Month: July 2008

Uh-Oh, Surgio

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by Eric Martin In a recent two–part series, I tried to unpack the term "The Surge" and correctly identify what effect, if any, the actual Surge has had on events in Iraq, as opposed to the other shifts in tactics/strategies (as well as serendipitous events/trends) that roughly coincided with that troop escalation.  To repeat what … Read more

Compare And Contrast

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by hilzoy

George W. Bush, today:

“
President Bush said Tuesday that he will not call on Americans to conserve gasoline despite the rising price of oil, saying consumers are “smart enough” to figure out for themselves that they should drive less.

“They’re smart enough to figure out whether they’re going to drive less or not. I mean, you know, it’s interesting what the price of gasoline has done,” Bush said at a news conference in the White House press room, “is it caused people to drive less. That’s why they want smaller cars: They want to conserve. But the consumer’s plenty bright. The marketplace works.”

“You noticed my statement yesterday, I talked about good conservation and — you know, people can figure out whether they need to drive more or less,” he said. “They can balance their own checkbooks.”

“It’s a little presumptuous on my part to dictate how consumers live their own lives,” the president added. “I’ve got faith in the American people.” “

Ari Fleischer, May 7 2001 Press Briefing (h/t someone other than myself):

” Q Is one of the problems with this, and the entire energy field, American lifestyles? Does the President believe that, given the amount of energy Americans consume per capita, how much it exceeds any other citizen in any other country in the world, does the President believe we need to correct our lifestyles to address the energy problem?

MR. FLEISCHER: That’s a big no. The President believes that it’s an American way of life, and that it should be the goal of policy makers to protect the American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one. And we have a bounty of resources in this country. What we need to do is make certain that we’re able to get those resources in an efficient way, in a way that also emphasizes protecting the environment and conservation, into the hands of consumers so they can make the choices that they want to make as they live their lives day to day.”

Barack Obama, today:

“The surest way to increase our leverage against Iran in the long-run is to stop bankrolling its ambitions. That will depend on achieving my fourth goal: ending the tyranny of oil in our time.

One of the most dangerous weapons in the world today is the price of oil. We ship nearly $700 million a day to unstable or hostile nations for their oil. It pays for terrorist bombs going off from Baghdad to Beirut. It funds petro-diplomacy in Caracas and radical madrasas from Karachi to Khartoum. It takes leverage away from America and shifts it to dictators.

This immediate danger is eclipsed only by the long-term threat from climate change, which will lead to devastating weather patterns, terrible storms, drought, and famine. That means people competing for food and water in the next fifty years in the very places that have known horrific violence in the last fifty: Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. Most disastrously, that could mean destructive storms on our shores, and the disappearance of our coastline.

This is not just an economic issue or an environmental concern – this is a national security crisis. For the sake of our security – and for every American family that is paying the price at the pump – we must end this dependence on foreign oil.”

As said: making strategic connections: it’s a good thing.

For good measure, one more comparison below the fold.

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Speeches And Strategy

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by hilzoy

Both Obama and McCain made major foreign policy speeches today. It’s worth reading both in their entirety. They are very interesting, and very different. Obama got at one of the most important differences here:

“Our men and women in uniform have accomplished every mission we have given them. What’s missing in our debate about Iraq – what has been missing since before the war began – is a discussion of the strategic consequences of Iraq and its dominance of our foreign policy. This war distracts us from every threat that we face and so many opportunities we could seize. This war diminishes our security, our standing in the world, our military, our economy, and the resources that we need to confront the challenges of the 21st century. By any measure, our single-minded and open-ended focus on Iraq is not a sound strategy for keeping America safe. (…)

Senator McCain wants to talk of our tactics in Iraq; I want to focus on a new strategy for Iraq and the wider world.”

This is exactly right. If you read the two speeches together, it’s striking how much Obama focusses on understanding our foreign policy goals not just one by one, but in terms of their relation to one another, and to our broader interests: the costs of the war in Iraq to Afghanistan, to our military, and to our broader interests; the importance of having a good Pakistan policy to Afghanistan, terrorism, and nuclear nonproliferation; the relationship of our energy policy and our alliances to each of these things.

