Why Another Karzai Government May be Bad for Afghanistan

If you read the news (in the US anyway) it is common knowledge that what is most important in the current Afghan elections is not necessarily who wins, but that the elections be seen as legitimate and transparent by the Afghan public as well as the international community. Now, almost three weeks after election day, it is highly questionable whether the election process this time around will be, in the end, seen as legitimate by Afghans or the international community. There have been widespread allegations of voter fraud, including among supporters of sitting President Hamid Karzai. The sheer volume of complaints has pushed back the announcement of the election’s official results by at least two weeks.

With 90% of the vote counted, Karzai appears to have won 54% of the vote, with runner-up Dr. Abdullah Abdullah with 28%, and the remainder of the vote being split among 36 other presidential candidates. However, these results are not official, hundreds of thousands of votes have been thrown out, and there have been persistent allegations of massive voter fraud. It appears that there is substance to many of the allegations, raising the possibility that enough votes could be disqualified to drop Karzai’s tally to under the 50% that he needs to avoid a runoff with Abdullah. Investigations into voter fraud could last months, delaying any eventual runoff and threatening to plunge Afghanistan into more violence and perhaps a constitutional crisis as competing groups and candidates jockey for a position in whatever government eventually comes to power (or alternatively, strive to discredit and destabilize the government elect).

The reason for the strong opposition against Karzai has been his government’s extreme corruption and his political amorality in being willing to team up with unsavory former warlords like Abdul Rashid Dostum, accused of human right atrocities against Taliban captives under his control. The Afghan people also have seen Karzai largely as the candidate of the US and the international community which has generated distrust concerning the outcome of the vote, believing that his victory has been preordained without concern for Afghan opinion. If Karzai wins a majority in a flawed election process, his adminstration is sure to be dogged by accusations that it came to power illegitimately. Should he fail to win over 50%, his position would be confirmed as relatively weak while he would be subject to repeated opposition attacks (during and between election campaign) highlighting his corruption and poor administration. If Karzai were to win the runoff election, he would be returning to office with a poor record, a weak administration, and no mandate from Afghans. If on the other hand, Abdullah were to win the run off, there may be a public sense of hope for a new direction in Afghan politics, and a belief in the legitimacy of the electoral system. Nor would Abdullah have the amount of negative baggage that is holding Karzai back. While Abdullah’s backers are also likely to have engaged in vote fraud, the most serious allegations appear to be against the Karzai campaign. An Abdullah win would more likely be perceived as representative of a fair and legitimate electoral process.

The biggest difference between Karzai and Abdullah is that Karzai supports a government with power concentrated in the office of president, while Abdullah sees a parliamentary system as a more appropriate system for representing the diversity of Afghan beliefs and communities. An Abdullah win would mean a fundamental restructuring of the Afghan government with unpredictable results. In governing, Abdullah would probably need to rely on supporters as shady as Karzai’s, and his government would face the same difficult challenges to improving life in Afghanistan that Karzai’s would.

But it may just be time for a change. Karzai may have been the man for the job when the Taliban fell. He had an admirable history of brave opposition to the Taliban and al Qaeda. He challenged Presidents Bush and Musharraf on many aspects of his country’s rebuilding and advocated strongly for the Afghan people. He may have been the best chance to hold Afghanistan together after 2001, but now, his rule has become a liability for the Afghan state. A new leader is needed to bring legitimacy to the election process and to restore faith in the Afghan government itself. Bringing progress in Afghanistan will be a difficult task for anyone, but should Karzai win, it will be harder than need be.

This article is the third in a series about major elections taking place in Asia this year.  Part one and two covered the recent elections in India.

Pakistan: Caught in the Crossfire, Part 2

This is the second of my two part series dealing with Pakistan through the eyes of  Naveed, a lecturer at an Islamabad University. Please see Part 1 for more context.

After being enlightened about Pakistan’s history and foreign interference, I was desperate to find out his views about the insurgency in his native tribal areas. We were out in the open air, and Naveed was in a calm mood.

“So you asked me about the insurgency in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan?,” he uttered after taking a deep breath. As I nodded, he said: “To understand the present insurgency, you have to go back to the British Empire era when Pashtun tribal areas had their own tribal administrators called ‘Walis’.”

ISOLATION AND INDIFFERENCE

“The British did little to interfere in our lives and gave us the freedom to have our own code which we call the ‘jirga’ (assembly of tribal elders) that defines laws, regulations, and policies. Soon after the independence, we joined Pakistan on certain preconditions. One of them was to have our own jirga system,” Naveed said, adding that Pakistani courts and law enforcement have no jurisdiction over the tribal areas known as Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

FATA is an interesting region of Pakistan. It covers an area of 27,220 sq. km and has an estimated population of 3.5 million. Pashtuns comprise the overwhelming majority of the population with a few ethnic Hazaras, Sikhs, and Punjabis living alongside. The literacy rate is hardly 10%, well below the national average of 40%. It is an underdeveloped area with few metalled roads and limited gas and electricity supply. The locals do not pay tax to the state. With only seven percent of the land area cultivatable, people make a livelihood by smuggling custom-free goods from Afghanistan, operating car theft rackets, drug trafficking, and selling locally produced illegal small and heavy arms.

