February 10, 2015 · 5:47 am

No strength no peace

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The world is awash with troublemakers testing our resolve.  Is our president up to the challenge?

When it comes to national security policy, the administration seems adrift on so many levels.  Most alarming is President Obama’s outright disregard for real threats, chief among them the menace of Islamist terror.  He has alternately compared the jihadists to “a jayvee team,” “violent extremists,” and most recently, random urban criminals.  His unwillingness to identify — let alone combat — the scourge of radical Islam as a festering global challenge is bewildering, irresponsible, and insulting (not just to our intelligence).   Congressional leaders on the right and the left are simply exasperated.  Were it only a cynical ploy to avoid responsibility for policy failure, his dismissive attitude would be scandalous.  That he really seems to believe what he is saying is simply terrifying.

Where the White House does acknowledge a challenge, it is notoriously late to the game.  The Arab Spring, the civil war in Syria, the attack on our consulate in Benghazi, the Russian annexation of Crimea, the emergence of ISIS, and the unraveling of the government in Yemen — all seemed to catch the president off guard.  Advisors and spokesmen were then left scrambling to explain the government’s positions and strategy.

One instance where President Obama did try to get ahead of a global security challenge was the escalating brutality of the Assad regime in Syria.  Against the use of chemical weapons, the president famously drew a (red) line in the sand.  As we now know, when Assad called his bluff, Obama was unable or unwilling to follow through.  The rest of the world took notice, allies and foes alike.

Threats of force from this administration simply do not pass muster unless we can “lead from behind.” Or at least from the safety of a remote base piloting a drone.

Obama is so fearful of replicating the perceived overreach of his predecessor that he simply refuses to project strength.  Confession, conciliation, and concession are the standard features of the Obama doctrine (if you can call it that).  In Iraq and Afghanistan, we pre-announced our scheduled withdrawals and did little to protect the military gains for which we had sacrificed so much.  In the face of Russian intransigence — later to become belligerence — we unilaterally disarmed by unwinding commitments to place antimissile batteries in Eastern Europe.  And regarding ISIS, we take options off the table, such as “boots on the ground,” even though we lack the intelligence needed to sustain an effective campaign against the would-be totalitarian caliphate.

You don’t have to subscribe to the foreign policy principles of Senators McCain and Graham to realize how much we are dropping the ball.  Our adversaries can either ignore our demands and threats outright, or they can simply wait for them to pass and wither.  While President Obama slow-walks offers to bolster the army of Ukraine with lethal weaponry, the rest of Eastern Europe is getting anxious.  It’s only a matter of time before Vladimir Putin identifies Russian speakers elsewhere in the region who require protection from some contrived injustice.

So when it comes to negotiations with Iran, is it any wonder that leaders of Congress doubt the White House?  Why should anyone trust that diplomacy engineered by this president can keep the Iranian nuclear program in check?  Iran is at the table of under the strain of a vigorous sanctions regime.  Obama seeks to curtail further moves in this direction, threatening to veto legislation that would tighten economic pressure.

Sadly, it seems this is the only kind of threat from President Obama one can believe in.

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February 7, 2015 · 6:41 pm

Strategy without deserts

“Would you send your son to go fight ISIS?”

That was the provocative question posed to me over dinner last week.  Of course, I wouldn’t be keen to send my children to fight in any war, but my dining companion wasn’t really arguing that point.  Instead he was charging that we don’t own the problems of the Middle East.  His was another flavor of the cliche that “America isn’t the world’s policeman.”

Pundits and politicians step over one another to assign blame for the world’s problems.  It does not serve our national interest.  As Peggy Noonan wrote last week, “you have to unhitch yourself from your predispositions and resentments and face what is happening now.”  Normative judgments are fine and good as a way to defend policy prescriptions, but they do not address the problems at hand.  People are rightly exasperated with President Obama’s reluctance to admit how Islamic thought is motivating today’s biggest security threats.  That said, we are not in an existential war against political correctness.  Our clear and present danger arises from a growing set of deranged actors.  The president’s primary fault is his failure to articulate a coherent strategy and lead the fight against our enemies.

Obama set off a firestorm in his homily at the recent National Prayer Breakfast, where he ostensibly likened the crimes of the medieval crusaders to those of modern day jihadists.  Without debating the historical merits or otherwise of his comments, it’s unsettling how much this president moralizes about metaphorical stone throwing instead of orchestrating a global campaign against the sadists who are literally throwing stones as he speaks.  Being action-oriented and practical minded doesn’t make you a practitioner of realpolitik.  We should lead where we can — not because we caused a problem, but because we fear the alternatives to our leadership.