If you look at McCain’s speech, by contrast, it does not have much strategic vision at all. (It’s worth noting that his major new proposal is to create separate Czar-ships for Iraq and Afghanistan: to separate, not to combine.) Here, as best I can tell, is what he says about the relationship between Iraq and Afghanistan:

“Senator Obama will tell you we can’t win in Afghanistan without losing in Iraq. In fact, he has it exactly backwards. It is precisely the success of the surge in Iraq that shows us the way to succeed in Afghanistan.”

I take it that by the claim that Obama thinks “we can’t win in Afghanistan without losing in Iraq”, McCain is referring to the idea that we can’t send more troops to Afghanistan until we bring some of them home from Iraq. This is, of course, true, and it’s worth asking whether McCain’s Iraq policy makes enough troops available to allow him to do what he says he wants to do in Afghanistan. He does not consider that question, as far as I can tell. And that’s the only way in which he discusses the impact those two wars have on one another.

The relationship he’s really interested in is quite different: it’s not about the effects our policies in Iraq and Afghanistan have on one another, but the idea of using what we did in Anbar province as a model for Afghanistan:

“It is by applying the tried and true principles of counter-insurgency used in the surge — which Senator Obama opposed — that we will win in Afghanistan. With the right strategy and the right forces, we can succeed in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I know how to win wars. And if I’m elected President, I will turn around the war in Afghanistan, just as we have turned around the war in Iraq, with a comprehensive strategy for victory.”

McCain also notes that there are differences between Iraq and Afghanistan, and that these need to be taken into account. That’s good, since a lot of his speech consists in saying: we need to take the approach that has worked in Iraq, and use it in Afghanistan. And at times, he doesn’t take nearly enough account of those differences. For instance, he says — apparently about Pakistani tribes — that “We must strengthen local tribes in the border areas who are willing to fight the foreign terrorists there — the strategy used successfully in Anbar and elsewhere in Iraq.” But there are huge, huge disanalogies between these two cases. One is that we are, thank God, not occupying Pakistan, which means both that we have a lot less control over what’s going on and that thr tribes do not in any way have to deal with us. Another is that the Sunnis in Anbar province were facing the threat of an extremely hostile government composed of people they believed to be dedicated to their destruction, and needed our protection and support while they beefed up their militias. Nothing of the kind is true in Pakistan.

But to my mind, the most important difference between the two speeches, apart from the enormous differences in policy, is that Obama consistently relates one foreign policy goal to another, while McCain seems to view them in isolation. As for the policy differences, they’re pretty obvious. Obama:

“I strongly stand by my plan to end this war. Now, Prime Minister Maliki’s call for a timetable for the removal of U.S. forces presents a real opportunity. It comes at a time when the American general in charge of training Iraq’s Security Forces has testified that Iraq’s Army and Police will be ready to assume responsibility for Iraq’s security in 2009. Now is the time for a responsible redeployment of our combat troops that pushes Iraq’s leaders toward a political solution, rebuilds our military, and refocuses on Afghanistan and our broader security interests.

George Bush and John McCain don’t have a strategy for success in Iraq – they have a strategy for staying in Iraq. They said we couldn’t leave when violence was up, they say we can’t leave when violence is down. They refuse to press the Iraqis to make tough choices, and they label any timetable to redeploy our troops “surrender,” even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government – not to a terrorist enemy. Theirs is an endless focus on tactics inside Iraq, with no consideration of our strategy to face threats beyond Iraq’s borders. (…)

So let’s be clear. Senator McCain would have our troops continue to fight tour after tour of duty, and our taxpayers keep spending $10 billion a month indefinitely; I want Iraqis to take responsibility for their own future, and to reach the political accommodation necessary for long-term stability. That’s victory. That’s success. That’s what’s best for Iraq, that’s what’s best for America, and that’s why I will end this war as President.”

Exactly.

One more bit from Obama’s speech is also worth thinking about. I’ve put it below the fold.

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Remember to Remember to Vote on the Vote

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by Eric Martin As Marc Lynch reports, today’s scheduled vote in the Iraqi parliament to determine the rules governing the provincial elections slated for October has been postponed until Thursday.  Thursday is overly optimistic as well, however.  The final vote on the vote, so to speak, will likely face further delays which will, in turn, … Read more

Heh.