The Pakistani government seldom intervenes in the tribal affairs. A government appointed political agent called “Malik” represents the federation with few executive powers. FATA is however represented in the National Assembly in Islamabad. Unelected tribal elders represented the region until the system was changed in 1997 to introduce mandatory elections. However, little has changed as the elections are contested on tribal rather than on political lines. Therefore, although there are now elections, most individuals vote solely along tribal lines. This is in contrast to the rest of the country where political parties cut across tribal identities.

“This whole region is in a limbo. It is part of Pakistan, but at the same time it is not. Confused aren’t you?” a sarcastic Naveed remarked at my puzzled face. “Thanks to our tribal elders’ wishes, the government never incorporated us into mainstream Pakistan. There always remained a divide between the settled and tribal areas that local leaders as well as Islamabad exploited for their own gains. We are the Pakistani version of America’s Wild West,” he joked in his patent ironic tone.

The dynamics of this tribal society are now unraveling. Due to the fact that this region never became part of the mainstream Pakistani society, the allegiance of the people is toward their tribes or clans rather than to their country. The idea of a shared cultural identity has remained confined to the boundaries of the tribal regions spread across Pakistan and Afghanistan. Therefore, although they are counted as part of the Pakistani population and their areas are shown on the map as part of federal Pakistan, the state has failed to win the Pashtun hearts and minds in order to fully include them in the wider Pakistani cultural society.

“The people in the province, especially in the tribal areas, felt the isolation. Politicians, time and again, made promises to bring them into the mainstream and grant a comprehensive political and judicial system. From Bhutto to his daughter Benazir and from General Zia-ul-Haq to his stalwart Nawaz Sharif, everyone made promises. Empty promises. Things hardly changed on the ground,” Naveed remarked. “Does a promise remain a promise if unfulfilled?,” he argued while referring to an Urdu proverb with a similar connotation.

RETURNS OF THE HOLY ALLIANCE

The outbreak of a guerrilla war in Afghanistan is a turning point in the history of Pakistan. In 1980, Pakistani military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq setup an alliance with the United States to send fighters across the border to aid the Afghan resistance against the Soviet-backed government in Kabul. The joint Pakistani-US investment of arms and fighters radically altered the course of war in Afghanistan, drawing Soviet troops into a long, bloody conflict that ultimately left them defeated and contributed to the disintegration of the USSR.

But the Pakistan-US alliance also brought a host of problems to the region, especially Pakistan. The tribal areas, acting as a launching pad for anti-Soviet fighters known as the “mujahideen,” became a den of illegal arms, drugs, and smuggling. Millions of people from Afghanistan sought refuge in Pakistan, straining the already limited resources of their hosts. The impoverished refugees from Afghanistan, at times, clashed with more modern and well-off Pakistanis due to cultural, religious, and lifestyle differences. People still resent the military government of General Zia over his handling of the Afghan crisis.

The area that was touched most by the conflict was the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan. Naveed described the post-war situation. “The mujahideen returned to their homes. The government had no rehabilitation plan for them. Frustration rose tremendously and their warfare experience gave them the confidence to lift their arms and fight for their rights.” He added that veterans of the Afghan war returned to Pakistan along with their comrades from the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa.

“Most of the non-Afghan fighters were exiles from their home countries who could no longer return to their states. Many of their home governments feared a rebellion from their ranks and labeled them as unwanted elements. The only people who welcomed them were the Pashtuns as we have an ancient code of hospitality and generosity for someone who asks for protection and refuge,” Naveed explained, pride for his culture and traditions evident in his tone.

While the USSR left Afghanistan humiliated and defeated, the US reveled with joy. Afghanistan was abandoned, as the US interest was limited to the defeat of its nuclear rival rather than rebuilding of the nation. Former mujahideen turned their guns on each other and a full-scale civil war ensued. Thousands of people died during the conflict from 1992-1996. The only forces that stopped the civil war were the Taliban, who drove the warring former mujahideen factions from power and seized control of 90% of the country.

HOSTILITIES AT HOME

“The former mujahideen who returned from Afghanistan demanded a judicial system based on Islamic law and Pashtun culture and traditions. This was their own version of Shariah. It was a simple demand that was raised to deal with the complex law and order situation in their region,” the young academic described, adding that the local people were very enthusiastic about such demands. “Everybody including the former mujahideen wanted it. The government, instead of principally agreeing to their demand and holding a referendum to decide the issue, sent troops and tanks to the region. People did not get what they really wanted,” he remarked with bitterness replacing his usually soft tone.

In 1994, a bloody conflict erupted in the Malakand division of NWFP province. Veterans of the Afghan war formed a militia called “Tehrik Nifaz Shariat Muhammadi” (Movement for the Imposition of Muhammad’s Shariah law) and started an armed uprising in the region. Government buildings in the region were attacked and occupied in November 1994. The Islamabad government led by the late Benazir Bhutto, initially signing a peace agreement with the militants, backed off under international pressure and waged a military operation. The TNSM militants were flushed out to the hills, and calm was restored. However, the situation on the ground remained the same, and no general judicial system reforms were introduced to speed up the delivery of justice. The demand for a time saving and cost-effective judicial system in the national courts remained unheard, further infuriating the masses.

Hundreds of people lost their lives in the bloody conflict between the TNSM militants and Pakistani armed forces from November 1994 until early 1996. Thousands of people also left their homes in the region due to the conflict.

