A Tale of Three Scandals

 Posted by  2012 Election, Abuse of Power, Book Related, Middle East, Obama Administration, U.S. Politics  2 Responses »
May 162013
 

There are three “scandals” supposedly “rocking” the White House this week.  Really, I think it just goes to show how silly we all are.

The first, and oldest, of these scandals is Benghazi.  Four Americans were killed, including the Ambassador to Libya, when an Al Qaeda affiliate attacked a diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya in September, 2012.  Since then, the conservative media has been pushing two separate lines of inquiry, seemingly in the hopes of embarrassing the president.  The first, and the legitimate one, is whether or not those lives could have been saved.  There have been numerous hearings on this, focusing on why various troops or planes were not called into Benghazi to assist that outpost during the attack; and while questions remain, it seems that the worst story that can be told is one of a lack of communication between the State Department, the CIA and the Pentagon.

The second line of inquiry regarding Benghazi, and this one is just plain silly, is about the evolution of a set of talking points that UN Ambassador Susan Rice and others used in the days after the attacks to describe what was happening in public interviews to the American people.  The first version of those talking points speculated that while there might have been some connection to the ongoing protests in Cairo and Yemen over an anti-Muslim YouTube video, that it was likely that the attack in Benghazi was carried out by an Al Qaeda affiliate.  By the 12th and final version, all mention of Al Qaeda had been dropped–but not the mention of the ongoing protests.  And of course, it eventually turned out that the Cairo protests had nothing to do with it, and that Al Qaeda had been planning the attack for months–which means that Susan Rice and others gave wrong information in those first few post-attack interviews.

Continue reading »

Sympathy for the Dzhokhar

 Posted by  Book Related, Disasters and Tragedies, Terrorism  No Responses »
Apr 232013
 

Apparently I have something in common with the nation’s latest terrorist; we both love going to the Midwest Grill, a Brazilian BBQ Restaurant in my (our?) neighborhood.  We were also both captains of our respective high school wrestling teams and members of the National Honor Society.  His friends from high school talked about him going out of his way to help out, giving rides home, and coming back to his high school to help out for wrestling practice after he had graduated–all things I can relate to.  For all those reasons–not to mention the fact that he only lived about a quarter mile from me–it’s really hard for me not to relate to him.

Which makes the events of the last week all that much more baffling for me.  How could this kid get so twisted that he placed two bombs in a crowd of people, shot a police officer in cold blood, and hijacked a car at gun-point?

I have nothing but sympathy for the friends and families of the victims.  The eight year old boy whose life was ended just as it was beginning.  The graduate student from China who loved living in Boston.  The  restaurant manager from the suburbs who never missed a marathon.  And the MIT officer who was the consummate policeman.

But it’s the bomber, suspect number two, the one who was just arraigned on federal charges from a hospital room yesterday… he’s the one whose story seems most familiar to me.  And yet he’s the one who maybe I will never understand.  Because for all the similarity, how could I understand what drove him to commit such an act of evil–an act that is so viscerally repellent to me I have trouble even watching the footage of it?

Understanding is especially difficult because human motives are never easily understood.  They are never so simple as we would like them to be.  It would be nice if there were a simple, clean, explanation for why he did it.  His evil brother made him do it.  His felt abandoned by his family.  He felt abandoned by his friends.  He fell in with a bad crowd.  He started listening to the wrong preachers.  He was depressed.  He was angry.  He was on drugs.  He was crazy.

But the truth is always more complicated.  The truth is some combination of some or all of those things–and more.  The truth is that human beings are extraordinarily intricate creatures who usually don’t fully know why we do what we do, and who rationalize our behavior after the fact to make ourselves feel better about what we’ve done.

The best we can do is to understand his actions and associations.  Did anyone help him or fund him or advise him?  What else were they planning on doing?  Did they commit any other crimes before the marathon?  Those are all important questions.

As for motive?  Why he did it?  As much as I would love to know… it’s a fool’s errand.

Finally, let me end by quoting Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of the Boston Archdiocese: “Forgiveness does not mean that we do not realize the heinousness of the crime.  But, in our hearts, when we are unable to forgive, we make ourselves a victim of our own hatred.”