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by hilzoy I haven’t written anything about the New Yorker cartoon, mostly because I don’t particularly care about it. But this is funny (h/t Balloon Juice):

The Fiscal Fairy

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by hilzoy A couple of days ago, the McCain campaign did something it hasn’t done thus far: it provided some actual numbers to back up McCain’s promise to balance the budget. The Post’s editorial board thinks his numbers aren’t particularly credible. They start by noting that his tax proposals would cost a lot more than … Read more

N&Ns

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by hilzoy TidBITS tells me something that made me think, simultaneously: that’s kind of fun! and: gosh, some people apparently have too much money burning holes in their pockets: “I just saw in the Photojojo newsletter that you can print text and – this part is new – photos on M&M’s, the little candy-covered chocolates … Read more

More Inhumanity

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by hilzoy

I haven’t yet gotten my preordered copy of Jane Mayer’s new book on torture. But other people have, and it sounds horrific, in the way that a very well-sourced book by a very good journalist on how this administration, in her words, made “torture the official law of the land in all but name.” Andrew Bacevich has a great review of it here (that’s where I got the quote I just used from). The NYT writes:

“Red Cross investigators concluded last year in a secret report that the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation methods for high-level Qaeda prisoners constituted torture and could make the Bush administration officials who approved them guilty of war crimes”

Steve Clemons is hosting a discussion about the book tomorrow at 9:30; he’ll have streaming video at his site. Frank Rich writes about it here; and Scott Horton has a great interview with Mayer, including the story of an internal probe into homicides in detention, done by the CIA’s Inspector General, and shut down after a series of meetings between the IG and Dick Cheney. Mayer:

“Helgerson’s 2004 report had been described to me as very disturbing, the size of two Manhattan phone books, and full of terrible descriptions of mistreatment. The confirmation that Helgerson was called in to talk with Cheney about it proves that–as early as then–the Vice President’s office was fully aware that there were allegations of serious wrongdoing in The Program.

We know that in addition, the IG investigated several alleged homicides involving CIA detainees, and that Helgerson’s office forwarded several to the Justice Department for further consideration and potential prosecution. The only case so far that has been prosecuted in the criminal courts is that involving David Passaro—a low-level CIA contractor, not a full official in the Agency. Why have there been no charges filed? It’s a question to which one would expect that Congress and the public would like some answers.”

Then there’s this, from the Washington Post, which seems to me to encapsulate much of what I hate about this administration:

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Three Cheers for “He Said/She Said” Journalism

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by publius Ron “Fightin’” Fournier achieved something I once thought impossible – he’s made me appreciate the “he said/she said” template for journalism. In case you didn’t see the Politico story, Fournier heads the AP Washington Bureau. Since he took over, things have been a little different (Steve “Ivan Drago” Benen explains why things have … Read more

Inhuman

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by hilzoy

From Reuters:

” A newly-released document suggests Osama bin Laden’s former driver may have been subjected to 50 days of sleep deprivation at the Guantanamo prison camp in Cuba, the prisoner’s defense lawyers said on Monday.

Lawyers for Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni in his late 30s, previously alleged Hamdan was beaten and abused. But they said sleep deprivation for 50 days, if proved, would be among the worst abuse he suffered at the hands of his American captors. (…)

Hamdan’s lawyers said they discovered the document among 600 pages of “confinement” evidence handed over to the defense team on Saturday, 9 days before trial. It said Hamdan was put into “Operation Sandman” between June 11 and July 30, 2003.

Operation Sandman has been described in press reports as a program devised by behavioral scientists where an inmate’s sleep is systematically interrupted.

“My view personally is that sleep deprivation of that nature extending for 50 days would constitute torture,” said Joseph McMillan, one of Hamdan’s civilian lawyers.”

It would.