“The government’s short-sighted and half-baked measures exacerbated the situation. It waged an armed operation against the group but forged an alliance with the leadership. The head of TNSM, Maulana Sufi Muhammad, was captured by the army, but was released without any charges. I do not understand the logic of a military operation that ends up with the signing of a peace deal and distribution of sweets,” the 26 year-old said while mentioning the local practice of distributing sweets on the eve of a festive ceremony. “They sit side-by-side adorning each other with garlands while people mourn over their losses and bury their dead. Is this justice?”

According to a statement issued on May 3, 2001 by the then-NWFP provincial governor Owais Ghani, criminals and assorted illegal arms, timber, and drugs mafias provided financial support to the TNSM and flourished under their rule. TNSM strictly denies the allegations. The Shariah movement returned to the political scene in the region with a vengeance soon after the 9/11 attacks in the USA. While the then-US President George W. Bush was envisioning plans to invade Afghanistan and topple the Taliban government in Kabul, the former mujahideen in Pakistan were renewing their vows for a jihad and promising a new war against the USA along the same lines of struggle against the USSR.

Soon after the US forces invaded Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, TNSM was the first pro-Taliban group to send its forces to fight alongside the Taliban. Thousands of fighters crossed into Afghanistan along with their leader Maulana Sufi Muhammad. The TNSM fighters returned to their bases after Taliban retreated from urban Afghanistan to their rural strongholds to initiate a guerrilla war against the occupying US and NATO forces. Leaders of TNSM were arrested by Islamabad after their return in 2002 and imprisoned on charges of incitement of violence and violation of state laws. President General Pervez Musharraf outlawed the organization in 2002.

Naveed stopped all of a sudden in the middle of the conversation. Something was clearly bugging him as his face turned red. “The cat and mouse game between TNSM and Pakistani military continued. The Pakistani government enjoyed the support of Washington while TNSM were bolstered by the inclusion of al-Qaeda elements in its ranks. The government signed a peace deal on one day and initiated an armed operation against the opposite side the very next day,” Naveed uttered angrily.

His outburst continued: “Nothing changed on the ground except that the situation got out of control and the militants got bolder with their tactics. Pakistani military attacked militant positions on the ground. They also hit their hideouts from the air with the help of Cobra gunship helicopters given by the US.”

“As if this was not enough to wreak havoc, the US drones unleashed hell from the skies, allegedly killing hundreds of innocent civilians. Thousands of people have been caught in the crossfire with no place to run and nowhere to hide. I’ve seen the carnage myself. Was this all for peace?”

Stocky-built Naveed came to an abrupt halt. His voice was shaky, and he didn’t want to continue anymore. Having lived for more than a year with him I never saw Naveed so silent before. He silenced himself. The aggression was in his hands, but he unclenched his fists and stood still. What else can he do?

As we were having this chat on a rainy spring evening, thousands of internally displaced refugees in Swat valley in northwest Pakistan were lying in the open without any shelter. There is an acute shortage of food in the refugee camps, I’m told. But one thing is very certain. There is no shortage of ammunition on either side.

The radical Islamists impose their style of governance in the name of religion and carry out their harsh sentences against poor and powerless people. In the opinion of many in Pakistan, the Islamabad government with the aid of the US government bombs and maims its own people by using tanks and fighter planes. The poor and powerless people, suppressed by the militants and oppressed by the government, run to save their lives. Where is the democratic promise of liberty, fraternity, and equality? Why don’t I see the Islamic spirit of forgiveness, compassion, and justice? Perhaps, both the sides are interested in furthering their agenda and exploiting their subjects in the name of their ideologies.

Mr. President, We Do Have a Choice

In explaining his most recent escalation of American troop levels in Afghanistan, President Obama claimed that “the United States of America did not choose to fight a war in Afghanistan.” The underlying justification for the additional 4,000 “advisors” was the fact that “nearly 3,000 of our people were killed on Sept. 11, 2001, for doing nothing more than going about their daily lives.” His second statement is unquestionably true; the first is not. But even more important than the question of whether or not we had a choice in the matter of invading Afghanistan is the fact that we have one today, more than seven years later.

Normally we might say a country had no choice but to wage war if it found itself the target of ongoing sustained attacks from another country. Having been the victim of a highly coordinated and lethal terrorist attack, there was little question that the US – and much of the rest of the world – had to revamp a wide array of security measures, the results of which are evident in any airport. The decision to fight a war in Afghanistan, however, was quite another matter.

From the beginning, a central goal of this war, as announced by the White House, was bringing the apparent perpetrator of the September 11 attacks, Osama bin Laden, to justice. And a week into the war, the Taliban government then in power in Afghanistan made an offer to turn him over — with several substantial provisos. They would do so if provided evidence connecting him to the crimes; they would not give him to the US, but only to another Muslim country; and naturally it would happen only if they could locate him. The offer was rejected out of hand.

Looking back, the matter of evidence would presumably have proven no obstacle. And so far as the stumbling block of the refusal to deliver him directly to the US goes, it now seems highly relevant to note that the Bush Administration then in power would go on to organize an elaborate worldwide campaign to prevent Americans from ever being turned over to the International Criminal Court despite the fact that 108 other countries have opted to recognize its legitimacy. The White House certainly would never have honored a demand such as it made upon Afghanistan.

