Month: September 2011

"I submit to you, that the damage done by four years of liberal legislative assault and 2.5 years of socialist executive rule far exceeds the carnage that was experienced ten years ago," – Crush Liberalism.

(Hat tip: Roy Edroso)

Spiegel reports that Germany is preparing for a Greek default. Felix Salmon begins to worry:

[W]e’re at an inflection point, in Europe, and all the signs are pointing to more chaos and uncertainty. The last crisis brought Europe and the world together, at least briefly. This one is tearing Europe apart. The unity that we saw at the G20 summit in London in 2009 is nowhere to be seen, and there’s no indication that it’s going to emerge again, at least not before it’s too late. Most of the time, market reports of “worries over Europe” are code for “global stock markets fell, and we don’t know why.” This time, I think they’re legit.

Ryan Avent chips in his two cents.

Playing with your food goes to 11:

At least into washing his or her hands [NYT]:

Dr. Hofmann and his co-author, Adam Grant, took baseline measurements of the amount of soap and disinfectant caregivers used in a large North Carolina hospital. Then they measured the change in soap use when they put up different signs by the dispensers. One sign read “Hand Hygiene Prevents You from Catching Diseases.” Another read “Hand Hygiene Prevents Patients from Catching Diseases.” And a third sign, which served as a control, had a generic message: "Gel In, Wash Out." The patient-focused sign produced a 33 percent increase in the amount of soap and disinfectant used per dispenser over a two-week period, compared with the other signs.

David Frum gives advice:

Either directly on the debating platform tonight – or through ads and other media in the days ahead – [Romney] must offer Republicans an advance glimpse of the campaign Barack Obama will wage against Rick Perry in 2012. It won’t be a pretty sight, but Republicans need to know the full measure of their candidate’s vulnerability before they commit to a nominee whose own words (however carelessly and unmeaningly written) will be used as evidence that the GOP wants to repeal Social Security, Medicare, and the theory of evolution.

Stay tuned for debate live-blogging tonight.

A reader writes:

While I'm sure the modern female soldier appreciates your reader's concern for her health, and while I'm sure the reader thinks that he is a forward-thinking, concerned feminist, his argument reduces women to mindless baby makers. Does the reader think that ANY part of war is good for your child-bearing future? Does he believe that female soldiers blindly walk into battle without a thought about their health and the health of their offspring? While depleted uranium sounds extra harmful, what about trying to raise a child as a paraplegic? Or with PTSD? Does your reader not thing that women are capable of weighing these risks before joining the military?

Another writes:

Your reader, whatever his personal moral qualms might be about possible harm to possible fetuses, is not on the side of the law with his argument against women in combat on this basis. Per the Supreme Court case Automobile Workers v. Johnson Controls:

By excluding women with childbearing capacity from lead-exposed jobs, respondent's policy creates a facial classification based on gender and explicitly discriminates against women on the basis of their sex under 703(a) of Title VII . . . The policy is not neutral, because it does not apply to male employees in the same way as it applies to females, despite evidence about the debilitating effect of lead exposure on the male reproductive system.

Title VII, as amended by the PDA, mandates that decisions about the welfare of future children be left to the parents [499 U.S. 187, 189] who conceive, bear, support, and raise them, rather than to the employers who hire those parents or the courts.

Now in that case the harmful exposure was to lead, but I doubt that depleted uranium is not similarly damaging to male and female reproductive systems. Also, thankfully, in this country (at least in many cases) we've decided that it is the responsibility of individuals to evaluate their own choices about childbearing, rather than treating all fertile women as "pre-pregnant" (regardless of their personal plans) and therefore excluded from myriad activities and careers.

Another notes:

From one of the linked articles: "Chris Busby, an Ulster University expert in the effects of radiation, said the uranium particles can also wreck the DNA of sperm and eggs produced by contaminated adults – causing a multitude of birth defects in any baby they conceive."

A female Army veteran passes along the story, "Israel’s Declining Sperm Quality Tied to Depleted Uranium Exposure."

I keep feeling as if I am in a different universe when I read sentences like this one from Maureen:

The president is weak and House Republicans are obstructionist.

I know what she is saying. There is a laconic, hang-back style to Obama that can be frustrating for fightin' Irish bruisers like me and MoDo. But the facts suggest something very different from a weak president. Look at the terror war. In my view, Obama has been more effective and more lethal in two years than Bush was in eight. We're almost out of Iraq, and yet we've developed a global, drone-based relentless focus on al Qaeda:

Obama is a Democratic leader who opposed the Iraq war and is pulling troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan but has notched up a record as a lethal, relentless hunter of terrorists. He is a president who banned torture in the interrogation of suspected terrorists and pledged — unsuccessfully, so far — to close the military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but carried out more drone strikes in Pakistan in his first year in office than Mr. Bush did in his eight years.