When I travel in pro-Israel circles, it’s not uncommon to hear advocates recite a laundry list of transgressions by the Palestinian people and their leadership.  The Arabs have rejected compromise, fomented hatred, celebrated violence, and glorified murderous suicide.  It’s impossible to defend such behavior with a straight face.  It gives context to Israeli policies which vex the liberal conscience.  What your adversaries deserve, however, is not the foundation of a strategy to deal with them.  The most persuasive proponents of a two-state solution in Palestine are those who enumerate the practical risks of denying civil rights to an occupied population.  Palestinians need an independent state as a way to resolve Israel’s continuing security and diplomatic challenges of the conflict.  It’s not that Palestinians “earned” independence by their conduct.  Israel must stay the course of negotiations because it serves its best interests to do so.

Which brings me back to the thorny question of ISIS and its fellow travelers across the globe.  Do Americans want another military incursion in the Middle East?  Not very likely.  Do Americans want battle-hardened jihadis hitting our shores to blow up subways in New York or scatter bullets across newsrooms in Washington, DC?  Also not very likely.  We own the problem of radical Islam whether or not we share some responsibility for its incarnation.  What we need is a clear-headed strategy for countering the threat.  Let’s back up the comparatively civilized front-line fighting forces (e.g., Jordan’s army and the Kurdish Peshmerga) with arms, resources, and unhindered logistical support.  Let’s use our best diplomatic and intelligence capabilities to rally the like-minded against a metastasizing global menace.  I shudder to think of those I know and love suffering at the hands of jihadi terrorists.  Washing our hands of the problem won’t make it go away.

 

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February 5, 2015 · 4:23 pm

Hyphenation Nation

In 2000 I was enamored with the “insurgent” candidacy of John McCain for President.  Although his image took a beating in later years, back then his maverick reputation had earned him accolades in the press and in popular culture.  So I went online and made a donation.  The campaign also sold me what it must have thought would secure my commitment:  a bumper sticker reading “Jewish Americans for McCain” and featuring a martial five-point star in tribute to Sen. McCain’s distinguished military service.

Upon closer inspection, the sticker felt a bit creepy.  While a Star of David would have made more sense, it wasn’t the star that seemed misguided.  Rather, the well-intentioned “swag” rubbed me the wrong way because I had never called myself a “Jewish American.”  The designation awkwardly lined me up with all the other hyphenated ethnic and racial designations bandied about by professional liberal activists.  To be sure, I am a proud Jew and a proud American, and I belong to countless American Jewish organizations.  What drew me to Sen. McCain, however, was his extraordinary biography and commitment to American leadership in the world.  Then as now, his principles stood for shared American values that transcend special interests.  For this reason, I eagerly lined up behind the senator, albeit as a nondescript “McCainiac” rather than a “Jewish American for McCain.”

McCain’s clumsy appeal to ethnicity was a sign of the times and seemed to augur the rise of the so-called Emerging Democratic Majority (EDM).  Originally coined by Ruy Teixeira and John Judis in their 2002 book by the same name, the EDM thesis postulates that the Democratic Party will come to dominate national elections because of the changing demographic landscape.  Specifically, whites are declining as a percentage of the electorate as racial minorities are rising.  This fact, together with the relative strength of Democrats among minorities and other demographic “voting blocs,” apparently spells doom for Republican prospects.  Just last week, however, Judis himself pulled a 180 with a piece in National Journal, where he explains how Republicans are set to dominate elections after all, due especially to their rising hold on middle-class voters.  Politicos of all stripes have been breaking down the arguments, often to suit their own agendas.

Lost in all the beltway chatter is the sad premise that U.S. elections turn on capturing the disconnected hearts and minds of this segment or that one, be it Hispanics, blue-collar workers, senior citizens, millennials, gays, soccer moms, veterans, unmarried women, urban professionals, or — dare I say — Jewish Americans.  True, it was the machinations of Karl Rove which introduced the power of micro-targeting to the campaigns of George W. Bush.  But President Obama’s second Presidential campaign took identity campaign politics to an unprecedented level.  From the beginning Obama for America was really a conflation of building blocks — Obama for blacks, Obama for Hispanics, Obama for gays, Obama for labor unions, Obama for pro-choice activists, Obama for gun-control activists, Obama for trial lawyers.  Stack ’em all up and they totaled more than the would-be coalition for Romney.  Gone was even the lip service to the 2008 rallying cry of “not a collection of red states and blue states… the United States!”

I wasn’t too politically aware when Reagan held the White House, but one thing I remember clearly was his sunny demeanor and his message of bringing freedom and prosperity to Americans from every walk of life.  Likewise Bill Clinton worked hard to weave a thread of shared purpose in “a bridge to the 21st century.”  Appealing to our common American values should be the centerpiece of a Presidential campaign.  The motto of our nation’s Great Seal is e pluribus unum.  That means “one from many” not “many from one.” Instead of littering their speeches with trite anecdotes illustrating one interest group or the other and instead of manufacturing soothing but shallow catch phrases like “middle-class economics,” our leaders should be delving deeply into what makes America truly special and rallying the population around it.  They may be surprised how many [insert label here]-Americans break out of the molds predetermined by cynical political strategists.