Finally, there’s the matter of whether the Taliban was acting in good faith or would do so in the future: Did they know where bin Laden was and would they have delivered him if they did? That’s all speculation, of course, but what is not speculation is that seven plus years of war have not produced him either. And as we consider whether this war is worth continuing today, let’s consider the crux of the President’s argument as to why we had no choice but to get into it – the “nearly 3,000 of our people” killed.

In contrast to the facts surrounding September 11, data concerning Afghan civilians killed by American military action is very hard to come by. In what is arguably the most thorough study that was ever done on the question, University of New Hampshire Professor Marc Herold concluded that there were already nearly 3,800 of them by December 7, 2001. His research report listed the number of casualties, location, type of weapon, and source of information, but Herold believed “the figure I came up with is a very, very conservative estimate. I think that a much more realistic figure would be around 5,000.” These Afghanis too were simply “doing nothing more than going about their daily lives.”

The actual number to this day? No one knows. Certainly the casualty rate abated after the war’s first few months, yet few would question that the number is greater than that of the Americans who died as a result of the hijackers’ activities. Which brings us to the current President’s statement. Do the Afghanis therefore now also have no choice but to fight a war with the US? “An eye for an eye and soon the whole world is blind,” as Gandhi put it?

Whatever one thinks of the logic of getting into this war in the first place, the logic of staying is quite another thing. And actually, it may be a stretch to call it logic. Consider, for instance, the March 28, 2009 New York Times editorial praising Obama for asserting “leadership over the war that matters most to America’s security — the one against Al Qaeda and the Taliban,” while simultaneously complementing “his plans to urge so-called moderate Taliban to abandon their hard-line leaders” and noting that “more than seven years into the fight, the leader of the American intelligence community acknowledged that it knows shockingly little about the Taliban command structure.”

And that’s the current strategy in a nutshell: send in more troops to fight the enemy at the same time you’re trying to negotiate with them and figure out who they actually are. Unfortunately, the level of intransigence of the last administration was such that this approach may strike a lot of people as reasonable by comparison. But even though American casualties may well remain small enough in number and Afghan casualties may seem too remote and obscure to provoke a crisis in confidence back home, the fact remains that these are real people’s lives that the White House is hanging its flimsy strategy on.

Seeking to prevent Al Qaeda from inflicting any further harm on the US is a worthy goal and probably a realistic one. Trying to eliminate everyone who doesn’t like us in Afghanistan – and increasingly in Pakistan as well – is surely a prescription for endless war. We do have a choice

Blowback: The Economy or the Military?

During the long years of the Cold War, not many dared to question the US military budget. Since then, however, the budget has continued to expand, often sending troops overseas to situations that were created by previous diplomatic blunders. Some of those blunders have directly created the morasses that we attempt to extricate ourselves from today. As such, let’s take a look at some of the history of what the CIA refers to as blowback for the U.S.

Brief Blowback History

In 1953, Iran, or Persia as it was then called, had a functioning democratic system. A successful coup by the CIA and British Intelligence overthrew the democratically elected government and replaced them with the hereditary Shah of Persia. His abuses and misrule led directly to the Islamic Revolution and the problems we have encountered with their Islamic government ever since. In the early 1980s, Iraq thus was encouraged to invade Iran, by the US in a fit of pique, and was supplied with arms in the resulting war. This assistance helped solidify Saddam Hussein’s military ambitions and indirectly encouraged his invasion of Kuwait in 1991, all of which led to the mess in Iraq today.

Meanwhile during the 1980s, the military assistance given to the tribes opposing the Russian occupation of Afghanistan led to the Taliban taking over the country. These people, who were responsible for 9/11 (despite what the Bush administration’s claims to the contrary), are whom we continue to fight today in Afghanistan. In addition, they also have brought the war on terror to the nuclear-power country of Pakistan.

Bill Clinton didn’t help matters, when he, in the midst of the Monica Lewinsky affair, launched Tomahawk missiles against suspected Al Qaeda munitions facilities at a site in Sudan and the Bora Bora site in Afghanistan where Osama Bin Laden was thought to be. This was in retaliation after US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania had been previously bombed. One of Tomahawks destroyed a human and veterinary manufacturing plant in Sudan, killing at least 20 Sudanese and putting many out of work. The Sudanese government immediately cut off all ties with the U.S. and released an important Al Qaeda suspect they had been about to hand over to the U.S. The Tomahawks in Afghanistan missed Bin Laden totally–he was in Kabul at the time. He in turn sold an unexploded Tomahawk to the Chinese for 10 million dollars. Worse, almost all of Africa, who had been outraged over the Embassy bombings by Al Qaeda, swung against the US policy after the bombings. Sound familiar?

In addition, it is clear to most of the world, though rarely reported in the US, that huge military assistance to Israel keeps them so dominant that they often disdain from entering into meaningful dialogue with the Palestinians or other nations in the region. Without meaningful legitimate political channels, arguably, that may have in turn indirectly led to the cult of the indefensible and grotesque suicide bomber.

Similar situations of blowback have occurred on all continents. It is alleged that the policy of supporting vain, immoral megalomaniacs as leaders in the more unstable areas of the world could be summed up as, “We don’t care if he’s a bastard so long as he’s our bastard”.