In the process, the White House said, it has killed more officials of Al Qaeda in the last two and a half years than were eliminated during the entire Bush administration. Among the big names: two top Qaeda managers, Sheik Saeed al-Masri and Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, and one of its most feared field commanders, Ilyas Kashmiri.

And it's important to note that the ramp-up in Afghanistan was in part designed from the very beginning to find and kill Osama bin Laden. It was Obama who pushed that back to the top of the agenda, and Obama who saw it through. Ask Somali pirates if they think Obama is a softy. Ask Qaddafi. Instead of the cowardice and incompetence of torture and absurd displays like the "Mission Accomplished" moment, Obama has focused on refining intelligence and operating lethally in covert warfare:

Intelligence is certainly an area where the president appears confident and bold. James Clapper, the director of national intelligence who has been running spy agencies for more than 20 years, regards Obama as "a phenomenal user and understander of intelligence." When Clapper briefs the president each morning, he brings along extra material to feed the president’s hunger for information.

Those who keep insisting that Obama is weak need to ask Qaddafi or Ahmadinejad. One has been deposed; another is getting desperate because of the sanctions that Obama put in place. That this policy is not dramatized as Bush would have does not mean it is not successful. It means this president means business – and has delivered.

One of my oldest friends married one of my global heroines on Saturday. The irascible Scot wed the unafraid Somali to the Battle Hymn of the Republic (and a little Gershwin thrown in) in Harvard Memorial Church. For me, this is America: a refugee from brutal Islamist repression and an intellectual seeking new forums and new audiences to share his work. They came here because this is America, a place that makes an East African and a Glaswegian feel equally at home.

I am happy on a personal level to see my old friend, for whom happiness has always been a long, Calvinist struggle, looking so, well, content. But I am happy also because this is my country too; and however much trouble it is in, it is also one of very few places in which this marriage could happen. That matters. And it should give us hope.

A reader writes:

Just wanted to comment on Mearsheimer – when I graduated from the University of Chicago in 2004, the Iraq War was underway, and Mearsheimer gave our graduation speech.

He was elected by the students to give the speech, but I had never taken a class from him or heard of the guy (no reason for a Classical Studies and English Lit guy to study with him). He spoke about the strategic uselessness of the Iraq War and the reasons it would blow up in our faces. I thought it was a very weird graduation speech at the time, except that every time I heard a news item about the war, I recalled the speech. Everything he said was exactly right, of course. It was an ill-conceived, counterproductive war.

And, as one of the two major wars in which our country has engaged since the start of my adulthood, the Iraq War is one that has shaped my views of foreign policy in a significant way, and Mearsheimer has shaped my view of that war. It is strange that this guy from whom I never took a class while on campus and from whom I heard only once – on my last day on campus – has had a significant impact on the way that I see the world and our nation's role in it. Thanks for pointing out his "strategic brilliance".

Mehdi Hasan counters me:

A hard-hitting, seven-page legal opinion on the consequences of Palestinian statehood, published recently by Guy Goodwin-Gill, a professor of international law at Oxford University, concluded that "the interests of the Palestinian people are [put] at risk of prejudice and fragmentation" [by statehood].

Ziad Asali sees further consequences: 

For Palestinians, it could mean a return to more restrictive forms of control by Israeli occupation authorities, more checkpoints and roadblocks, as well as other forms of retaliation, including punitive economic measures.

Larison nods solemnly. Spencer Ackerman lambastes J Street for opposing statehood. And later explains how the US supporting statehood serves our interests:

The U.S. spends extraordinary amounts of money and prestige in the Arab world trying to pull it in directions that it doesn't want to go. Then it has to spend even more of each mitigating the negative consequences of that effort. Opposing Palestinian statehood would take that trend to the Nth degree. On the other hand, since the region at this point expects the U.S. to oppose statehood, reversing course would likely send a shockwave of optimism through the Mideast. And you wanna talk about undermining al-Qaida's narrative, well…

The sad truth is that Obama's recasting of America's relationship with the Arab and Muslim world has been stymied by the Israel question from the get-go. The Gaza war was the warning that Israel would sabotage the Obama presidency in any way it could.

If the US vetoes Palestinian statehood at the UN, the strategy is dead. It will have been deliberately killed by a nexus of a religious right government in Jerusalem, a Christianist 30 percent in the GOP, and the Greater Israel lobby in the Congress. The petty short term problems and difficulties are not the issue here. The issue is an Arab world transformed in the last few years into one in which the United States could make big strides in advancing our alliances and interests in a newly democratic context. This is a time to think big, for Israel to take a leap of faith with the newly democratic forces around it, instead of doing what it is doing: intensifying its occupation of neighboring territory, alienating key allies like Turkey, and expressing contempt for the American president, even as its illegal settling of the West Bank accelerates.

I'm under no illusions about the dangers and difficulties that would follow a successful UN resolution recognizing Palestinian statehood. But the status quo is untenable. It's time to go big, not shrink small.

(Photo: A Jewish settler girl rides a bike May 24, 2011 in the West Bank settlement of Havat Gilad. By Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)