Judges worse than terrorists

I've always been critical of the 'Bush=Hitler' crowd because it changes the debate away from legitimate criticism of the president, the administration and their policies and toward whether Bush is exactly as bad as Hitler. Bush is not a very good president, but no reasonable person could equate him with Hitler. Using lazy historical analogies does nothing to advance serious analysis of serious problems. Extreme hyperbole discredits the speaker far more than the target of the speaker's wrath. It makes things too easy on the target's defenders.

Pat Robertson is another person who often makes statements so ludicrous that his own words discredit him more than any critic can. For example, he recently told George Stephanapolus of ABC News that the federal judiciary, as currently constituted, represents the biggest threat to America in its history. He warned: "They're destroying the fabric that holds our nation together."

An incredulous Stephanapolus asked whether Robertson was saying that the threat posed by federal judges was more dire than the Civil War, World War II, and the terrorists who struck on Sept. 11. Robertson replied: "I really believe that. ... I think that the gradual erosion of the consensus that's held our country together is probably more serious than a few bearded terrorists who fly into buildings."

For the last three and a half years, we've been told by hysterical officials that al-QaedaSaddamUNTheFrench will destroy the American way of life unless we invade random and sundry countries willy nilly. Now, that demon has been officially replaced by judges who demand legislators respect constitutions, even if traditional ways of doing things have done the opposite. Well, not totally replaced, I'm sure; just as public enemy number one.

On the other hand, if a nut case can squeeze a lucrative book deal out of the libel that all liberals are traitors. then perhaps it's not so surprising that Robertson thinks he can get away with something like this.

The intersection of enlightened self-interest and cleaner air

From the invasion of Iraq to the attempts to open up the Arctic to speculative drilling, you'd be forgiven for thinking that oil runs our economy and that nothing can be done about it. While it's true that oil runs our economy, the picture isn't entirely bleak. Take this article in US News & World Report on the rise of environmentally-conscious hybrid cars.

Hybrids get close to 50 miles on a gallon of gas, more than twice what many SUVs get. With gas averaging over $2.20 a gallon nationally, that increased efficiency is starting to get people's attention.

They are expensive; a Honda Accord hybrid lists for over $30,000. But as demand increases and technology is improved, prices will drop. And as gas prices continue to increase, more people are willing to spend money up front to save in the long term.

I think this is the way things are supposed to work. There was a problem: high gas prices (or at least high gas prices in comparison to what Americans have been used to). The real solution isn't President Bush snapping his fingers and offering some half-baked decree, as some would want. The real solution isn't to ruin the Arctic for yet another short-term band aid. The solution is increased energy efficiency.

Sure, the president found that as an excellent smokescreen during the 2002 State of the Union address. He spoke of spending lots of money on hydrogen fuel cells. This was a transparent pre-emptive strike against liberal critics who were waiting to pounce on the other half of that speech: justifying (snicker) the then-imminent Iraq conquest. It was a good idea but have you heard anything about fuel cell research since that speech? Has the president uttered a single word about it since?

But ultimately, the market provided its own solution. I've written a lot about enlightened self-interest. In dealing with the problem of perceived high gas prices, there is no place for punitive measures like gas rationing or mandating that all cars get 80 miles per gallon. Enlightened self-interest works better.

Some people wanted cars like hybrids for reasons of principle. However, demand for hybrids started increasing rapidly once the realities of perceived high gas prices caused people to re-examine their choices. Demand increased when principles and the wallet crossed paths.

The same enlightened self-interest has been shown on the part of auto manufacturers. There was a demand for more fuel efficient alternatives to the gas guzzlers. Those companies that were first to recognize and respond to that demand have been rewarded. There is very high brand recognition and loyalty for the Toyota Prius, the first major hybrid car.

More hybrids on the road will result in cleaner air, which benefits everyone. And as demand increases for non-traditional engine cars, there will be more incentive for automakers to invest in the next step: mass produced hydrogen fuel cell based vehicles.

Now all we need is increased investment in the various public transportation systems in this country so then we could have less congestion, less sprawl AND cleaner air.