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Double Standards

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by hilzoy The NYT: “Alarmed by the sharply eroding confidence in the nation’s two largest mortgage finance companies, the Bush administration on Sunday asked Congress to approve a sweeping rescue package that would give officials the power to inject billions of federal dollars into the beleaguered companies through investments and loans. In a separate announcement, … Read more

The Primary Reason McCain Sucks

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by publius John McCain may well win this fall. But he’s an atrocious candidate. And his campaign is fairly atrocious as well, particularly compared to the well-disciplined, relentlessly on-message Bush-Cheney machines of yesteryear. But it’s not just that McCain is gaffe-prone. His policy shop has been a complete joke – his policies generally lack crucial … Read more

Open Thread: With Armed Kitten!

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by hilzoy I’ve been having one of those little technological leaps that befalls me every so often. First, I got an iPhone to replace, um, the cellphone I never turn on, carry around with me in case I get a flat tire, and have never once given anyone the number of. It’s awesome and wonderful, … Read more

Crooks

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by hilzoy From the Times of London, via ThinkProgress: “A lobbyist with close ties to the White House is offering access to key figures in George W Bush’s administration in return for six-figure donations to the private library being set up to commemorate Bush’s presidency. Stephen Payne, who claims to have raised more than $1m … Read more

Learning To Get Online Myself

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by hilzoy From the NYT, about John McCain: “He said, ruefully, that he had not mastered how to use the Internet and relied on his wife and aides like Mark Salter, a senior adviser, and Brooke Buchanan, his press secretary, to get him online to read newspapers (though he prefers reading those the old-fashioned way) … Read more

A Government Of Laws And Not Of Men

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by hilzoy From the Washington Post: “The Bush administration has decided not to take any new steps to regulate greenhouse gas emissions before the president leaves office, despite pressure from the Supreme Court and broad accord among senior federal officials that new regulation is appropriate now. The Environmental Protection Agency plans to announce today that … Read more

Don’t Get Stuck: Ledbetter and Congressional Choice

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–Sebastian For some reason I was reading about the Ledbetter case, and recent Congressional attempts to reverse the Supreme Court ruling.  The thing the struck me most, was how odd it was that Congress was letting itself get stuck in the narrow role of directly addressing the Supreme Court’s ruling in a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ … Read more

I Hate Cancer

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by publius Tony Snow is dead at 53. Heartbreaking – thoughts go out to his family. I hope I live to see the day when we get rid of cancer — it’s taken far too much from me, and from everyone.

The Medicare Vote

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by hilzoy

On Wednesday, the Senate passed a Medicare bill by unanimous consent (the vote on cloture, which was the important one, passed 69-30. Guess who the missing Senator was.) It did two main things. First, it blocked a pay cut of 10.6% to doctors. This is a good thing: we can debate reforms to physician compensation under Medicare, but cutting fees by 10.6% across the board, not as the result of, well, thought, but because a deadline had expired and no one could figure out a way to agree on how not to have those cuts kick in, is surely not the way to do it.

The reason Congress was having trouble finding a way not to make that cut was because they had the curious idea that they should, well, find a way to pay for it. As it happens, a really wonderful way was at hand: cutting reimbursement for Medicare Advantage programs.

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This Could Get Very Ugly

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by hilzoy

The news about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sounds terrifying to me:

“Shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the beleaguered mortgage finance companies, plummeted again on Friday morning, as senior Bush administration officials consider a plan to have the government take over one or both of the companies and place them in a conservatorship if their problems worsen, according to people briefed about the plan.

Fannie Mae stock was down 36 percent in early trading compared with Thursday’s closing price; Freddie Mac stock was down 41 percent.”

And that was after big previous losses. As of right now, Freddie Mac is down over 87% from a year ago; Fannie Mae is down over 85%.

The FT has a nice, short summary of the problem:

“As house prices have fallen and foreclosures have soared across the US, the two institutions have suffered deep losses, which they have tackled by raising more capital. Many observers believe that a collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could bring the US mortgage market to a complete standstill, with severe repercussions for the financial sector and the economy as a whole.

Many investors in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have come to assume that the government would eventually come to their rescue because of their importance to the system. However, concern has risen recently that contingency plans for a government bail-out might involve wiping out public shareholders to minimise the cost to taxpayers, while confidence that senior debt would be protected has held up.”

