Two nights ago, half a dozen Republican presidential candidates met in South Carolina for another TV debate, this one sponsored by Fox News. The shining star of the debate was Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, the only one of the candidates to oppose the Iraq War. Paul is an "old-school" conservative who believes that the Republican party has lost its way "because the conservative wing of the Republican Party always advocated a noninterventionist foreign policy," as he told moderators Brit Hume and Wendell Goler. Of the Iraq War, he said, "And my argument is that we shouldn't go to war so carelessly. When we do, the wars don't end." Goler then asked if the United States' non-interventionist policies hadn't changed with September 11. And so began an exchange that would separate the idiots from everyone else, an exchange that would expose Rudy Giuliani as an opportunist:

MR. GOLER: Congressman, you don't think that changed with the 9/11 attacks, sir?

REP. PAUL: What changed?

MR. GOLER: The non-interventionist policies.

REP. PAUL: No. Non-intervention was a major contributing factor. Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there; we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East -- I think Reagan was right.

We don't understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. So right now we're building an embassy in Iraq that's bigger than the Vatican. We're building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us. (Applause.)

MR. GOLER: Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attack, sir?

REP. PAUL: I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it, and they are delighted that we're over there because Osama bin Laden has said, "I am glad you're over on our sand because we can target you so much easier." They have already now since that time -- have killed 3,400 of our men, and I don't think it was necessary.

MR. GIULIANI: Wendell, may I comment on that? That's really an extraordinary statement. That's an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don't think I've heard that before, and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th. (Applause, cheers.)

And I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn't really mean that. (Applause.)

MR. GOLER: Congressman?

REP. PAUL: I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback. When we went into Iran in 1953 and installed the shah, yes, there was blowback. A reaction to that was the taking of our hostages and that persists. And if we ignore that, we ignore that at our own risk. If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem.

They don't come here to attack us because we're rich and we're free. They come and they attack us because we're over there. I mean, what would we think if we were -- if other foreign countries were doing that to us?

Giuliani is in trouble. He has already demonstrated that he has very little knowledge of foreign policy. He departs from the rest of his party on the issues of gay rights and abortion. The only thing going for him are his credentials as mayor of New York during the September 11 attacks. But it turns out that waving the flag of September 11 doesn't make you a good presidential candidate. In this exchange, Giuliani misconstrues what Paul says, implying that if we say that our foreign policy toward the Middle East contributed to the September 11 attacks, we're simultaneously saying that we "deserved" to be attacked. This is not true.

Paul appears to be fed up with the simplistic explanation given by our president that "they hate us for our freedoms." As Pat Buchanan noted in an op-ed today, Osama bin Laden and friends -- formerly the mujahideen of Afghanistan -- were our allies in the 1980s. " What Ron Paul was addressing was the question of what turned the allies we aided into haters of the United States," wrote Buchanan. "Was it the fact that they discovered we have freedom of speech or separation of church and state? Do they hate us because of who we are? Or do they hate us because of what we do?" It turns out that viewers who tuned in to the debate weren't misled by Giuliani's simplistic opportunism; text-message polls showed that viewers believed it was Paul who won the debate that night.

The fact that Giuliani couldn't get away with what President Bush was able to get away with many times before signals a welcome change in political discourse: simple explanations won't cut it anymore. With a majority of the American people wanting to get out of Iraq, we've learned that President Bush can't be trusted. Bush is a man who takes Occam's Razor too literally: not only must the simplest explanation be true, but the true explanation must necessarily be the simplest one. Do Middle Eastern countries hate the United States because of thirty years of foreign policy or because we have freedom of speech, and they don't, and they're either jealous of our freedom of speech, or they hate the idea of freedom of speech? Thirty years of foreign policy is a lot to delve into; catchy slogans not so much. Bush is a president who likes complex ideas distilled into bumper sticker-length slogans. The American public is tired of being deceived by simplicity.

Oh, and I think both Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan are deserving of becoming SEDHE Heroes of the Week.

Posted by Mark at 9:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

After hearing two weeks' worth of testimony calling Bush UN Ambassador nominee John Bolton's conduct into question, Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH), said, "I've heard enough today that I don't feel comfortable voting for Mr. Bolton." Voinovich has suddenly called Bolton's approval into question: with 10 Republicans on the Foreign Relations Committee and 8 Democrats, it seemed like it would be a 10-8 vote in favor of Bolton. Now, though, it could be a tie!

