If we are not in it to win it, then pull out
There are only two ways to fight a war. Either we put the full resources of the country behind the war effort with the explicit goal of total victory in the shortest time, or we don't fight it at all. It is immoral to fight a war any other way. It is morally wrong to ask young men and women to put their lives at risk knowing full well that if we had provided more resources and manpower, many of the casualties could have been avoided.
It might seem that Obama is quickly making doves out of hawks, and one could be excused from thinking that conservatives are simply opposing Obama for opposition's sake, but a simple thought experiment (since it doesn't seem likely to happen in real life) will dispel that: imagine Obama approved his general's request for 40,000 troops—or, heck, suppose he doubled it and approved for 80,000 troop increase. Can you imagine a single conservative who would oppose that?
We just want our president to stop dithering. We should either fight to win, or, especially since we have already achieved important milestones, stop putting our men in danger. Anything else is a disservice to our troops:
Mr. President, it is time to bring our troops home.
If our mission in Afghanistan is simply to protect the populace and build the nation, then I believe the time has come to bring our troops home.
We have successfully rooted out Al-Qaeda from Afghanistan. Fewer than 100 Al-Qaeda operatives are operating in Afghanistan according to Retired General James L. Jones’ assessment of the situation. “I don’t foresee the return of the Taliban,” he said in an October 4 Associated Press report. Jones, who is President Obama’s National Security Advisor, continued: “Afghanistan is not in imminent danger of falling. The al Qaeda presence is very diminished. The maximum estimate is less than 100 operating in the country, no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies.”
Mr. President, we all recognize that we will still have to fight Al-Qaeda around the globe. So let’s bring home the tens of thousands who have fought so valiantly to protect America.
Let’s instead use the best human and electronic surveillance available to allow our special forces to target and kill those who actually threaten us.
One can make an argument for nation building. A strong, free democracy doesn't make a good training ground for terrorists and jihadists. But, we can make that argument only as long as we are committed to success, in the shortest amount of time possible—by commitment of whatever resources and manpower necessary that this nation can provide.
If we are not committed to success, then the single argument for nation building collapses. As it was once said, "Do or do not. There is no 'try'."
Update: This is comforting. By the general's own admission, the ball's in his court, and frankly, I have far more confidence in the men of our military than its current commander in chief, so it's very comforting to know that the future of this war is in the military's hand.
Gitmo not closing: prelude for landslide win in ‘12?
Rather predictably, Obama administration is not serious about closing Gitmo:
Struggled? Yes, that’s one way of putting it. After Craig damaged US-British relations by sticking four Gitmo detainees on a plane to Bermuda, and after he dumped less than a dozen more on the island nation of Palau, the pickings for release became mighty slim. Even with the US sending five 9/11 plotters to New York City to face a criminal trial, the Washington Post estimates that 75 prisoners remain that simply cannot be released, sent elsewhere, or tried normally — a situation Obama’s critics predicted all along.
This is going to eventually come back bite Obama. He is disillusioning his own base by breaking every promise made during the campaign: in fact, the ones that he actually does want to keep (universal health care) he doesn't have the power to push through, because this is a center-right country and president is not a king, and the ones he can keep using his executive powers (closing Gitmo, bringing troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq) he was never serious about keeping.
This is developing into a landslide scenario for a conservative candidate in 2012, whoever that may be. Conservatives are happy that Obama isn't keeping his promises (perhaps with the exception of some libertarians on Afghanistan-Iraq wars and Gitmo, but when it comes down to it, domestic policies will matter far more to libertarians). Independents who thought Obama was a moderate have fled from him as they found out more. And finally, liberals will be disappointed with Obama and will simply stay home on the election day.
Unless Obama can change direction drastically on foreign policy (and he probably won't be able to, even with that Nobel Peace prize), his only hope for the second term will be the economy—he might be able to win back some of the independents back, if economy improves enough (just pray that Obama and Pelosi do not raise taxes enough to kill the recovery). But even then, it would be an uphill battle—he will no longer have the enthusiastic netroots support, and the resurgent conservative grassroots movements will be opposing him.
Divisions and factions
J. Robert Smith writes about "delicious irony" of Obama the Great Divider.
I am not sure if "delicious" is how I would describe it. Yes, the silent majority is now speaking up and they are speaking up for liberty. That is the good news—but that is the only good news, as far as I can see.