In too many situations today, previous meddling in the internal affairs or politics of other countries has led directly or indirectly to these messes that we may now face. If intervention leads to revolution or serious instability in the country involved, it is often inevitable that the beneficiaries of the situation will be the worst possible choices. It takes many generations for the situation to settle down and for the voices of reason make headway over the radicals who are always the initial power base. The French Revolution, The Russian Revolution, and the Persian [Iranian] Revolution are all cases in point

To return to the end of the Cold War, there was at that time, along with a feeling of relief that we were all suddenly safe, a hope that the troops could come home, and be discharged. That of course never happened. Why not?

The Military Industrial Complex

Today the US spends 46% of the total world’s military budget. The next 4 nations, the UK, France, Japan and China spend between 4-5% each. The US military budget has risen from 250 billion dollars in 2001 to over 700 billion in 2008. Thus, the sensible solution to help our failing economy would logically have to be to cut the military budget and bring everyone home. Wouldn’t that give us iron clad security at home? Maybe we could even make our inner cities safe and bring down the horrendous murder rate from the 17,000 yearly victims it is today.

Of course that is about as realistic as overall world peace. But why?

The answer to why that apparently sensible solution is currently a pipe dream was first given by President Eisenhower in 1961. Eisenhower was the first President, as a former General, to recognize the power of the Military Industrial Complex.

That term refers to an over friendly relationship between the government, the military, munitions manufacturers, and defense contractors. All in this relationship benefit financially, and unfortunately peace can get in the way. Eisenhower as a military man saw what could occur when future Presidents without military experience tried to go up against this Complex. They would be easily maneuvered by the military to react where no reaction was necessary, and to keep the US military equipped with constantly updated equipment and every new technology. Today, there is a defense contractor in every State of the Union. If there are cutbacks, you can be sure these workers will be out in force rallying senators and representatives at every level. The President will be lambasted across the nation and the Republicans will make hay. Any President to take on this issue will be lauded by history, but unlikely to win a second term.

Will Barack Obama be able to break this endless cycle to prevent the never ending cycle of blowback? If recent history is a good predictor, it certainly won’t be easy. For the sake of the rest of the world, let’s hope for the best.

What Do You Think a Stimulus Is?

Yesterday, President Obama finally stood up to the Republicans. For the last week, Republicans have been doing what they do best: controlling the message. They have talked about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 only in terms of its negative components: how much individual elements cost, how there aren’t enough tax cuts. They have, as they always do, derided and made fun of specific parts of the bill, like the part that calls for moving the federal vehicle fleet to hybrid cars. In much the same way that Sarah Palin derided certain research projects during the election (research projects that, by the way, benefit the state of Alaska), Republicans have attempted to hold up individual programs and say, “Isn’t this stupid?” Of course, that message is only suucessful if the audience similarly agrees that the program is stupid.

Yesterday, at a Democratic getaway (which cost $100,000, by the way), Obama defended the stimulus plan and even — what’s that — improvised:

When you start asking, “Well what is it that’s such a problem, that you’re seeing? Where’s all the waste in spending? Well, you know, you want to replace the federal fleet with hybrid cars.”

Well, why wouldn’t we want to do that? That creates jobs for people who make those cars. It saves the federal government energy, it saves the taxpayers energy.

Then you get the argument, “Well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill.” What do you think a stimulus is?  That’s the whole point. No, seriously. That’s the point.

Republicans have been pushing more of the same: tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts. For businesses and for the wealthy. But businesses have shown that they have no tolerance for spending money right now. They’ll take a tax cut and save it rather than use it for new production, or investment, or to hire workers. The wealthy have all the necessities of life they need. Rather than spend a tax cut on a new car or a new house, they’ll save it. The marginal value of a 10% tax cut is greater for a poor person than it is for a wealthy person. The wealthy person doesn’t need another Rolls. The poor person needs to eat.

Part of the Republicans’ problem with the stimulus package is that it involves the government doing things beyond fighting wars. It’s a generalization to say that Republicans hate government, but certainly part of what it means to be conservative is wanting “less government.” Grover Norquist is, of course, the proprietor of wanting to make the government so small he could drown it in a bathtub, which is why the government was so mismanaged for so many years. It’s hard to do a job well when you don’t think that job is worth doing at all. Given the choice between action or inaction, conservatives have preferred inaction (except, of course, when action increases businesses’ profits, as when Congress voted to take up United Airlines’ pension plan). One conservative pundit last week (who may or may not be able to speak for all conservatives and may or many not also be an idiot) claimed that the government has never created jobs, that government can only destroy jobs. It’s like dealing with an economic al-Qaeda: Republicans don’t want to negotiate, they don’t want to be bipartisan. They want to get exactly what they want, in full. They’ve grown accustomed to that after eight years. (Democrats have the exact opposite problem: they’ll capitulate at the drop of a hat. They’ll volunteer to capitulate if no one has asked them. There’s even a picture of Harry Reid in the dictionary next to the word “pusillanimous.” Someone needs to tell the Democrats that Ronald Reagan stopped being the president a long time ago.)