As the 2016 campaign begins to take shape, I hope we see a fresh approach from the Republican field and the presumed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.  For her part, Clinton is working hard to articulate a substantive rationale for her prospective candidacy.  A good place to start would be to enunciate principles for boosting the economy and countering our nation’s enemies abroad.  Democrats and Republicans may not agree on policy, but we should be able to agree on the end goals.

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February 4, 2015 · 1:58 pm

What to do about veterans healthcare

Yesterday the Senate unanimously passed The Clay Hunt SAV Act, a rare bipartisan measure designed to allocate resources for suicide prevention and other mental health needs of our nation’s veterans.  It’s hard to argue with the bill’s purpose, which is to stem the wave of self-inflicted wounds among our returning servicemen, such as the one which took the life of the legislation’s namesake.  Given the modest investments the bill underwrites, such as a peer support program and an interactive website, it’s also hard to imagine the money being squandered by the bureaucracy of the Veterans Administration.

Of course, in light of the VA’s checkered history, we can only hope this program won’t prove to be yet another disappointment.  Ever since last summer’s wait list scandals at the VA, I’ve been asking myself how our treatment of wounded warriors could get any worse.  More than once I’ve wondered why our veterans, the citizens most deserving of our compassion and support, should be shunted into an unaccountable government health care system.  Really — what’s the point?  Why do the rest of us — even those relying on government financed health insurance — have the opportunity to choose among private health care services, while our heroes must turn to the medical equivalent of the DMV.  It’s true — increasingly so — that citizens on public assistance are having a harder time gaining access to care as practitioners stop accepting Medicaid, Medicare, or Obamacare patients.  But certainly that fact alone cannot justify keeping veterans on a separate track.

As a recent survivor of a near-fatal traffic accident, I have had an intimate encounter with our nation’s current healthcare delivery system. The extraordinary care I received both to save my life and to rehabilitate my body provides a case study in the disparity between privately managed healthcare and the socialized model serving our nation’s veterans.

In May I was riding my scooter near my home in suburban Los Angeles when a careless driver in a minivan struck me during the morning commute.   I was rushed to the emergency room at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where the doctors performed a series of gutsy maneuvers to save my life. In addition to orthopedic procedures, I had to endure open-heart surgery and removal of my spleen.

My wife later explained to me how the various specialists consulted meticulously with one another to assess options and determine the best path forward. They patiently conferred with my wife so that she could understand their recommendations and the attendant risks. After five major surgeries and ten days in ICU, my condition stabilized, I became conscious of my surroundings, and I began my long path to recovery.

What happened next was particularly instructive about the standard of care in the system. Every professional who served me – from the most senior expert surgeons to the food service crew, treated me with skill, patience, courtesy, compassion, and diligence. At no time were my questions or requests disregarded or delayed. At no time did any person mislead me about my condition or the timing and risks of various treatments. At no time did my private insurance carrier Anthem Blue Cross deny me any coverage for the procedures, therapies, medications, and equipment prescribed by my various physicians. Simply stated, I was treated with professionalism, respect and dignity throughout my ordeal by every stakeholder in the private healthcare delivery system. There were no bureaucratic or financial impediments to my recovery.

Compare this experience with the continuing flow of reports about the incompetent, shameful, and potentially illegal conduct at all corners of the Veterans Administration.  Time and again we hear about the treachery of VA bureaucrats more concerned with lining their own pockets than caring for America’s wounded warriors. The culture of this government managed healthcare delivery system has been proven to be woefully corrupt. The VA bureaucracy lacks any accountability for its misdeeds because there is no competitive alternative for our soldiers.

In contrast, the professionals at my privately managed hospital and insurance carrier were committed to excellent patient care as a top priority. Failing to live up to that commitment would not only create a public relations challenge but also a competitive disadvantage.  Veterans deserve no less.  Instead of forcing them to use VA facilities, a better solution would be to grant them vouchers to obtain healthcare from the providers of their own choosing.

I’m not writing today about the disconcerting trends accelerated by the Affordable Care Act, but the top-down failures emblematic of the VA system should serve as a cautionary tale.  The more government controls healthcare, the worse it becomes.  More broadly, we should adopt a competitive, consumer-driven healthcare program such as the one outlined by the organization Docs 4 Patient Care (D4PC). Only when we stop treating healthcare as somehow immune from the discipline of competitive markets will we truly address the challenges of caring for our soldiers and our citizens.

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February 3, 2015 · 5:13 pm

Brother, can you spare a drachma?

