Today marks the 30th anniversary of the seizing of the U. S. embassy in Tehran by factions of the revolution that overthrew the shah. President Obama has issued a statement on the occasion which I will reproduce in full here:
Thirty years ago today, the American Embassy in Tehran was seized. The 444 days that began on November 4, 1979 deeply affected the lives of courageous Americans who were unjustly held hostage, and we owe these Americans and their families our gratitude for their extraordinary service and sacrifice.
This event helped set the United States and Iran on a path of sustained suspicion, mistrust, and confrontation. I have made it clear that the United States of America wants to move beyond this past, and seeks a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran based upon mutual interests and mutual respect. We do not interfere in Iran’s internal affairs. We have condemned terrorist attacks against Iran. We have recognized Iran’s international right to peaceful nuclear power. We have demonstrated our willingness to take confidence-building steps along with others in the international community. We have accepted a proposal by the International Atomic Energy Agency to meet Iran’s request for assistance in meeting the medical needs of its people. We have made clear that if Iran lives up to the obligations that every nation has, it will have a path to a more prosperous and productive relationship with the international community.
Iran must choose. We have heard for thirty years what the Iranian government is against; the question, now, is what kind of future it is for. The American people have great respect for the people of Iran and their rich history. The world continues to bear witness to their powerful calls for justice, and their courageous pursuit of universal rights. It is time for the Iranian government to decide whether it wants to focus on the past, or whether it will make the choices that will open the door to greater opportunity, prosperity, and justice for its people.
I find the statement strangely detached. In every action and statement, including its non-responsive retort this very week to the offer to end its nuclear enrichment program made by the governments of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States, the leaders of the Iranian government have demonstrated that they have already made their choice. Ray Tayekh of the Council on Foreign Relations states the situation quite plainly:
Dealing with Iran has always been a complicated enterprise with moral hazards. The persistent mistake that the West has made is to place the nuclear issue above all other concerns. The Iran problem is not limited to illicit nuclear activities, and it is somewhat incomprehensible that the United States and other nations can contemplate nuclear transactions with a regime that maintains links to a range of terrorist organizations and engages in brutal domestic repression. Western officials would be smart to disabuse Iran of the notion that its nuclear infractions are the only source of disagreement. Iran’s hard-liners need to know that should they launch their much-advertised crackdown, the price for such conduct may be termination of any dialogue with the West. Only through such a policy can the United States advance its strategic objectives while standing up for its moral values.
We should implement consequences for Iran as stern as we can make them, non-violent in nature but punitive in quality. We should muster all of the permanent members of the Security Council to participate in these measures but be prepared to proceed without them. A peaceful, prosperous, and just Iran is in Russian and Chinese interests as it is in ours and, if they elect to support tyranny in Iran, Russia and China should be made aware that this latest tyranny in Iran will eventually end and the Iranian people will know who supported the tyrants and who opposed them.
The Atlantic Council is sending a delegation of us out to the USS Eisenhower for the next couple of days.
Barring unforeseen access to a computer, the Internet, and free time that means no posting from me until Saturday morning. My OTB colleagues will, however, be slavishly posting away as usual if not at a slightly higher opstempo.
The Supreme Court hears oral argument today in Pottawattamie County v McGee, wherein they will have to decide if prosecutors have immunity from lawsuits even if they frame someone for murder.
On one side of the case being argued are Iowa prosecutors who contend “there is no freestanding right not to be framed.” They are backed by the Obama administration, 28 states and every major prosecutors organization in the country.
On the other side are two black men — Terry Harrington and Curtis McGhee — men who served 25 years in prison before evidence long hidden in police files resulted in them being freed.
[...]
The Supreme Court has indeed said that prosecutors are immune from suit for anything they do at trial. But in this case, Harrington and McGhee maintain that before anyone being charged, prosecutors gathered evidence alongside police, interviewed witnesses and knew the testimony they were assembling was false.
Hard though it might be to believe, this is actually a difficult decision. The balance between protecting diligent prosecutors from suit and protecting defendants from the bad apples is not a simple thing. The good news is that a case like this is amenable to a bright-line rule against intentional misconduct. The bad news is, the Supreme Court has shown a consistent disdain for bright-line rules for some time.