America is dividing up. Rasmussen's Daily Presidential Tracking Poll has 32 percent of Americans strongly approving on Mr. Obama and 40 percent strongly disapproving. 72 percent of likely voters have strong opinions on the President! How would that 40 percent get along with the 32 percent? Those who have not made up their mind, i.e. the potential "neutral party", isn't even a plurality of this nation (well, counting only those who vote).
Unlike Mr. Smith's characterization, times of division has not been the greatest moment for America. Yes, the American right to dissent, the tradition of loyal opposition is a very valuable thing. But with dissent came the possibility of compromise. The Constitution was such one.
Today, we have the luxury of laughing at the absurdity of counting a person as "three-fifths" of a person because of the color of his skin. But without that compromise, United States of America would not have come to be. There would not have been 9 states to ratify the document, and divided colonies would have been quickly swallowed up by the British, French, or Spaniards.
The first hundred years of this republic was compromise upon compromise, most especially on the matter of slavery. Each time a new state joined the union, the foremost question was whether it was a "slave state" or a "free state". The careful balance had been kept for decades. Critics may argue that these compromises only delayed the inevitable: but this delay allowed the nation to develop, and the economic situation to change. By the time Civil War broke out, the North overwhelmed the South, as we can see in the fact that the South lost, when all they had to do was defend their own territory, not extend supply lines ravaging farms after farm.
Even so, the Civil War represented the most perilous period of this republic. When compromises could no longer be satisfy the factions, when the division became so deep that the mere election of a president who can be voted out in 4 years provoked military action, this was the time when this nation could have been destabilized and destroyed by a foreign power. At no other time, save for the revolutionary war and the war of 1812, did this republic face an existential threat.
And the Civil War left so many wounds in this republic that had been so difficult to heal. We can perhaps argue today that hurts of racial politics have been mended and that we are now in a "post-racial America", where color of a politician's skin matters quite not so much as his policies. But there are other damages that have yet to heal: one is our system of federalism. Our system of government, our union has always been based on a voluntary union of states with its own almost sovereign sphere of influence. No state has ever joined the union under compulsion (we still have territories that choose not to become part of the union and there is no pressure on them to), and until the Civil War, it had always been assumed that every state was free to leave.
The Civil War changed that. That may have only been a small step for the centralized government, but it is a giant step backward for local autonomy, and ultimately individual liberty. And this may come back to bite us if the federal government becomes so oppressive that secession becomes necessary: we have a precedent against us.
The downfall of the Athenian empire had been partisan politics. Extremists for democracy and oligarchy fought for control, inviting foreign actors inside the city walls in order to slaughter the opposition. George Washington could not predict the revolution of 1800 and the two party system that emerged eventually, but he was still right about dangers of factions. Our two party system worked so well so far because the two national parties had been forced to the center, as illustrated in the parable of ice cream vendors. Division was not good for political parties, and extreme differences didn't develop.
In the end, dissent is like pain. It's good for you, because it lets you know what's wrong. But it is not to be embraced warmly. It is a sign that something needs fixing. We cannot afford to let this divide destroy us. We cannot afford to fight another civil war. After all, current left-right divide does not have the clean geographical separation that slavery divide did. We will have our cities at war with countryside, and our suburban counties at war with inner city districts. Although Orson Scott Card imagines a happy ending, do we want to take that chance?
Eventually, we need a uniter. We need a healer—or we may not be able to keep this republic.
What happened to gender equality?
Let me just say that I would be, and for a good reason, the last person to claim that women should be slaves to men. Or to claim, as Greek philosophers did, that women have no faculty of reason—or at least one much inferior to men's.
I believe in gender equality. I believe that anything men can do, women can do better, and that anything women can do, men can do better—which means by mathematical consistency, men and women can do everything equally as well as the other gender. Some statistics, of course, show that more men are in prison than women, or that more women are now in colleges than men. I do not think this represents some kind of gender bias, either at the individual level or at societal level. There is some argument that this has to do with different evolutionary paths men and women have taken due to their different role in reproduction.
But, fundamentally, aside from our physical differences, I believe that men and women are equal, as should every reasonable person.
Then why is Obama administration launching a government program to somehow bring more attention to "women's rights" while ignoring, well, men's rights? Are women's rights not also men's rights? If spousal abuse is a problem for women, is it not for men as well? If a wife slashes the husband, does he not bleed?