For breaking with party lines and voting the way a normal person should vote, George Voinovich is -- surprisingly (and despite all the bad he's done in the past) -- SEDHE's Hero of the Week!

Posted by Mark at 11:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Ich bin ein Paul Krugmanner!

Writing an op-ed in The New York Times last Friday, Paul Krugman took Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan to task for his misguided support of George W. Bush's personalized Social Security system (please read about the system at Factcheck.org, in spite of what National Review may think of it).

I always thought Alan Greenspan was on our side. The Fed is a very independent body, usually immune to partisan politics. Yet, somehow, says Krugman, Greenspan "painted a dark (and seriously exaggerated) picture of the demographic problem, and said that what we need is a 'fully funded' system. He then conceded that Bush-style privatization would do nothing to improve the system's funding. [...] Mr. Greenspan went on to concede that the opponents of privatization are right to worry about the huge borrowing that Bush-style privatization would entail." And after all this, Greenspan still endorsed private retirement accounts! My old economics teacher, Mr. Allen, instilled in me a love for Greenspan and his objectivity. It has become increasingly apparent, however, that Greenspan is not as objective as Mr. Allen remembers him.

Okay, so the question is, why are we being told that the situation is so urgent that Social Security reform can't wait another second? In much the same way that we had to go to war with Iraq right now, we're being told that Social Security needs to be reformed right now. I'll buy that Social Security needs to be reformed, but does it have to be immediately? And if Greenspan is correct and Bush's privatization scheme won't do anything to solve Social Security's future insolvency problems, then why should we go along with the Bush plan?

To quote Hamlet, something is rotten in my refrigerator.

Or something like that.

First of all, private retirement accounts would only augment Social Security benefits, and only slightly at that. If everyone who could put money into private accounts did so, then the funds of the whole Social Security pool would decrease by that percentage, meaning that Social Security would be worse in the future for people without private investment accounts and slightly better for people with those accounts.

But let's pretend I don't care about other people. Screw them. They should have invested their money. But maybe I care about gigantic government budgets. It is estimated that $4.5 trillion will be required to finance the first twenty years of the privatization plan as funds are shifted around between the Social Security trust and private accounts. That's a lot of money to throw around for a project whose benefit is dubious at best. Let's be rational consumers, here: does marginal benefit equal marginal cost?

And then there's the timing. Why now? Why not last year? Wasn't it just as urgent then? Bush knows that this is his last four years (until they manage a constitutional amendment to give him four more years, leading us Where Many Dictatorships Have Gone Before), so he has to spend the "political capital" he made in the last election. Who stands to benefit the most from this privatization? The retiree who will get 4 or 5% more than he would without a private account? Where is his investment going? It's going into private corporations, of course. And as Americans buy stocks and mutual funds with their private investment dollars, the value of those stocks goes up. And the people who stand to gain the most from an increase in stock price are the people who have the most money invested in them: the executives of the corporations in question! So, under the Bush plan, Americans can only use their private investment money to purchase stocks in corporations A and B. The stock prices of corporations A and B go up as a result. The executives of corporations A and B see their portfolios increase in value tremendously thanks to an influx of the money from millions of Americans. And when Bush leaves office, where does he have a very cherry job waiting for him? Yes, that's right: corporations A and B are falling all over themselves to give him a position on their Boards of Directors, where he can earn millions of dollars to meet with a dozen other people in a posh conference room twice a month.

Cynical? Yes. It sounds like Bush is fabricating a crisis so as to fabricate a solution that benefits him and his friends at the end of the day.

And it's all for you.

Posted by Mark at 2:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

While the Bush Administration attempts to remain as secretive as it can, refusing to divulge records, often on nebulous "national security" grounds (where there is little or no national security at stake), Governor Bob Holden took a step in the opposite direction on Monday by signing into law an expansion of a Missouri "sunshine law."

A "sunshine law," as its name suggests, provides government accountability by requiring records to be available to the public. "These laws are called sunshine laws because they reflect the American sentiment that opening up government records for public scrutiny -- or in other words, letting in the sunshine -- is a uniquely beneficial endeavor," said Holden.