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, yesterday delivered a stern warning to Iran’s hard-line leader amid signs that the west’s patience with Tehran’s prevarication on its nuclear programme was running out.
In a speech to the joint houses of the US Congress, the first by a German chancellor in more than half a century, Mrs Merkel aligned Germany closely with the US drive to tackle a range of threats such as global warming, international terrorism and climate change.
Her comments on Iran signalled Germany’s determination to press ahead with a new raft of sanctions against the Tehran regime if, as is now expected, it fails to enter into negotiations on its nuclear programme.
“Zero tolerance needs to be shown when there is a risk of weapons of mass destruction falling, for example, into the hands of Iran and threatening our security,” Mrs Merkel told Congress. “Iran needs to be aware of this, Iran knows our offer but Iran also knows where we draw a line.”
The editors of the Chicago Tribune have encouraged the United States government to support a new round of sanctions against Iran, especially a ban on exporting gasoline to Iran:
The U.S. is reported to be forming a set of much harsher sanctions against Iran, targeting the country’s energy, transportation and financial industries. Good. But Iran is already under several sets of sanctions by the U.S. and U.N. Security Council. These have pinched, but not enough to stop Iran’s nuclear program.
The best option now is a ban on gasoline imports. Even though it produces crude oil, Iran must buy about 40 percent of its gasoline. Any jolt to that supply would have an immediate effect on the streets of Tehran and on every Iranian motorist.
The Iranian people may blame their government. Or they may blame the U.S. and its allies. Either way, Iran’s leaders, already loathed at home, will come under immense new pressure to yield on their nuclear ambitions.
The U.S. and its European allies can’t make a gas embargo stick without help from Russia and China. They’re reluctant. But now’s the time to make the case that an embargo is a better strategy than a military strike on Tehran.
Most of all the members of the Security Council must decide whether their resolutions are proposals in a negotiation or not. If they are not, Iran should not be allowed to to turn them into a negotiation. If they are, clearly the UNSC will need to up the ante.
If it were me, in exchange for 10% of Iran’s enriched uranium I would lift 10% of the sanctions I’d impose on Iran which would include a ban on gasoline exports and a ban on Iranian financial transactions in international banks, in exchange for 20% of Iran’s enriched uranium, I’d lift 20%, and so on. But that’s just me.
However, we need to ask the Russians and the Chinese the question outright: are the resolutions for which they’ve voted merely bargaining points in a negotiation or not?
There’s a fascinating article in Spiegel Online (in English) on “Operation Orchard”, the operation in September 2007 in Syria in which the Israeli air force destroyed what many have termed a “nuclear plant”, what the article calls “Syria’s Al Kibar nuclear reactor”, and the Syrians have characterized as a conventional military facility. Spiegel has interviewed Syrian, Israeli, and American leaders as well as confidential Syrian and Israeli sources to compile a mosaic of espionage, intrigue, assassination, and general international shenanigans.
Was it a nuclear plant, in which scientists were on the verge of completing the bomb? Were North Korean, perhaps even Iranian experts, also working in this secret Syrian facility? When and how did the Israelis learn about the project, and why did they take such a great risk to conduct their clandestine operation? Was the destruction of the Al Kibar complex meant as a final warning to the Iranians, a trial run of sorts intended to show them what the Israelis plan to do if Tehran continues with its suspected nuclear weapons program?
In recent months, SPIEGEL has spoken with key politicians and experts about the mysterious incident in the Syrian desert, including Syrian President Bashar Assad, leading Israeli intelligence expert Ronen Bergman, International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohammed ElBaradei and influential American nuclear expert David Albright. SPIEGEL has also talked with individuals involved in the operation, who have only now agreed to reveal, under conditions of anonymity, what they know.
These efforts have led to an account that, while not solving the mystery in its entirety, at least delivers many pieces of the puzzle. It also offers an assessment of an operation that changed the Middle East and generated shock waves that are still being felt today.
The article has enough suggestions, claims, and innuendos to give nearly anyone food for thought at the very least.