Bringing “the US mortgage market to a complete standstill” does not sound like a very good idea. What are the alternatives? One is a conservatorship:

“Under a conservatorship, the shares of Fannie and Freddie would be worth little or nothing, and any losses on mortgages they own or guarantee — which could be staggering — would be paid by taxpayers.”

The shares that would be wiped out presently amount to about $18billion. But the liabilities we, the taxpayers, might have to assume are staggering:

“What Americans need to know is how damaging such a failure would be. This wouldn’t merely be a matter of the Federal Reserve guaranteeing $29 billion in dodgy mortgage paper, a la Bear Stearns. Fannie and Freddie are among the largest financial companies in the world. Their liabilities – mortgage-backed securities (MBSs) and other debt – add up to some $5 trillion.

To put that in perspective, consider that total U.S. federal debt is about $9.5 trillion, compared to a total U.S. GDP of $14 trillion. About $5.3 trillion of that debt is held by the public (in the form of Treasury bonds and the like), while $4.2 trillion is intragovernment debt such as Social Security IOUs. This is the liability side of America’s federal balance sheet, and its condition influences how much the government can borrow and at what rates.

The liabilities of Fan and Fred are currently not on this U.S. balance sheet. But one danger is a run on the debt of either company, putting pressure on the Treasury and Federal Reserve to publicly guarantee that debt to prevent a systemic financial collapse. In an instant, what has long been an implicit taxpayer guarantee for both companies would be made explicit – committing American taxpayers to honoring as much as $5 trillion in new liabilities. U.S. debt held by the public would more than double, and the national balance sheet would look very ugly.”

$5 trillion dollars in liabilities is a staggering amount, even when you consider that not all many of the loans we would guarantee would not go bad*, and so we would almost certainly not be on the hook for the entire amount. But if Fannie and Freddie become insolvent, it would beat the alternative, which is, as best I can tell, more or less shutting down the market for mortgages.

***

Which leads me to an important point. Unlike Bear Stearns, Fannie and Freddie really are too big to fail. What this means, as far as I’m concerned, is that we need to take steps to ensure that they won’t fail. This, to me, was one of the huge lessons of the S&L crisis (and, for that matter, of plain common sense): when the government is on the hook when things go bad, the government should take steps to ensure that things don’t.

Mark Thoma quotes Robert Reich:

“Here we have another example of socialized capitalism. The executives of Fannie and Freddie have been among the best paid in all of corporate America. We’re talking tens of millions a year in CEO pay alone. Fannie and Freddie are treated like giant investor-driven entities as long as they’re healthy and their investors and executives are doing well. But when they start to go down the tubes they become public entities with public responsibilities, the rest of us have to bail them out.”

And adds:

“If failure of these firms endangers the broader economy, and hence threatens to impose large costs on people who had nothing to do with creating the problems, then policymakers need to step in and do what they can to prevent a downward economic economic spiral. In addition, they need to change the rules and regulations that allowed the problem to emerge in the first place, and add new rules and regulations as needed to lower the moral hazard worries going forward.”

Exactly.

(NB: it’s worth noting that the housing bill, which the Senate is considering today, would do just this. Better late than never. But it should have been done years ago.)

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Make Him Stop!

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by hilzoy I really don’t want to write about all McCain gaffes all the time. I have lots of interesting ideas for other posts. But if he keeps saying these things, what am I supposed to do — especially since the media doesn’t seem all that interested in covering them? In his interview with the … Read more

The Harder You Flash, the Harder You Get Flashed On

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by Eric Martin

While I’m usually the one complaining about the neverending string of stories telling of Moqtada al-Sadr’s demise, which began in 2003 and continue to this day (with each new contribution showing little concern for the unbroken streak of error that preceded it), this piece by Andrew Lebovich goes too far in the other direction. Lebovich’s conclusion:

Thus the surge cannot necessarily be said to have weakened militia groups in Iraq. Rather, we have succeeded in reworking the militia structure, inadvertently aiding the Sadrists both in the streets and in parliament by eliminating their rivals, while not posing a serious threat to the organization. They are still armed, and as-Sadr is still just as opposed to America’s occupation of Iraq, and Iraq’s current government. Ultimately, it is Iraq’s political process that has shifted towards as-Sadr, not the other way around.