The bad neighbor policy

The International Paper plant in Ticonderoga, NY wants to burn some tires. Naturally, the folks across Lake Champlain in Vermont aren't too thrilled, but NY Sen. Hillary Clinton thought polluting the Green Mountain State's air was a nifty idea.

IP wants to conduct a two-week test burn at the plant, and Clinton weighed in on the company's behalf, saying the plant was the source of hundreds of jobs, notes The Rutland Herald.

Vermont Gov. James Douglas has opposed the test burn because data suggest pollution from burning tires would contain harmful levels of zinc and mercury, which would waft on westerly breezes across Lake Champlain to [western Vermont's] Addison County and beyond.

While tire burning is done at other places, IP insists on proceeding with its test burn without installing the kind of technology that has made burning tires acceptable at other sites. It is arguable that the residents of Shoreham won't be seriously injured by two weeks of zinc from the plant. But why not demand adequate technology before giving IP the idea that burning tires might be OK?, editorializes The Herald.

If they are doing a test burn, it can only be because they have designs on something more permanent.

This flap provides the chance for two politicians to advance their political aspirations, with jobs and the environment being the fig leafs.

Democrat Clinton is still under the delusion that she could be elected president in 2008. This is an opportunity for her to pick a fight with environmentalists and side with polluters to demostrate that she's not the raving liberal that most of the country assumes she is (given her record as senator, most New Yorkers know better).

She says she supports IP's tire burn because it's a big employer. The implication is that jobs would be lost if the burn had been blocked. That is what she wants you to infer but she never comes out and says it, let alone specifys how many jobs would be lost. Was she happy to let people draw the wrong conclusion?

Republican Douglas has a different motivation. It is widely expected that he will run for the US Senate in 2006 to fill the seat to be vacated by James Jeffords. Douglas knows that basic respect for the environment is something important to Vermont culture and this is a chance for him to present himself as the defender of clean air.

There is a bitter irony in all this. Ticonderoga is located in New York's Adirondack Mountains. Dozens of Adirondack lakes are now dead, no living creatures can be found in them, as a result of acid rain. Acid rain caused by pollutants from factories in other states, notably the midwest, much to the ire of New York state leaders and Adirondack residents.

Now, with the esteemed Sen. Clinton's complicity, New York is set to perpetrate the very same wrong on Vermonters.

Blair re-elected

Yesterday, Tony Blair's Labour Party won the British general elections. The US isn't the only country whose electoral system produces distorted results. Formerly left-wing Labour won 35.2% of the vote, the Conservatives garnered 32.3% of the vote and the progressive Liberal Democrats obtained 22.1%.

Yet the relative close popular vote totals were not reflected in the seat totals. Labour took 355 parliamentary seats, the Conservatives 197 and the Lib Dems 62. Two are undeclared at present.

Most analysts concluded that the result is exactly what British population wanted: another Labour government, but with a reduced majority (47 fewer seats). The British public was angry at Blair for his role in the Iraq debacle and his close alliance with President Bush but were happy with his handling of the economy.

It's a good result for the Liberal Democrats, who are the progressive alternative to the increasingly right-leaning Labour Party. The Lib Dems benefited from being the only major party to oppose the Iraq aggression.

Results from Northern Ireland were less promising. 14 of the province's 18 seats (and a combined 48%) went to the two extremist sectarian parties: the DUP (of the infamous Rev. Iain Paisley) and Sinn Fein (the political wing of the IRA). The two traditional moderate groupings, the Catholic SDLP and Protestant UUP, got 3 and 1 seats respectively; percentage wise, they barely outpolled, combined, Paisley's gang.

It's sad reality that the BBC was shaken to core when a single reporter on a morning radio show essentially said that the Iraq invasion was based on false pretenses. As a result of that statement which is now widely acknowledged to be reality, the leadership of the BBC was forced to resign and the corporation restructured. Yet, the three men most responsible for the aggression (Bush, Blair and Australia's John Howard) were each given another term in power.