Every social problem that can be framed as women's right (perhaps with the exception of abortion issues) can also be framed as men's right. If it is a fundamental right, then it should apply to all the U.S. citizens, not just the women half of them. If it is not a fundamental right, then the government has no business messing with private affairs.
The pendulum has come to full swing. Women do enjoy equal rights and privileges as men, except where physical differences prohibit them. If we are to pay any more attention to gender differences, perhaps we should spend more time with the troubled, neglected boys, rather than girls who enjoy plenty of attention already.
Price of freedom is eternal vigilance
Because you never really win. After all, that's the thing about a free society: a society is not truly free if it does not give enemies of freedom enough berth to try and destroy it—or at least its freedom.
We may be able to hold the tide back. We may be able to stop Obama, his cronies, and "the powers that be", especially if Democrats lose control of the House, where spending bills must originate, in 2010. We may be able to stop government intrusion into private health care system, and the final form of ObamaCare passed may be the best we could hope for: one that fixes what is broken (tort reform, less restriction on selling insurance across state lines, and removal of distorting tax incentives that ties insurance to employers) and leaves alone what works (the rest of the system).
Would that mean that we won and our children can live in peace?
Of course not. It might mean that this temporary victory may be so overwhelming, like our victory over U.S.S.R., that no statist would have the audacity to try it again for decades. But more likely than not, we will have to fight another similar battle in our lifetime once more, and our children will almost definitely have to earn their own freedom. After all, we have a republic if we can keep it, and each generation must prove that they can keep it.
Difference between Obama’s speech to the school children and previous speeches
So, Laura Ingraham called Obama's live speech to the school children "something that no other president has done". Was that correct?
Well, after a week of media coverage, it appears that Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush have also given speeches that were televised to the school children. But here is a crucial difference: those were speeches made at a specific school (and presidents are popular speakers at any venue; it would be senseless to ban them from speaking at schools at all) that were recorded and later distributed nation-wide for re-broadcast.
While some may protest that these speeches were political in nature, not educational, the fact of the matter is, that the content of these speeches were well known before they were mass-distributed. If either Reagan or Bush tried to fundamentally change American youth through these speeches, they couldn't have done it. The adults would have stopped them well before that could have happened, and "your children belong to the state" moment could not have happened, even if Reagan or Bush had such designs at heart.
Obama's speech is different. As it was going to be broadcast live to schools (admittedly ones that elect to broadcast it live; but we don't know how much federal pressure is (or is not) there, especially for schools that receive significant federal funding), there was no way for any adults to know what the speech would say. It could have told our kids to report on their parents' fishy activities so that they can help President Obama. After the controversy broke, the administration said that the speech will be available today for review, but that's just the typical backpedaling; this hadn't been in the original plans.
In fact, original plans included "educational activities" where union thugsteachers would discuss how the children can "help President Obama" (ostensibly in fulfilling their own educational goal, but why did it have to say anything about helping any particular political figure, especially one as divisive as Obama?), which would be scheduled to take place right after the speech. This is something indeed no other president has ever done.
When the speech becomes available later today, we may find out that all this fuss is over nothing (and after all, the administration had plenty of time to re-write the speech to remove anything controversial they had in the first draft, before this became public). But regardless of what happens in this particular incident, we must remember one thing. our children do not belong to the state.
A totalitarian government bypasses educated citizenry with its indoctrination of the youth through the apparatus of public school. Nazis have done it, and there is no reason to believe such an event absolutely cannot happen in America. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and we must never forget that. Let no president, Obama, Reagan, or Bush, get to our children without going through us first.
Edit: Hot Air has the speech. As predicted, nothing controversial remains.
Van Jones resigns
I think Glenn Beck deserves a lot of credit for his investigation of Mr. Jones' radical activities and bringing these into the attention of the mainstream media, as well as many conservatives and moderates. He put himself in the line of fire with his work. He's not in the clear yet, as the left-wingers are calling for his blood, not to mention the boycott Jones' Color of Change initiated against Glenn Beck advertisers after Mr. Beck started covering Obama's "czars" as a window into his policies, as Mr. Obama himself suggested during last year's presidential debates, but no matter what happens, Mr. Beck is a hero and patriot.
As for Mr. Jones, he cannot be ... honest even in resigning:
"They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide," he said. "I have been inundated with calls -- from across the political spectrum -- urging me to 'stay and fight.' But I came here to fight for others, not for myself. I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past. We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future."