While I agree with Lebovich that the recent anti-Sadrist operations in Basra, Sadr City and Amarah don’t pose a "serious threat to the organization" itself (the org. is too big with too, long a tradtion), the military campaign has proven to be a setback for the Sadrists both politically and with respect to their militia.  And that is exactly what these campaigns werwe intended to achieve.  They were undertaken with an eye on the upcoming election schedule (with local elections slated, tentatively, for this fall, and nationwide elections to be held in 2009). 

First, the intention has been to weaken the Sadrists so that ISCI/Dawa can maintain its control of the local government machinery in the Shiite-dominated South, then ISCI/Dawa could use that position to ensure a strong showing (by hook or crook) in the national elections in 2009.  Thus far, the anti-Sadrist operations have succeeded in supplanting the Sadrist presence in Basra and other parts in the south, while deposing the Sadr-friendly (or led) government n Amara. 

While the Sadrists remain popular, ISCI/Dawa have attained a position to control the election machinery which is, arguably, more important.  As Boss Tweed famously opined after an election in 1844, "The ballots [don’t] make the outcome.  The counters [do]."  So, for the time being, ISCI/Dawa have muscled the Sadrists out of a position to "count" or even effectively "observe."

Further, the Mahdi Army militia (JAM) itself has taken heavy losses, as it always does when it goes toe-to-toe with the US military (see, ie, 2004 uprising).  That doesn’t, as some overenthusiastic commenters argue, mean that the JAM is defeated.  But then, to state a truism, defeating an insurgency/guerilla movement is exceedingly difficult.  It’s too easy for guerilla movements to melt away, adjust, adapt and re-emerge to fight another day, another way.  Gary Brecher (he of War Nerd fame), sheds some light:

The most recent and ridiculous take is that "Moqtada al Sadr is renouncing violence." Talk about naive! What led these geniuses to that conclusion is that on June 13, Moqtada al Sadr, leader of the biggest and toughest Shia militia, the Mahdi Army, sent out a big announcement: "From now on, the resistance will be exclusively conducted by only one group. … The weapons will be held exclusively by this group." In other words, he’s switching from a big, sloppy, amateur force to a select group of professional guerrillas.

Brecher sees this as a natural evolution, akin to the transformation undertaken by the IRA (no, not a perfect analogy – but it’s not meant as that.  There are definitely strong parallels though):

The trouble is, when po’ folks organize, they have this fatal addiction to big, fancy titles and military fol-der-ol. It’s easy to understand: It helps stomped-on people feel braver, have a little pride. So these groups always go for show, a lot of pomp and uniforms, and a traditional military organizational chart. Pretty soon the guy next door is a colonel, the clerk in the corner store is a four-star general, and they’re strutting around in homemade uniforms feeling ready to take on Genghis Khan. Good for morale, but fatal to real urban guerrilla war. There are two reasons for that. First, these amateur armies get slaughtered when they go up against professional troops; and second, the traditional open organizational chart makes it very easy for the occupiers to identify everyone who’s anyone in the insurgency. When an organization starts out fighting mobs from the enemy tribe, that’s fine. So when the IRA tried to fight the British Army head to head in the 1970s, it got stomped; so did Sadr’s militia when it went up against U.S. troops in April 2004.

Due to the JAM’s popularity and community base, Brecher argues that the Maliki government and US forces have been able to take advantage of informants (sometimes tortured or coerced) to pick off JAM members, most of whom are well known to many if not most of the locals.  So now, a shift:

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More Disgrace

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by hilzoy Ezra Klein manages to find the perfect analogy for McCain’s comments on Social Security: “There are criticisms that people make of Social Security, most of them relating to a mismatch between the program’s revenue and its future obligations. But McCain’s comment is very different. It’s like if lots of people made fun of … Read more

Goodbye to “Sister Souljah”

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by publius I keep hearing that Nutsgate is a “Sister Souljah moment” for Obama. Frankly, it’s annoying me. First – it’s not a Sister Souljah moment at all. Second – I’m sick of that term. It’s time to retire the Sister Souljah label altogether. It’s inaccurate, and even borderline racist. There are two interpretations of … Read more