The picture above is a satellite image of the facility that was destroyed.
The loss of a Republican seat in NY-23 under highly unusual circumstances notwithstanding, yesterday was a good day for Republicans. After crushing defeats in successive elections, they won back the Virginia governor’s office in a blowout and knocked off a billionaire incumbent governor in New Jersey despite having their vote split between two candidates.
I would, however, resist the temptation to see these contests as a referendum on Barack Obama’s presidency and the Democratic Party, much less a harbinger for 2010 and beyond.
Glenn Reynolds has an op-e in the NY Post titled “The Obama Magic has Faded.”
All politics is local, they say, and Tuesday’s off-off-year elections certainly had their local angles. Jon Corzine has been a terrible governor even by the undemanding standards of terribly governed New Jersey. Creigh Deeds, though he looked good to Democratic Party recruiters not long ago, turned out to be an undistinguished campaigner, more driven by the concerns of Washington Post editorialists than of Virginia voters. And NY-23 Republican nomineee Dede Scozzafava was a bizarre choice, bizarre enough to inspire a seemingly quixotic third-party run by Doug Hoffman.
But these local angles weren’t enough to keep the Obama administration out of the races. President Obama barnstormed Virginia and New Jersey — and pumped money and Joe Biden into NY-23 in support of Democratic candidate Bill Owens. (One suspects Owens would have preferred more money and less Biden.)
And — until it started looking as if they might lose — the Obama people were suggesting that these races would seal their mandate and encourage congressional wafflers to toe the line on health-care reform. Not so much, as it turns out.
Now, this is right, so far as it goes. Exit poll analyses by both ABC and CBS show Obama remains personally popular but that people are extremely worried about the economy and the direction of the country. The reality has set in that Obama’s a politician, not a messiah. While many retain high hopes, most of the irrational exuberance has faded. And, clearly, he doesn’t have coattails when he’s not on the ballot. Then again, neither did Ronald Reagan. Recall that Republicans lost 27 House seats in 1982.
A stronger case is made by Dan Balz in an “analysis” piece at WaPo titled “Contests serve as warning to Democrats: It’s not 2008 anymore.”
Neither gubernatorial election amounted to a referendum on the president, but the changing shape of the electorates in both states and the shifts among key constituencies revealed cracks in the Obama 2008 coalition and demonstrated that, at this point, Republicans have the more energized constituency heading into next year’s midterm elections.
The most significant change came among independent voters, who solidly backed Democrats in 2006 and 2008 but moved decisively to the Republicans on Tuesday, according to exit polls. In Virginia, independents strongly supported Republican Robert F. McDonnell in his victory over Democrat R. Creigh Deeds, while in New Jersey, they supported Republican Chris Christie in his win over Democratic Gov. Jon S. Corzine.
For months, polls have shown that independents were increasingly disaffected with some of Obama’s domestic policies. They have expressed reservations about the president’s health-care efforts and have shown concerns about the growth in government spending and the federal deficit under his leadership.
Tuesday’s elections provided the first tangible evidence that Republicans can win their support with the right kind of candidates and the right messages. That is an ominous development for Democrats if it continues unabated into next year. But Republicans could squander that opportunity if they demand candidates who are too conservative to appeal to the middle.
This is exactly right. Independents, by their very nature, are fickle. When thing are going well, they’ll stick with the party in power and when they’re not, they’ll vote for change.
So, if unemployment is still high and we’re still mired in a mess in Afghanistan a year from now, the Republicans will have an opening to make major gains in the House and Senate. But they’ll need candidates who won’t alienate independents.
