyway, enjoy:

A reader writes:

I’ve long shared your  fiscal conservatism. But in the light of the current troubles, I can’t say that I fully agree with the priorities you set in your post yesterday. There is a point at which the dangers of fiscal conservatism, in the form of making people suffer fully the consequences of their actions, outweigh the long-term harms likely to arise from vigorous government intervention.

You quote Zakaria saying "All of these tools [of governmental intereference] have long-term effects that are extremely troublesome, but they are nothing compared with the potential collapse of the financial system." Not being an economist, I can’t evaluate how serious the risk is of a complete financial collapse, but let us assume for the moment that it is non-zero.

The likely effects of a complete financial collapse are hard to envision, but, from history, we know that they can include some Very Bad Things, with Very, Very Bad consequences for individuals. If the price of avoiding those Things is the interference we are seeing, plus the nasty hangover likely to follow in the form of inflation and stunted economic growth, it’s not clear to me that the price is too high. (Though I would like to hear some more honesty from our leaders about the likely long-term harms of these bailouts.) After all, is 10% inflation too high a price to pay to stave off a wave of a 21st century fascism?

But that question assumes that these interventions will work, and you are absolutely right to remain unconvinced that more of the same borrowing and spending will get us out of this mess. It won’t, and I hope most of the smart (?) people running the show recognize that. But it remains an open question as to whether the Obama stimulus package will be more of the same in the relevant sense of encouraging reckless (as opposed to prudent) spending. What it might do is keep the economy from dramatically and indiscriminately reducing its capacity to produce goods and services; sectors of the economy vital to our future (green energy) get a boost, and those that embodied the credit-binge (McMansions, $3,000 TVs, etc) are crushed. To me, Obama’s stimulus plan emphasizing long-term investment in infrastructure and green energy seems precisely the right thing to do at this moment to encourage the conversion of economic capacity toward things we need (roads, wind turbines, 21st century power grid), to keep the incipient green energy sector from dying off and to partially reversing decades of underinvestment in infrastructure. The government would, of course, thereby be picking economic winners and losers, and *gasp!* investing tax dollars in the future productivity of the American economy, but there are sound policy reasons to do both.

Whether the Obama stimulus can do this is a pretty big ‘if.’ It’s probably even money that the package is majority pork. All the same, moralizing about what we "deserve" does not seem to be most responsible thing to do given the stakes.

This captures the dilemma pretty well. I don’t know the answer. I didn’t mean to engage in moralizing. I meant merely that sending the signal that the government will always bail us out is not a good signal after the past two decades. But the distinction between investment in good things and random spending and borrowing is a good one.

Rauch calls for a culturally transformative, non-victim-based federal strategy:

The old civil rights model, with its roots in an era when homosexuals were politically friendless pariahs, focuses on such matters as protection from bigoted employers and hate crimes. In truth, for most gay Americans the civic responsibility agenda, with its focus on service to family (marriage), children (mentoring and adoption), and country (the military), is more relevant and important.

With a comparatively sympathetic administration and Congress taking office in Washington, the time has come to pivot away from the culturally defensive pariah agenda — the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, for instance — and toward the culturally transformative family agenda.

Priority 1, and well ahead of whatever comes second, should be federal recognition of state civil unions. Obama supported this, as did, for that matter, all the other Democratic candidates. Marriage will take a while, but federal civil unions, though not a cinch, are attainable in the course of the next four to eight years, and they would be hugely beneficial to gay couples, who would get access to immigration rights, Social Security benefits, spousal tax status, and much, much more. Federal recognition of same-sex unions might also break the back of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” military policy. How can one part of the U.S. government banish gay couples while the rest embraces them?

I wrote almost exactly the same piece for the Advocate in 1988. The key is repeal of DOMA, which will allow the feds to recognize both civil unions and civil marriages in the various states. (Hat tip: Crain)