It’s true that, given enough time, the economy could probably fix itself (of course, John Maynard Keynes famously said that, in the long run, we’re all dead). But while we’re waiting for the free market to operate, people are getting laid off and losing their homes. Can we morally permit ourselves to let the economy remain in shambles for an unknown amount of time just to prove a point about capitalism? Of course not; it doesn’t make sense to do something just because it’s liberal or just because it’s conservative. We should do things because they work; Obama said as much in his inaugural address (though, admittedly, he was referring to more government versus less government).

Right now, the free market is broken. Consumers don’t want to spend at any price (and “any price” here means “any price that would be beneficial to the market”; certainly businesses could offer their goods for free, but that doesn’t exactly help us out of a recession). The cycle is supposed to work like this: a recession occurs, consumers stop spending, businesses lower their prices, consumers start spending again, business make more money, they start hiring people, consumers get employed again, business raise their prices, and we’re on our way back to 99-cent gas and Hummers at a 2-for-1 discount.

Our recession is working like this: consumers stop spending, businesses lower their prices, businesses lay more people off in order to save money, consumers stop spending even more as some of them get laid off, business revenue decreases, business lay more people off to save money, and so on. It’s a downward spiral that the market can’t correct. The market needs a fresh infusion of cash that just isn’t going to be coming any time soon.

Monetarism has failed. The discount rate — the interest rate that banks pay for short-term loans to other banks — is between 0% and 0.25%. It can’t go any lower, and banks still are reluctant to lend to other banks. This isn’t an issue strictly of price; it’s also one of psychology. Until businesses are ready to produce again, government must step in and fill the void to prevent the recession from getting any worse than it already is. Republicans criticize the size of the stimulus and bring up the issue of how we’re saddling future generations with this debt (these same people, by the way, were remarkably silent as the debt doubled under George W. Bush, Henry Hyde, Tom DeLay, and Bill Frist). They forget the other component of Keynesian economics: once the economy has recovered, the government must increase taxes and cut spending in order to pay back the money it borrowed. Let’s hope Congress doesn’t forget that part.

Update: Daily Kos has an interesting article analyzing media coverage of the stimulus bill. The Liberal Media, as it turns out, are not liberal at all. “Republican lawmakers outnumbered Democratic lawmakers 75 to 41 on cable news interviews.” In addition to Congressional Democrats themselves, cable news networks must be informed that Democrats won the election. Also, some of the Democrats who appeared on cable news networks were “Blue Dog” Democrats who side with Republicans on economic issues. And pretty much every other issue. Why are they Democrats, again?

Checking out of Camp G

I was pleased with Obama’s move to shut down Guatanamo Prison. It’s not that I think everyone there is innocent, but the idea of holding prisoners indefinitely without charging them is everything America shouldn’t be. Communist Russia used to do that. A man/woman should always have their day in court. There’s risk that the guilty will go free, but what does it say about us when we don’t believe our own justice system is better than a dictatorship style management of “detainees.”

Obama’s Progressive Street Cred

The selection of Rick Warren for the invocation at Barack Obama’s inauguration is troubling, to say the least. Many progressives are rightly outraged at the selection of a man who is virulently anti-choice and homophobic. Yet, this is only the latest in a series of Obama decisions that has left many progressives wondering who it was, exactly, they voted for. Apparently, “change” looks a lot like the Clinton administration. Rahm Emanuel is back. So is Eric Holder, formerly Deputy Attorney General. Most conspicuous of all, Hillary Clinton will be Secretary of State. A bevy of liberal-but-not-quite-progressive apologists have tried to explain away all of Obama’s decisions. Here is a list of some of their justifications:

• Obama is pursuing Abraham Lincoln’s “team of rivals” approach. Authors of this justification also cite Lyndon Johnson’s phrase: it’s better to keep one’s enemies “on the inside, pissing out” rather than “on the outside, pissing in.” By keeping his enemies in the White House, those enemies are not in Congress or on K Street trying to defeat his plans.
• Remember how we all said for six months that Obama’s qualifications don’t matter? Not so much. As such, he’s surrounding himself with a group of people who have experience working in a presidential administration, and the last Democratic presidency was Bill Clinton’s, so it only makes sense that he would choose people from there.
• Obama is sneakier than he seems (think I, Claudius, I suppose). He’s putting a lot of center-left (and, in some cases, center-right) Washington establishment politicians in key positions to pay lip service to that establishment. Don’t worry, it’s only a front. The real reforms are going to happen, but from behind a veil of mainstream non-reform. That’s the only way he can get things done down there.
• Obama does not want to continue the divisive politics of George W. Bush. Even though it might anger those on the hard left, Obama would rather heal and reconcile than punish.  Turn that cheek!

Some of these justifications are disturbing. The last one, that Obama should be conciliatory instead of punitive, is put forth by people who believe that the crimes of the George W. Bush administration should not be investigated. The country needs to heal, they say. It’s time to get on with the business of the United States, where “business” is defined so as to exclude investigations of the previous administration. Of course, this logic ignores the fact that the law has been broken. As Glenn Greenwald has observed, politicians are more than ready to throw the full force of the law at marijuana dealers, but when it comes to prosecuting their own, politicians are equally ready to be lenient, even though the marijuana dealer harmed no one and the politician may have, oh, I don’t know, been responsible for torture, extraordinary rendition, and warrantless wiretapping at the least. When crimes are committed, they should be investigated and prosecuted – not just for poor people, but for everyone, including politicians. For Barack Obama to suggest that Bush administration criminals should go free is to suggest that politicians live in a special class above the reach of the law. It also encourages more illegal activity in the future, once it is known that the government won’t prosecute those activities.