What "lies and distortions" are those, Mr. Jones? Glenn Beck didn't read into or somehow extrapolate from Mr. Jones' supposed motives or circumstantial evidences. Glenn Beck showed videos of Mr. Jones espousing radical, communist ideas, with contexts intact, as well as revealing documents that bore Mr. Jones' signature—and he made sure that Mr. Jones' signature couldn't have gotten there by mistake and, every single time, asked the White House for response before going public. If these are "lies and distortions", I wonder what kind of words Mr. Jones uses to describe his own words and his own criticism of the previous administrations.
Straining ties with our allies
Is this how the Obama administration intends to heal the bruised relations and strained ties with our allies? (via Hot Air)
I cannot believe that this is the same administration that did not want to get involved in the internal affairs of Iran—to the degree that they wouldn't even criticize it, much less impose sanctions!—and the same president that went around the world apologizing to our "allies" in Europe and Middle East about how wrong America has been for the past 8 years.
How hard has it been to handle this Honduran affair correctly? Not hard at all!
Supposing that the administration knows nothing about Honduran constitution and their chain of command (after all, it knows nothing about the U.S. constitution—for example, where in the constitution does it say that the federal government has the power to take over health care, or any other industry comprising 15% of the nation's GDP?), this should not have been a difficult matter to decide or handle, if a firm decision is, once again, above his pay grade.
Ex-Pres. Zelaya has been supported by Chavez and Castro, clear enemies of American interest—in fact, Chavez went as far as to humiliate Mr. Obama himself in the world stage only a few months ago. How difficult is it to judge Mr. Zelaya by his friends? His friends are enemies of America. Wasn't it slightly possible that Mr. Zelaya himself might be an enemy of the United States (although he is apparently friends with some of her politicians)?
No one demands that Mr. Obama order a "targeted killing" against Mr. Zelaya. No one demands that Mr. Obama do anything at all. All that we demand is that Mr. Obama, just as he wisely distanced himself from the internal affairs of Iran, distance himself and his administration from the internal affairs of Honduras. We don't even ask that he do it indefinitely. We only ask that he wait until November, when an election that was to take place anyway had Mr. Zelaya remained president by obeying his country's constitution, and everything will be back to normal (on the other hand, if everything does not come back to normal, one would be justified in re-evaluating this stance).
All that anyone asked of Obama administration was the simple: "Don't just do something, stand there." And that would have been sufficient to remain on good terms with our good ally.
But, for inexplicable reasons of his own, the Obama administration had to not only strain the ties with our allies, as Pres. Bush arguably did, but cut it loose, cross the bridge, and burn the bridge. This extremely frustrating—because as a mere citizen, no matter how strongly I disagree with it, it feels as if I can do nothing for 3 years—decision is yet one more in a mountain of reasons why this administration needs to be ousted as quickly as possible—it's eroding the relations with our vital allies faster in 4 years than we can hope to repair in the ensuing decades.
Why we must resist further government encroachment into health care
Daniel Gross writes for Newsweek:
The same can't be said for the legions of people you hear on television, or read in the op-ed pages, or chat with at weekend barbecues, raging about taxpayer-funded health care as an unworkable, inefficient, Orwellian evil.
This is a something of a Churchillian moment. Never before have so many known so little about so much. The meme that my Slate colleague Timothy Noah has been tracking about Medicare not being a government program has two sources: ignorance and mendacity. Some people may really not know that Medicare is taxpayer-funded health care. That's ignorance. Many more people know it—and know the degree to which taxpayers are already funding lots of health care for them and their loved ones—and argue otherwise. That's mendacity.
I won't defend those who claim Medicare isn't a government program. They are hypocrites who either don't want to cut the benefits their are eligible for, or, more likely in the case of rich politicians, they will say anything to placate their base, even if it's patently untrue (I'll come back to this later). But, I object to this:
After the stock-research scandals of the 1990s, analysts were required to disclose whether they or their families owned stock in the companies they were talking about. That has since emerged as a key gauge of credibility. I'd like to see something similar for the health care debate. Before they weigh in on the prospects for health care reform, interview subjects—pundits, talking heads, policy wonks, editors, members of Congress—would have to disclose whether they or their family members rely on taxpayer-funded health insurance.