Whining

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by hilzoy Phil Gramm, McCain’s “Econ Brain” said this in an interview published yesterday: “”You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession,” he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil … Read more

Diplomacy 101

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by hilzoy Looking around at the reaction to Bush’s parting remarks at the G8, I find, not to my surprise, some responses like this, from Samizdata: “Apparently, the humourless twerps who lead many of the world’s main industrial nations got a touch of the vapours over these parting remarks from the President as he left … Read more

FISA

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by hilzoy I hate, hate, hate the FISA bill. I hate, hate, hate that Obama voted for it and its cloture motion. The fact that he voted for the three amendments (1, 2, 3) is some consolation, but not nearly enough. (McCain didn’t even show up. The last time he voted in the Senate was … Read more

Edmund Burke, Patron Saint of Organic Food

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by publius

On the crunchy front, I recently finished Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food. And while melodramatic in places, it’s worth the read. In fact, I’m finding myself investigating local CSAs, and trying to eat more “food” as opposed to “edible food-like substances.” (not at July 4 BBQs though – I’m not made of stone).

What’s interesting, though, about Pollan’s argument is how fundamentally conservative it is. In particular, it seems to echo many of Edmund Burke’s arguments in that it values the wisdom of traditional customs over the puny powers of Western reason.

To back up, the most powerful conservative Burkean argument has always been an epistemological one – that is, Burke is most persuasive when he’s talking about the limits of human reasoning powers. (This will be familiar to old LF readers). Burke is skeptical about our abilities to determine “the good” from abstract thinking. Instead of trying to recreate a brave new world on paper, we should instead look to the wisdom inherent in customs and tradition.

Under this view, tradition isn’t glorified for tradition’s sake. Tradition is instead a giant laboratory that provides us insight into what works and what doesn’t work. To Burke, we abandon these traditions at our peril when we opt for sudden change or revolution. (Admittedly, this view also justifies existing exploitative relations – e.g., slavery – but that’s a different post).

Anyway, whether Pollan intended it or not, a lot of these Burkean themes run through In Defense of Food, including: (1) skepticism of modernity; (2) wisdom of customs; and (3) the harms of sudden change. More below.

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Our Friends Hate Us To Become Successful

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by Eric Martin Adam Blickstein takes John McCain to task for suggesting that the recent statements by the Maliki government regarding a timeline for the withdrawal of US forces are simply the product of political posturing: The subtext of John McCain’s response to the Iraqi government’s strident assertions demanding clarity on the withdrawal of foreign … Read more

McCain’s Economists

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by hilzoy When John McCain released his economic plan (pdf) the day before yesterday, he also released a statement, signed by 300 economists, in support of his economic plan. I was curious about it — for one thing, the economists’ statement does not mention some central aspects of the plan released the same day, like … Read more

McCain: Dead Iranians are Funny!

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by Eric Martin Although counterintuitive, it is increasingly common knowledge that the people of Iran are amongst the most sympathetic to (even "pro") America in the Middle East.  For example, on 9/11, Iranian citizens held a spontaneous candlelight vigil in Madar Square in Tehran as a show of solidarity and sympathy for the United States.  … Read more

Even More McCain

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by hilzoy Honestly, I don’t want to be writing about McCain’s various displays of economic ignorance all the time. But he keeps coming up with statements that are just so jaw-droppingly awful that I have to. The latest is a CNN interview from this morning, which is posted, with its transcript, here. Rather than go … Read more

The “Disgrace” of Social Security

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by publius I just wanted to follow up on Hilzoy’s post. Social Security is one of the most successful, efficient, and politically popular government programs in history. John McCain — candidate for President — said yesterday that the funding mechanism behind this wildly successful program is an “absolute disgrace.” (And that’s the charitable interpretation). Anyway, … Read more

McCain: Deceptive Or Stone Cold Ignorant

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by hilzoy I was watching CSPAN yesterday, while I was eating dinner, and who should I see but John McCain. And he said the most extraordinary thing. It’s the second paragraph of the excerpt that follows; I’ve included the rest so that you can see that there was no context that made it seem more … Read more