Furthermore, it’s not even up to Barack Obama to decide what is or is not investigated. The cult of personality surrounding him is great (in fact, it contributed to getting him elected), but even though we like him we must not forget that, as the president, he has constitutional limitations. It was irresponsible for the media to even ask what Barack Obama thought about Joe Lieberman being kicked out of the Democratic caucus. On November 5, Obama’s life as a senator ended, even though he didn’t officially resign the position until three weeks later. The president has absolutely no say – none! – in the operation of Congress. It would be different if Obama were acting in his capacity as a senator, but after winning the presidential election, especially in a nation eager for a new leader, any notion of Obama acting solely in his capacity as a senator would be extremely naïve. Obama must repudiate the unconstitutional powers that George W. Bush has claimed for himself, either through complete fabrication or malicious misreading of constitutional law.

Given his opinion of things like same-sex marriage (he tactfully says that same-sex couples should not be allowed to “marry” as such, but then says that they should have the same rights as heterosexual couples), NAFTA/CAFTA, and Israel, no one could confuse him for a true progressive. Obama’s apologists rationalize his decisions by pointing out that Obama never claimed to be a progressive at all!

Or could they? George W. Bush’s method of saying-without-saying is well-documented. While he never explicitly said that Saddam Hussein was behind the September 11 attacks, there is definitely a reason why, in 2001, virtually no Americans thought Saddam Hussein was responsible, but in 2003, one third of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was responsible.

Could it be that Barack Obama, whose campaign P.R. was spectacular, performed the same saying-but-not-saying function? Yes, it is entirely possible that Obama clothed himself in the cloak of progressivism while still wearing the mainstream Democrat’s clothes underneath. He has suggested massive new spending on entitlement programs, but he wants to increase the size of the military. He wants to let the Bush tax cuts expire, but he voted in favor of retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that assisted the administration in warrantless wiretapping. His foreign policy goals consist of using real diplomacy instead of threats, but he voted in favor of NAFTA. He wants to provide government health care for people who have no health care, but he stops short of suggesting a universal-payer system like Canada’s or Great Britain’s. Obama’s positions are a wash: for every progressive-sounding idea, there is another conservative-sounding one to balance it out.

Or, on the other hand, it could be that Obama never suggested anything, but that he was forthcoming about his non-progressive credentials. It could be that we, the progressive Americans, were so thirsty for a change that we latched onto the only candidate (outside of Dennis Kucinich) who even brought up the issue of health care reform (at those early Republican primary debates, not a single candidate brought up the issue of health care), social reform, and getting out of Iraq (Hillary Clinton and John Edwards failed on at least one of these). We projected onto him the candidate we wanted him to be, ignoring the fact that he was not that candidate. Did we set ourselves up for disappointment? Yes, that is possible, too.

And then there’s the argument that all this complaining is pointless, that Obama isn’t even the president yet, and we should all just wait and see what happens on Jan. 20. Well, Rick Warren will happen Jan. 20, and that gives me even less optimism that, at noon on that day, Obama will suddenly throw aside his centrist mask and shout, “You fools! You thought I was just like Bill Clinton! But you were wrong! Free health care for everybody!” Agreeing to take part in Warren’s Saddleback (which sounds dangerously like “bareback”) debate with John McCain, Obama could conceivably have been seen as paying lip service to evangelical Protestantism, just like every president since Nixon has had to do. But putting Warren on the bill for Inauguration Day? Imagine if George W. Bush had hired Hillary Clinton to give a speech at his second inauguration. Yeah, it’s like.

Most troubling in my opinion, though, is Obama’s own insistence, ever since March of 2007, when he announced his candidacy, that he is not an ordinary politician. His grassroots, fifty-state strategy was unparalleled in its success. His speech about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was intelligent and it treated the American people as though they, too, could understand long speeches that contained nuanced thoughts, as opposed to the Manichean sound bites of George W. Bush. His political maturity happened after the Vietnam War era, and, as Andrew Sullivan has suggested, the very core of his being is not instilled with a reflexive fear of Republicans and conservatism.

Conservatism demands the acknowledgment of a false dualism in every aspect of life, with the promise that conservatism will lead people to the correct side of this duality. Democrats buy into this framework and then try to argue the opposite side. The true progressive would never let the Republicans frame the debate and then proceed to work within their ill-conceived framework. To the progressive, there is no debate about whether or not health care should be free, or if there should be a premium for minimum services, or if the government should control it. The answer is: the current system of privatized health care doesn’t work and it should not be repaired, it must be rebuilt from the ground up. Obama appeared unafraid to work outside the existing framework and create a new framework that works in the interests of everyone. “Should it be a public solution or a private solution?” is not the correct question. “What solution is best for the country?” Now that’s the right question. It’s a question that Obama appeared to be asking during the campaign, but one that is being substituted by justifications for increasingly conservative behavior.