I followed the Virginia race with some interest given that I live in the Commonwealth. It wasn’t a race about Obama or national issues at all. Deeds was the surprise winner of the Democratic primary, with the well-financed and well-known Terry McAuliffe and Brian Moran killing each other off and leaving Deeds standing. He was a moderate Democrat with appeal to rural Virginians who had narrowly lost to McConnell four years earlier when the latter got 323 more votes for attorney general. But when the Washington Post went on attack against McDonnell for an old master’s thesis and some rather unprogressive statements about women and homosexuals, Deeds decided to run a nasty campaign hammering at those points. It backfired, as McConnell turned the other cheek and came across as a decent, reasonable man. (As an aside, I should note that Republicans easily won the lieutenant governor and attorney general races in landslides, too. )
In New Jersey, Corzine is personally unpopular and his state is in bad shape. I posited on last night’s OTB Radio that it was all downhill after the motorcade incident, which was the first time I realized what a jackass Corzine was, but I don’t follow Garden State politics closely enough to know for sure. At any rate, Chris Christie was perceived as a reasonable alternative even in a Democrat-leaning state. Corzine’s genius advisers decided their best course was to double down on the jerk factor, campaigning on the theme that Christie was too fat to be governor. Oddly, it didn’t do the trick.
Regardless, these races demonstrate that Republicans can win — even with all the damage to the brand suffered in recent years — given both an opening and a solid candidate.
As Steven Taylor notes, the third-party candidacy by Doug Hoffman in New York’s 23rd congressional district seems to have backfired, delivering a solid Republican seat for generations to Democratic candidate Bill Owens.
While some conservatives like my Twitter pal (and OG blogger) Jayvie Canono have suggested that Republican nominee Dede “Scozzafava would’ve been a vote for the Dems,” one of the iron laws of contemporary politics in the House is that the vast majority of the time, even the most liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats vote with their party.
Would Hoffman have been a more reliable Republican vote than Scozzafava? Probably. But Owens, if he’s anything like the vast majority of his future colleagues, will almost certainly vote with the Democrats more than 90% of the time; even the most “disloyal” Republicans only break from their party around 35% of the time while the vast majority only defect less than 10% of the time. In other words, conservatives have probably traded a reasonably Republican vote in the House for a reliably Democratic one, which in the grand scheme of things is not likely to be smart politics.
It looks like the Obama Administration’s brilliant political jujutsu move of using “jobs saved or created” is making its way around some of the economics blogs again. First up is Brad DeLong’s attack on Allan Meltzer. Meltzer wrote the following,
There is no greater recognition of the failure of the stimulus program to create jobs than the efforts to mislead the public into believing the program had saved thousands, or millions, of jobs. One can search economic textbooks forever without finding a concept called “jobs saved.” It doesn’t exist for good reason: how can anyone know that his or her job has been saved? The Administration can make up any number it pleases. The number has no meaning…
Brad points to this partial quote by Milton Friedman,
Suppose the [Federal Reserve] System… had accompanied the measure by purchase of government securities [for cash]… as called for by the “classic” remedy for an internal drain…. [L]et $1 billion be the amount…. What would have been the consequence?… Reserve purchases of $1 billion… would have meant an increase of $1,330 million in high-powered money… would have permitted a multiple expansion of deposits…. Even if… the deposit ratios would have fallen as much as they did–and for the deposit-currency ratio, the fall in so short a time was the largest on record–the result would have been to cut in half the decline in the stock of money…. Only a moderate improvement in the deposit-currency ratio–a decline from 8.95 to 7.10 instead of 6.47–would… have enabled the stock of money to be stable…
You might be wondering, “What the….?” Well, what Friedman is saying is that if the Fed had taken expansionary policy with regards to the money supply it would have stopped the Great Depression, or at least it wouldn’t have been Great, and probably not even a depression. In other words, isn’t Friedman doing the samething that Meltzer is saying is impossible?
Well it depends. The above quote it from The Great Contraction and I haven’t read it and so I don’t know the context in which Friedman couched his argument or what is missing in the ellipses in the quote Prof. DeLong has quoted. But, if Friedman is making an analysis given a specific model, then his argument might be valid…in the context of that model. In fact, Prof. DeLong writes,
You can critique models. You can critique parameters. You can critique parameters. You can critique how the calculations are done, but you cannot deny their existence, for the kind of counterfactualcalculations [sic] that Milton Friedman does are, of course, the steady diet of what economists and other policy analysts do every day.
This leads me to believe that, indeed that Friedman is making his statements within the context of a specific model.
But it’s not just Meltzer — Greg Mankiw has done the same thing.
They should be ashamed of themselves.