Vermont may investigate use of Guard

The Iraq occupation is often described in grandiose terms: aggression, liberation, quagmire, spreading democracy. But the effects are deeply personal. If you have friends or family over there, as I do, you tend to have a slightly different focus: will MY friend/relative come back alive?

Given the huge numbers of troops need to occupy Iraq (and Afghanistan), the job can not be done simply with ordinary, active duty soldiers. National Guardsmen are normally under the control of the state governor and typically deployed to deal with local emergencies like flooding and ice storms. Yet lots of them have been shipped over to Iraq.

As a result, the Vermont state legislature is considering a study that would look at the effects on the state of Vermont National Guard deployments to Iraq. This was after 57 towns voted on such a resolution at this spring's town meetings, 49 of which approved the measure.

"I am not concerned about the committee so much as I am about the approach," said Maj. Martha Rainville, head of the Vermont National Guard.

Instead of being based on public forums, she said, the study might be more useful if it was based on statistical information, much of which the Guard already has, reported The Rutland Herald.

A fair enough comment.

Anyone paying attention has read the stories of National Guardsmen getting injured or dying because they were poorly equipped (take this one for example). In fact, the only casualties from my area have been Guardsmen killed (1) or injured (several) because they were forced to ride through dangerous areas in a vehicle without armor plating. With the over $165,000,000,000 spent on Iraq so far, you'd think that such things might be taken care of. But that can never be questioned, lest one 'undermine troop morale'

If that doesn't make your head spin...

Nation-building

I was interested to read this piece in The Atlantic

Following up on a widely read 2003 report on U.S. nation-building efforts, the RAND Corporation has released a study of United Nations peacekeeping missions. It concludes that in many cases the UN is better suited than the United States to lead stability-building operations. The UN has a low cost structure, a high success rate, and, perhaps most important, "the greatest degree of international legitimacy" among possible peacekeepers. It has also done a better job of learning from the past than the United States—which, though it had successful experiences with nation-building in the 1990s (in Bosnia, Kosovo, and to a lesser degree Haiti), failed to apply their lessons in Afghanistan and Iraq. Whereas UN operations are typically led by veterans of earlier missions, the authors argue, the United States "tends to staff each new operation as if it were its first and destined to be its last." And in Iraq, they write, American civil administrators were "late to arrive, of mixed competence, and not available in adequate numbers." The study also faults America for relying on "grandiloquent" rhetoric rather than careful diplomacy to build support for its missions. Of course, UN operations are not without weaknesses; they tend to be undermanned and underfunded, with military personnel of uneven quality, whereas U.S. missions benefit from greater access to donors and funds. In the end the UN may have a better success rate in part because the operations it undertakes are less demanding than those led by the United States. UN missions are limited to countries where no "forced entry" is required, the conflicting parties cooperate with the peacekeepers to some degree, and the number of troops needed is no greater than 20,000. East Timor and Mozambique, in other words—not Iraq. (Also see: The Rand Corporation

This is hardly surprising. The American establishment gives primacy to military force. The UN establishment gives primacy to nation-building. While both may be necessary, to varying degrees, each represents a very different operation. It's not surprising that the UN does nation-building better than the US. The UN gives the task and it has a lot more practice. US nation-building efforts are almost always tied in with military operations. It's those very military operations which necessarily diminish the legitimacy of the nation-building efforts... efforts which are usually given short shrift in planning to the more immediate needs of the military side. Furthermore, the multinational nature of the UN means that no one individual national biases and blinders is allowed to predominate, or at least to go unchallenged. The UN's diversity is its strength.

There are so many valid points made in the article but one in particular stands out: The study also faults America for relying on "grandiloquent" rhetoric rather than careful diplomacy to build support for its missions.

Again, this is because military force (which is seen as 'manly') is given more importance in American society than diplomacy (which is seen as soft).

I want more crime!

The Glens Falls' (NY) paper The Post-Star has a feature called Don Coyote. Basically, it's a way for Post-Star reporters or editors to take cheap shots or make snide comments behind the veil of anonymity. Sometimes, "Don Coyote" does make interesting points, but ones that aren't of sufficient length for a column. I have no respect for the whole concept.