Most notably (for me, anyway), "the new law makes clear that the University of Missouri's governing Board of Curators — which has lost costly legal fights over its closing of records — is subject to the law, like other public governmental bodies." At Miami University in scenic Oxford, Ohio, our Board of Trustees can be very secretive. Notes that Board members make must be left with the Board's staff secretary. The public is not allowed in on the Board's "executive session," and neither are the two student members of the Board. (Ohio state law requires that university boards of trustees have two student members, appointed by the Governor.)

Missouri's new sunshine law imposes stricter fines on government entities that withhold public information. Under the old law, the fine was $25 for withholding information. Since the fine was so small, "people who have been accused of violating the Sunshine Law have been able to stand behind the excuse that they were ignorant of the law" and pay the fine, said sponsoring Rep. Jack Goodman. No other violater of the law can use that kind of excuse.

The law also imposes a state-wide rate of ten cents per page for photocopying government documents. This prevents governments from inflating the price of copies as a deterrent to getting the documents in the first place.

The new law was drafted after a state auditor's report revealed in 2001 that the existing sunshine law was "inadequate." When requests for documents were submitted, "about 44 percent of the governmental entities surveyed either did not respond, responded untimely or improperly denied a request." The auditor's report is frightening for those of us who value an open government:

Three entities refused to provide the requested records unless the citizen explained why they want the information, which is not required by the Sunshine Law. One agency’s attorney offered this reason to deny: "It will be necessary for you to be more specific as to what you need and for what purpose before we can comply . . ."

This law is the best step in the right direction for government accountability, and both Governor Holden, the Missouri Senate, and the Missouri House (which passed the bill 121-18) should be given medals for their efforts to make government more open and less obscured. The Bush Administration could learn a lesson from Missouri (especially John Ashcroft, who comes from Missouri!).

Posted by Mark at 8:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

That's right. William F. Buckley is SEDHE's "Hero of the Week." Rather unlikely, but if you read his most recent column, you'll understand why. Unlike other conservatives, Buckley is not an apologist for the acts that occurred at Abu Gharib. Whereas Rush suggests that the acts were justified (read previous entry for details), Buckley contrasts the Abu Gharib situation with that of Lt. William Calley, who was prosecuted for the My Lai massacre in Vietnam in 1968. Calley was given life in prison for his actions then, but then "what seemed all of America rose up in protest against the sentence," not because they thought he didn't do anything wrong, but because they thought that life in prison was an extreme punishment; bowing to American popular opinion, President Nixon reduced his sentence.

The justification for My Lai, however, was that "you are waging war, there are snipers and other hidden assailants, and you find yourself authorizing your men to use their machine guns to everybody down -- one way to do it." Buckley suggests -- contrary to Rush -- that the guards at Abu Gharib were not in life-or-death situations. "In Iraq, there seems to have been nothing there in the sense of dodging bullets and returning fire. It seemed sheer sadism, pleasure taken from torture," he says. "But there is no accounting for forcing naked men to enact sexual practices, some apparently perverse, for the gratification of an assembly apparently stripped of any thought of humane behavior."

This is only the introduction to the column, but Buckley's point should be well-taken. Though Iraqi insurgents freely fire upon U.S. troops, that is no excuse for the professional U.S. Army to retaliate with sadistic abuse. Most of the prisoners at Abu Gharib were low-level detainees, anyway: they had no valuable information and were rounded up almost out of necessity. Some of them had committed no crimes at all.

The thesis of Buckley's column is that Donald Rumsfeld should not lose his job over this. I tend to agree: Rumsfeld is a suit back in Washington, and while he is technically responsible as Secretary of Defense, he was not there and he did not issue the orders to do this (as far as we know). By the time that these pictures surfaced on CBS News, the parties involved were in the disciplinary process. The Secretary of Defense cannot be expected to have control of everything. In a corporate structure, tasks are delegated, and managers expect that their subordinates will do the job assigned to them. In this case, one of the managers went a little crazy. That's the manager's fault, not Rumsfeld's.

John Kerry has been calling for the President's resignation. This is ridiculous on its face. The President of the United States has ten thousand things to attend to every day; this is why he delegates the duties of the defense of the U.S. to Rumsfeld. The President has no control over day-to-day operations of the Defense Department. Saying that Bush is responsible is a cheap election-year ploy designed to transfer blame to the President, where it is most strategic for Kerry.

Posted by Mark at 1:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)