The Obama administration’s “jobs created or saved” is just a way of saying “other things equal” in non-economese. Of course it makes sense to ask how many more people are working than would have been the case without a given policy — and every administration makes assertions along those lines. During the 2001 recession and its aftermath, how many times did the Bush administration claim that the recession would have been worse without its tax cuts? And while many of us quarreled with that claim, I don’t think I ever argued that other-things-equal arguments are nonsense on their face.
The willingness of conservative economists to fall in line behind such cheap shots says something sad about them, not about the Obama administration.
The 4 million job number is a counterfactual policy simulation of what the stimulus will do based on a particular model of the economy. As such, I have no objection to someone citing it in a policy discussion. In fact, macroeconomists use models to generate figures like this all the time. I have even done it myself.
But as an answer to the question “how can the American people gauge whether or not your programs are working?… What metric should they use?”, citing the 4 million job figure is a non sequitur, or more likely a diversion. A metric has to be measurable, and the actual number of jobs “created or saved” by the policy will never be measurable from any data source.
That is, I do not object to claims such as,
A: “Based on our models of the economy, we believe there would be X million fewer jobs today without the stimulus.”
But it is absurd to suggest that you can say,
B: “We have measured how many jobs the stimulus has saved or created, and the number is X.”
Economists are capable of making statements such as A, but it is beyond our ken to make statements such as B. Statement B is,of course, much stronger than statement A, as it purports to be based on data rather than on models. Unfortunately, we are hearing statements like B much too often from administration officials. A good example is here, where can you “learn” that 110,185.36 jobs have been created or saved in California alone.
Yes that is right, because of Obama’s brilliant policy there is a 0.36 person employed now that otherwise wouldn’t be employed. Of course, the use of the phrase “jobs saved or created” is baloney. If the President or his spokespeople had said, “Well, according to our analysis we think it is likely that 4 million jobs will be saved or created with this stimulus package…” they’d be home free. But that isn’t what they say. This is what they say,
Question: The American people have seen hundreds of billions of dollars spent already, and still the economy continues to free-fall. Beyond avoiding the national catastrophe that you’ve warned about, once all the legs of your stool are in place, how can the American people gauge whether or not your programs are working? Can they — should they be looking at the metric of the stock market, home foreclosures, unemployment? What metric should they use? When? And how will they know if it’s working, or whether or not we need to go to a plan B?
Answer: I think my initial measure of success is creating or saving 4 million jobs. That’s bottom line No. 1, because if people are working, then they’ve got enough confidence to make purchases, to make investments. Businesses start seeing that consumers are out there with a little more confidence, and they start making investments, which means they start hiring workers. So step No. 1, job creation.–emphasis added
The next episode of OTB Radio, our BlogTalkRadio program, will record and air live from 5:30-6:30 Eastern.
Dave Schuler and I will be joined by Zenpundit’s Mark Safranksi to talk about the “elections” in Afghanistan, today’s off-off-year elections in the USA, and the state of opportunity in America.
We’ll also be taking calls at (646) 716-7030. Owing to a high trolls to legit callers ratio, however, we’ll be using the BTR chat feature to screen for legit calls.
You can play the show, subscribe to its feed, or share it with your friends via the widget below:
(Note: The playback automatically updates to the most recent show available. Older shows can be accessed at the show archives.)
In a much discussed post, Ezra Klein produced a series of graphs showing that Americans pay more for office visits, scans and imaging, drugs, and other aspects of health care — often, far more — than is the case in Canada or Western Europe.
There is a simple explanation for why American health care costs so much more than health care in any other country: because we pay so much more for each unit of care. As Halvorson explained, and academics and consultancies have repeatedly confirmed, if you leave everything else the same — the volume of procedures, the days we spend in the hospital, the number of surgeries we need — but plug in the prices Canadians pay, our health-care spending falls by about 50 percent.
In other countries, governments set the rates that will be paid for different treatments and drugs, even when private insurers are doing the actual purchasing. In our country, the government doesn’t set those rates for private insurers, which is why the prices paid by Medicare, as you’ll see on some of these graphs, are much lower than those paid by private insurers. You’ll also notice that the bit showing American prices is separated into blue and yellow: That shows the spread between the average price (the top of the blue) and the 90th percentile (the top of the yellow). Other countries don’t have nearly that much variation, again because their pricing is standard.