Except for Medicaid (which I think, we can allow to stand for some time, even though it is an evil—but perhaps necessary—government-funded program) and the Indian reservation health care, everyone who is receiving some sort of government health care actually deserve it: they paid into the system in money or blood (VA, which I will leave out because it's an exceptional case where the government is not only empowered but should be obliged to provide). We cannot, while complying with the Fourth Amendment, take these systems away from these people without just compensation (say, reimbursement of all their Medicare and Social Security tax in inflation-adjusted dollars, plus a nominal fee for breaking the "contract"). Nor should they be a target of criticism because they are simply receiving benefits from programs that they themselves paid into.
And this is why we should not allow further government encroachment. We let Social Security stand after FDR instituted it. We let Medicare stand even after LBJ's Great Society programs failed. And now these programs which we are forced to pay for is being used as a brand to label us "hypocrites". Talk about insult upon injury. Expect more of this down the line if we let this ObamaCare stand after Obama's socialist programs fail.
Now, as for what to do with Social Security and Medicare, well, what can we do? They are evil government programs, and it is incumbent on us conservatives to eliminate the necessity for these programs so that they may be allowed to die. The answer to this is probably not too dissimilar to Bush's failed Social Security reform: let people opt out.
I think we need to make a firm stand that people who have already paid into the system will be guaranteed the benefits they would have under the old system (yes, I am taking a page out of Obama playbook, but please bear with me). They can opt to continue to pay into Social Security and Medicare, and they will have the same benefits they would have had without the reform. Given that Social Security and Medicare would be hemorrhaging money soon, this means these programs will run a deficit before they die from lack of subscribers. I think we should pay for these deficits in these programs. Think of it as a down payment for getting the government out of our health and retirement. Think of it as similar to the price our Founding Fathers paid, in blood and war funds, so that the colonists can live freely without the interference from the empire.
If we truly believe in the free market, I think we can believe that a majority of those being forced to pay for Social Security and Medicare would choose to take control of their own funds, either to spend it in the now, or putting it away for retirement in some low-risk funds. And for the small minority who choose to remain in the program, I believe our economy, free of this tax burden, will be strong enough to pay for them, even though these entitlement programs will run deficits, like the USPS or Amtrak. And later we can make the system into an "opt-in" so that this burden will be even less.
But, this is all in the future. I happen to be a proponent of the market in health care and retirement systems. But as all of you may know, we may not get there immediately. Because first, we got to take back the White House, and we got to take back the Senate and the House. For now, before all that, we must resist further government encroachment into health care.
P.S. Now, I know that Social Security and Medicare don't work as they should: as a trust fund. Instead, it does work as a ponzi scheme, where the current beneficiaries are paid for by the current tax payers. But, as long as we are making a moral argument, we shouldn't punish the participants for the defects of the system itself.
Why increased government spending cannot stimulate economy (efficiently)
It's because everyone is afraid to invite the government in, especially after its bullying tactics become apparent:
jmcharry sends word that as the deadline looms for requesting broadband grants from the $4.7 billion available in stimulus funding, Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T are conspicuously absent from the list of applicants. Quoting the Washington Post: "Their reasons are varied. All three say they are flush with cash, enough to upgrade and expand their broadband networks on their own. Some say taking money could draw unwanted scrutiny of business practices and compensation, as seen with automakers and banks that have taken government bailouts. And privately, some companies are griping about conditions attached to the money, including a net-neutrality rule that they say would prevent them from managing traffic on their networks in the way they want. ... Yet those firms might be the best positioned to achieve the goal of spreading Internet access to underserved areas, some experts say."
As a result, the people who end up with the money are either start-ups (with no proven track record) or people with poor business acumen ("Oh, this abusive business partner who have bullied and bankrupted that other guy wants to buy a share of my company? Sure, why not?"), and this new capital has to compete with the existing one, rather than adding to it.
While one could argue that we could use the competition in the mobile broadband business, that won't be true of every sector, and frankly, that wasn't the point of the "stimulus package". Stimulus package is supposed to get larger capital moving, not be the sole provider of all the capital investments in the country for the next year.
I thought Bush proved after the dot-com crash and the 9/11 crash that tax cuts are the most effective way to stimulate the economy. People like keeping more of what they earn; this money comes with no strings attached; it's guaranteed to be distributed fairly and effectively, since the most productive people who can make the most use of the capital is the one who gets the most back; and it's a way of getting back at tax cheats—they took all that risk of getting caught for nothing!
But I guess after campaigning against Bush for 2 years, Obama just had to throw out the baby with the bath water. Oh well. It makes it all the easier for us to defeat him in 3 years or so.