A lot of hand-wringing has been going on since the Greeks elected Syriza, the leftist anti-austerity party, to lead its new government.  It seems that the Greek people, while preferring to remain in the “eurozone,” have had their fill of the the harsh medicine that public and private lenders are imposing as conditions to a liquidity lifeline.  To sum things up, Greece, the European poster child for public corruption, fiscal profligacy, and tax evasion, can’t pay its bills as they come due.  European banks and public institutions such as the IMF and ECB have continued to finance debt restructuring (including interest rate reductions and maturity extensions) in exchange for commitments to cut public spending and raise taxes.  Greeks understandably complain that the austerity measures make it even harder to generate the new revenues needed to make good on its piled up debts.  What’s an honest spendthrift nation to do?

Two schools of thought have emerged on the issue.

One side argues that everyone needs to bite the bullet and let Greece default, exit the currency union, re-denominate accounts in drachma, and let the comparatively cheap currency lubricate the economy with tourism and trade.  This point of view suggests that further bailouts simply delay the inevitable.  While a “Grexit” would cause tremendous harm to domestic savings and purchasing power — not to mention bring renewed scrutiny to other weak eurozone economies — continuing to finance Greek debt throws good money after bad.  Politically it’s untenable in Northern Europe.  Let the chips fall and get on with it, these tough-love advocates insist.

The other side cautions that politics and rhetoric need to be kept in check.  Be careful what you ask for, they seem to be saying.  Letting Greece default would reignite eurozone “contagion,” throwing the entire European project into jeopardy.  While Greece represents only a small part of the world economy, default would trigger pressure on Spain, Portugal, and Italy, among others.  Capital would flee, interest rates would soar, and there would not be enough collective resources to bail out everyone.  The export industries that have powered Germany over the past decades would lose their fuel.  Continue to shelter the ne’er-do-well Greeks to prevent a Continental melt-down.

Is it too much to ask that policymakers entertain a third way out of this mess, one that is premised on support for shared economic prosperity?  Why is it that they must choose between the moral hazard of rewarding fiscal irresponsibility and shooting themselves in the foot by bringing the house crashing down?  Yes, the Greek people need to learn to live within their means.  Yes, they need to reduce the public sector and free up labor markets.  And by and large, there has been very little genuine reform to the Greek economy.  But even if the political leadership had pushed such reform through, why should it be pressed to add punitive tax hikes?  Higher taxes simply exacerbate the evasion problem and deter whatever business investment liberal reforms would otherwise inspire.  Why not unshackle the Greek economy with dramatic reductions of tax and regulation?  Give the Greek people a reason to believe in themselves and to hope for a better future.

While we are at it, let’s not condition further liquidity support on static budget arithmetic.  Changes which liberate the private sector and spur sustainable growth will rejigger the budget calculus.  Here in the U.S., Republicans in Congress are finally ensuring that fiscal responsibility be assessed while taking measure of productivity.  It’s time for the powers that be to stop treating Greece as if it operated in an economic vacuum.  Economic growth will be the cure of many ills — let’s use our influence to support it.

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February 2, 2015 · 4:00 pm

Keystone XL Pipe-Dream?

Keystone-Pipeline

In what seems to be the mother of all displays of disingenuousness, the White House continues to manufacture excuses for why it cannot make a decision about approving the shovel-ready project known as Keystone XL Pipeline.  Designed to move Canadian petroleum to gulf states refineries more efficiently and safely, Keystone does not seem to present any material environmental risks.  In fact, the current transit alternative means shipping oil by rail — possibly causing a greater risk to public safety AND the environment.

Under the standing Executive Order issued in 2004 by President Bush, the government will permit a cross-border pipeline if the Department of State determines that authorization is in the “national interest” — a complex stew of factors including economic, diplomatic, national security, and cultural issues, among others.

What really irks me are the senseless debates about whether the project creates “enough” economic benefit.  Why should this issue matter at all?  Unlike most of the President’s misguided ideas for spurring the economy, Keystone XL is a project that is privately financed.  TransCanada should be free to invest its capital as it sees fit, provided it is not causing material harm.  If the pipeline helps the economy in a material way, all the better.  If not, the project is still not causing material harm to taxpayers.

The other infuriating blather relates to the debate over energy security, with at least one Democratic senator arguing that Keystone oil should be used exclusively for domestic consumption.  This argument exposes ignorance about commodity markets, not to mention the hypocrisy of the President’s claims of support for the middle class.  Restricting the trade of a commodity will create unknown market distortions and undermine the generally beneficial price reductions resulting from more generous supply in the global market.  No factor has been more salutary for the U.S. economy and our leverage versus rogue petro-states than the recent free-fall of oil prices.  Obama cynically claims credit for a trend that has happened in spite of his policies, and now he turns the fact on its head to create yet another excuse not to approve the pipeline.

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