Bernard Finel, recalling a series of posts and comment threads from a while back, observes,
James Joyner has argued that in order to reduce health care expenditures we need to make a choice — we can’t have it be better, faster, and cheaper. Yes, we can. The reason we can is that the choice isn’t simply between better, faster, and cheaper, it is between better, faster, cheaper, and more profitable. If you cut profits — for medical insurance providers, for medical malpractice insurance providers, for med-mal attorneys, for doctors, for hospitals, and for drug companies — you can have better, faster, and cheaper. The problem is that our system is essential optimized for profits — our goal is not to make people healthy but to make people wealthy.
That’s true up to a point, although some of this is simply the Find The Umbrella phenomenon combined with arbitrary itemizing of costs. (Maybe the scans are $900 because they can bill that much for it while something that they’d otherwise bill more for is capped because the insurance companies won’t reimburse above a certain rate.)
Beyond that, as Dave Schuler points out, there’s no good reason to think OUR government is going to hold down costs in the same way the social democracies have.
I see no reason to believe that even if we went to a single-payer system that the federal government would be willing to lower healthcare prices so that we’re spending what France, Germany, or the Netherlands is. Despite the legislative mandate to do so that’s been around for about ten years they haven’t lowered Medicare reimbursement rates. Every year they postpone that painful choice and, indeed, they’re preparing to do so again.
And, indeed, as Kevin Drum acknowledges, nothing in the bills before Congress will do anything at all to reduce costs.
President Karzai narrowly won a clearly fraudulent election. His main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, has withdrawn from consideration as a candidate, ruling out a run-off election. That leaves us with an Afghan government of little or no legitimacy, unworthy of our confidence or that of the Afghan people. Classical counter-insurgency strategy requires a government with the support of the people. We don’t have such an ally in Afghanistan.
The status quo cannot continue. Obama has yet to decide whether he will heed the call of the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, for up to 40,000 more troops, but he has said he will not walk away from the country altogether. If that’s the case, it seems Obama has no choice but to hold his nose and press on with a weakened ally. Given that, he must push for a national unity government in Kabul to broaden its base of support and, at the same time, help develop a more decentralized administration of a land that has always been a loose collection of tribes and districts. Decentralization would allow the West to spread its resources to regional leaders rather than concentrating them in the hands of Karzai and his clique. Any U.S. strategy for stabilizing Afghanistan and drawing support away from the Taliban depends on a political leadership perceived as legitimate and a government that serves its people.
1. Strongly encourage him [i.e. Karzai] to form a new “unity government” that includes Mr. Abdullah, who on Sunday graciously removed himself from the runoff race. Karzai needs a government with wider appeal and greater credibility if he is to effectively influence the entire country.
Abdullah, who was formerly Karzai’s foreign minister, contributes on both of those counts. He ran the race (and quit it) on an anticorruption message. He hails from the Northern Alliance that helped topple the Taliban (Karzai comes from the dominant southern Pashtun ethnic group).
2. Apply quiet behind-the-scenes pressure on Karzai. The tough-love public criticism of Karzai has worked mostly to ostracise the Afghan president. Sen. John Kerry’s more subdued, but still firm, weekend of persuasion last month produced the desired effect – Karzai’s agreement to a runoff.
3. Washington should move quickly to influence selection of the Kabul government’s new cabinet. Certainly America’s contribution of troops and treasure gives it that right.
Karzai will be tempted to reward friends with high-profile posts, but what matters is competency in governance, especially in three key jobs: defense, interior, and finance. The US has successfully urged competency before – for instance, in backing the current finance minister (and prime minister) of the Palestinian Authority, Salam Fayyad.
4. Shift aid and relationships to local and regional leaders. This point counts as much as the first three combined – probably more. Insurgents do their courting outside Kabul, and the US should, too.
For 1,000 years Afghanistan has been ruled with tribal, decentralized government. Experts suggest a constitutional change that takes some powers from the president and gives them to the parliament (one idea even considers the Swiss model of semi-sovereign cantons).