I've been critical of Ken Tingley, the paper's managing editor, in this blog. But at least Tingley has the guts to sign his name. I was opinion editor for three years of my college newspaper (and a columnist for all four). I often took controversial positions, but I always signed my name too and thus faced public ire for my comments. Even in this blog, I sign my real first name and don't use a pseudonym. Neither my college paper, nor The Post-Star, publishes anonymous letters to the editor. So it seems strange that the daily allows this vehicle that's so out of character with the rest of the publication.

Anyways, Tuesday's "Don Coyote" remarked: I'm not afraid to walk the streets around here. But the taxes -- that's a different matter.

This remark gets to my heart about how the debate over taxes is framed. Or misframed.

Nobody likes taxes, just as no one likes getting a vaccination needle stuck in their arm. But sometimes, unpleasant things are necessary.

The debate has been misframed because only one side has been portrayed. If you ask people, "Do you want lower taxes?", 99.9% of the people will say, "Sure!"

Everyone wants a free lunch!

But this is only one side of the equation. That question should be accompanied by a related query: "In order to compensate for the lower taxes, do you want worse schools, bumpier roads, more crime or less fire protection?"

While some people might still opt for the lower taxes and take the downside, it would at least be a less disingenuous way of framing the issue. You can't talk about tax cuts without talking about service cuts.

If "Don Coyote" isn't afraid to walk the streets around here, could it be because the police department is sufficiently funded by TAX dollars?

Strange bedfellows

This essay is part of a regular feature on my blog that presents interesting stories from elsewhere in the world, particularly Africa, that are little reported in the American media. It's part of my campaign to get people to realize there is a lot going on in the world outside the US, Israel and Iraq.

After a period of admirable voiciferousness, the Bush administration has been fairly quiet recently about the genocide going in Darfur, western Sudan. Now The Los Angeles Times gives a good indication why.

According to the paper, the genocidal regime in Khartoum is now providing key intelligence in the war against terrorism. The al-Qaeda type of terrorism, mind you. Though, many would contend that genocide is the most extreme version of terrorism.

As recently as September, then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell accused Sudan of committing genocide in putting down an armed rebellion in the western province of Darfur. And the administration warned that the African country's conduct posed "an extraordinary threat to the national security" of the United States.

The partnership with Sudan is an odd one. Sudan once harbored Osama bin Laden. But in the late 90s, Sudanese strongman Gen. Omar el-Bashir broke his alliance with the Islamist leader and parliamentary speaker Hassan al-Turabi. Since then, Turabi and the Islamists have been vocal opponents of the Bashir regime. This is why the general has denied any cooperation with the United States.

Responding to an uproar over rumors of collaboration with the administration in late 2001, Bashir told a Khartoum news conference, "I swear in God's name that we have not handed and will not hand in any [terrorism suspects] to the United States."

Criticism of Sudan has been led by an unusual alliance of Christian conservatives and human rights organizations. The latter has long been concerned with the regime's poor human rights record. The former have been particularly angered by the mostly Muslim government's treatment of the mostly Christian south during the long civil war in the region.

The regime recently signed a peace agreement with southern rebels and the civil war in the south is hopefully over. However, many feared that the regime settled the war in the south so it could concentrated its military resources on the genocide in the west.

The regime denies any involvement in the Darfur genocide; naturally, it insists that nothing is taking place except a few unfortunate excesses, inevitable during a little chaos. This, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, including first hand testimony by a Janjaweed militia leader.

Increasing Sudanese cooperation with Washington on some forms of terrorism makes it increasingly unlikely that the Bush administration will press the regime on the more extreme form of terrorism it's complicit in.


Update: Nicholas Kristoff of The New York Times has an op-ed piece damning the Bush administration's about face on Darfur. He opines that, far from being passive silence, the Bush administration is fighting to kill the Darfur Accountability Act, which would be the most forceful step the U.S. has taken so far against the genocide. The bill, passed by the Senate, calls for such steps as freezing assets of the genocide's leaders and imposing an internationally backed no-fly zone to stop Sudan's Army from strafing villages.