What I Will Remember Most About Hugo Chavez

 Posted by  2012 Election, Foreign Policy, Latin America, U.S. Politics  No Responses »
Mar 062013
 

Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, died yesterday from complications related to an extended bout with cancer.  I have no idea how Chavez’s death will be remembered in Venezuela: as far as I can tell, he’s still very popular there, although for many of the wrong reasons.  Chavez preached populism until he was blue in the face, while consolidating power into his own hands–doing significant harm to Venezuela’s democratic institutions in the process.  (Yes, Chavez was democratically elected, although by now he has so warped the constitution that whether it will be a democracy going forward is somewhat in question.)  Chavez professed a deep desire to help the poorest Venezuelans, and took some steps towards that end–but he also largely squandered the economic boom that came from Venezuela’s massive oil reserves.

But what I find most fascinating with Chavez is his perverse, abusive, codependent relationship with the United States, especially American politicians. Continue reading »

Deconstructing Benghazi

 Posted by  2012 Election, Africa, Disasters and Tragedies, Foreign Policy, Middle East, Nomination and Confirmation, Obama Administration, Terrorism  No Responses »
Nov 282012
 

On September 11, 2012, a State Department outpost in Benghazi, Libya was attacked by a local Al Qaeda affiliate, killing four Americans including the Libyan ambassador.  At the time, there were protests erupting at American embassies around the Muslim world over a disgustingly insulting YouTube video about the Prophet Muhammad.  Initial media reports out of Benghazi were that the Americans were killed as a result of one of those protests getting out of hand.  But what the CIA knew at the time, and the media would discover within a couple weeks, was that the attack had actually been carried out by the Al Qaeda affiliate.  Again, it was initially thought that the Al Qaeda affiliate had used a protest outside the American facility as cover to attack; it was eventually determined that there wasn’t actually a protest that night.  The motives of the Al Qaeda affiliate are somewhat obscure; it was initially thought that they were acting in response to the assassination of a particular high-ranking leader within Al Qaeda, although more recently it has come to light that the attack was at least partly in response to the video.

Okay, so there are some important issues that we should be discussing about that attack.  Three come to mind, in particular:

  1. Motive.  Why was the American Ambassador attacked?  Was he targeted, in particular, or was the attack aimed at the facility itself?
  2. Prevention. Should we have known before hand about the attack?  Was there something that we could have done to prevent it?
  3. Security.  Why was the attack successful?  Could reasonable security measures have been taken to prevent the deaths of those four Americans?

Those questions are being asked by both the CIA and the State Department, and I hope that we can learn the appropriate lessons to prevent such an attack from happening again.

But there is a fourth question being asked, and is the most high-profile of all the questions being asked, which really puzzles me:

4. What did the American Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice know and when did she know it? Continue reading »

The Elephant In The Room

 Posted by  Debt and Deficit, Education, Fiscal Issues, Foreign Policy, Healthcare, Social Security and Welfare, U.S. Politics  No Responses »
Nov 272012
 

Health care costs are increasing much more rapidly than inflation.  Therefore any organization that employs, and pays health insurance, for large numbers of people will also have their costs rise significantly faster than inflation.

So, now let’s use that basic fact to answer a few questions:

  • Why has federal entitlement spending ballooned?  In part, because the federal government pays the health care costs of tens of millions of veterans, the poor, and the elderly–not to mention hundreds of thousands of of federal employees (not to mention troops).
  • Why have the costs of higher education skyrocketed? In part, because universities pay the health care costs of thousands of students, staff, and faculty.
  • Why has military spending increased annually, even if you ignore what’s been spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars?   In part, because the military employs, and provides health care, for about 1.5 million people.
  • Why have salaries stagnated for most Americans?  In part, because any salary increases they might have had are instead being funneled into rising health care costs.

We cannot solve any of those problems without first solving the problem of health care costs.  Raising taxes and cutting discretionary spending won’t solve the long-term budget problems, unless we deal with health care costs.  Reforming education won’t lower the cost of attending college, unless we also solve the problem of health care costs.  Reforming the military won’t make a huge long-term impact on either efficiency or effectiveness unless we also keep health care costs under control.  Redistributing income with the tax code won’t provide substantial relief for Middle America unless we also take steps to limit the growth of health care costs.

Any anyone who tells you differently is probably selling something.

There are liberal solutions to control health care costs and conservative solutions.  Some are surely better than others, but we are well past that particular debate.  Any solution is better than doing nothing–let’s get health care costs under control first, and then we can deal with any smaller problems created by the fixes that we implemented.

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