Sometimes, Terrorism Doesn’t Happen to the United States

Joshua Micah Marshall made a good point yesterday: Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that there may be some intelligence indicating that the Mumbai terrorists were plotting to kill “Americans and Britons.” But all the evidence points to the contrary. Mumbai was attacked due to its prominence, not the amount of westerners there. According to accounts of the violence, the terrorists appeared to be firing indiscriminately, not targeting particular people. Their purpose was to incite general terror with a “no one is safe” tone.

Is it American arrogance that makes Secretary Gates think that the purpose of the attack was to target Americans? Partially; American ubiquity demands it. Just like American clothing and pop culture is everywhere in the world, so too must American tragedies be recognized and venerated, and whenever a roughly analogous local tragedy happens, that tragedy must be understood through the lens of the American tragedy. In this case, since the local tragedy was terrorism, the American analogue is September 11.

President Bush (and now the rest of the country) seems to think that the Sept. 11 attacks were the first time any country has ever dealt with terrorist attacks on its own soil, and furthermore, that the United States, as a result of those attacks, is the only country that has experience dealing with terrorists. Prior to Bush’s tenure in office, the United States was not so cocky: of course we knew that Ireland has been dealing with terrorism since the 1920s, that Israel and Spain have been dealing with it since the 1960s, that India itself has been dealing with it from the Tamil Tigers, Kashmir separatists, and both Hindu and Muslim nationalists. Everyone seems to have forgotten, though, that the United States is not the world’s expert on dealing with terrorism.

So, no, it’s not likely that the attacks in Mumbai were designed to target Americans. But in order for the United States to lay claim to a War on Terrorism, it must lay claim to every instance of terrorism that occurs in the world in order to assert a leadership role in that war. The Bush administration has used the September 11 attacks as a throughway by which the United States may assert a “Me, too!” role in worldwide terrorism, even if the terrorism didn’t directly impact the United States.

It could be called the Cheney Doctrine after Vice President Cheney’s pronouncement earlier this year that the United States has a right to invade any country in the world, even if that country didn’t directly harm the United States, if the United States thinks that country has the capability or intent of harming the United States. Of course, the doctrine is nothing more than a unilateral pronouncement by Cheney and does not have the effect of law, but at least it shows us what he’s thinking. It’s the foreign policy equivalent of the “interstate commerce” clause, the section of the Constitution that has been interpreted so broadly as to allow Congress to control any aspect of business that could conceivably or theoretically impact interstate commerce (protecting endangered species in waterways that, through a series of even small creeks, eventually drain into interstate rivers, for example).

Diplomatic Implications

The United States would especially like to stick its nose into relations between Pakistan and India. Al-Qaeda is or was hiding in Pakistan on the Afghanistan border. Former president Pervez Musharraf didn’t send the military up there to investigate for fear of alienating those populations. The new Pakistani government will not be as America-friendly as the last one, since the United States supported the unpopular Musharraf. Without Musharraf, the United States has no reason or authority to be involved in India/Pakistan relations. Using the terrorism angle allows the United States to remain involved in that relationship.

We still think we are the gatekeepers to all the world’s diplomacy: no one anywhere in the world can have any bilateral talks without inviting the United States, as well. Every talk is necessarily multilateral because every relationship between any people anywhere in the world is relevant to the United States. It’s time for us to get over this attitude. When James Monroe asserted U.S. diplomatic hegemony in the Western hemisphere — essentially telling the rest of the world that, if you wanted to deal with Latin America, you had to go through the U.S. first — the arrogance was apparent, but at least it was confined to America’s sphere of influence in the world.

As the United States’ diplomatic clout has waned — particularly under the watchful eye of the Bush administration — its ability to assert leadership roles in negotiations in which it has no stake has similarly waned. Thankfully, there will always be the War on Terrorism there to insist that, by virtue of the United States being attacked on September 11, and its self-proclaimed doctrine of warfare against terrorism, the United States automatically has a stake in any negotiation that may even be tangentially related to terrorism.

It is a gross disservice to the people in Mumbai who were killed, wounded, and terrorized to narcissistically focus their tragedy in terms of our tragedy. Perhaps going through the same kind of event allows Americans to better understand what Indians are feeling right now, but we should no more shift the focus to our own attack any more than we would eulogize our own losses at someone else’s funeral.

Palin Thinks Trials are for Wusses

This guy Mark Bowden from the Philadelphia Inquirer has it right on the money. I remember watching Sarah Palin say, with contempt spittling out of her mouth, “Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America. He’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights.” My eyebrow furred a little. What’s wrong with reading them their rights?

“He” is, of course, Barack Obama. And what He will do is give those we have arrested in a complex and tangled field of battle the chance to contest their imprisonment. Unless, of course, you believe that the military arrests people with 100% accuracy every time. This from the Republican candidate? “Don’t trust your government to interfere with your wallet. Down with taxes. Privatize the congress. But you can trust our policemen!” So much for the party of less government. They’ve just shifted the government’s weight a little. Keep the billion-dollar stealth bombers coming in.

Bowden compares Palin’s attitude to that of a lynch mob’s: “Because a man has been arrested, he is guilty. End of story.” Is this the promise of a McCain/Palin future? A United States in which the government can “just call someone a terrorist, arrest him, and hold him indefinitely without showing some reasonable cause.” I mean, the government wouldn’t call people terrorists just to silence legitimate speech, right?