But the US shouldn’t wait for such a formal change. If insurgents are to be won over (or bought), if aid is to be turned into roads and schools, if trust and a justice system are to be regained – that must happen at the local and regional level. This strategy has the added benefit of a certain independence from Karzai – but it has to be managed carefully so as not to openly insult him.
5. Finally, the US and its allies need to provide the resources and commitment to support good governance and security at the national, provincial, and local levels. For instance, it does no good to train police if the Taliban lures them away with many more times the pay. And once Afghan security forces have been trained, they need their foreign “teachers” to follow up with them on patrol. That’s a people-intensive effort.
While I think that many Americans are tired of the war in Afghanistan and skeptical both of the support of our NATO allies and the confidence of the Obama Administration in the effort, I also think that withdrawing from Afghanistan presents tactical, strategic, legal, and moral problems. I would rather that we had never invaded Afghanistan. I would rather that we would have completed our objectives there by now. However, having invaded and not achieved our objectives I think that we need to find a set of objectives and a strategy for which the American people will at least tolerate a continuing involvement with the country.
If, alternatively, the Obama Administration is insistent on pursuing the old objectives and the stated strategy, it should be fully resourced and engaged in with confidence. It certainly won’t be a classic counter-insurgency strategy.
Via Kevin Drum, I have learned that current Senate version of the health reform bill would provide for insurance payments for Christian Science prayer treatments–and probably other “spiritual” treatments as well.
Reporting from Washington – Backed by some of the most powerful members of the Senate, a little-noticed provision in the healthcare overhaul bill would require insurers to consider covering Christian Science prayer treatments as medical expenses.
The provision was inserted by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) with the support of Democratic Sens. John F. Kerry and the late Edward M. Kennedy, both of Massachusetts, home to the headquarters of the Church of Christ, Scientist.
The measure would put Christian Science prayer treatments — which substitute for or supplement medical treatments — on the same footing as clinical medicine. While not mentioning the church by name, it would prohibit discrimination against “religious and spiritual healthcare.”
Ugh. You know, it’s bad enough that insurance companies are already wasting money paying for quack treatments like chiropractic “adjustments” and acupuncture, but this isn’t just the camel’s nose under the tent–it’s the camel in the tent, spitting and defecating over everything.
If we’re going to be serious about controlling health care costs, we have to stop covering quack treatments just because they might make people “feel better.” Chiropractors, acupuncturists, homeopathists, faith healers, reflexologists and the rest of that pseudoscientific lot are committing fraud: they claim they can heal, but they cannot.
It’s bad enough that we allow them to practice at all. It’s terrible that some insurance companies are idiotic enough to pay for such treatments. It is a derogation of the governments’ duty to its citizens that some states license these trades. But evolving a national health care system that preserves this quackery in law and ensures they get taxpayer dollars is absolutely criminal.
One of the few roles of government that I think folks from every political stripe can agree on is that the government should protect citizens from fraud. It’s not supposed to help people perpetrate fraud.
Isabel Sawhill and Ron Haskins have written a piece for Brookings titled “Five Myths About Our Land of Opportunity.” None of it’s new to those who’ve paid much attention to these things in recent years. What’s interesting, though, is the seeming contradiction in Myths 1 and 4.
1. Americans enjoy more economic opportunity than people in other countries.
Actually, some other advanced economies offer more opportunity than ours does. For example, recent research shows that in the Nordic countries and in the United Kingdom, children born into a lower-income family have a greater chance than those in the United States of forming a substantially higher-income family by the time they’re adults.
If you are born into a middle-class family in the United States, you have a roughly even chance of moving up or down the ladder by the time you are an adult. But the story for low-income Americans is quite different; going from rags to riches in a generation is rare. Instead, if you are born poor, you are likely to stay that way. Only 35 percent of children in a family in the bottom fifth of the income scale will achieve middle-class status or better by the time they are adults; in contrast, 76 percent of children from the top fifth will be middle-class or higher as adults.
[...]
4. If we want to increase opportunities for children, we should give their families more income.
Of course money is a factor in upward mobility, but it isn’t the only one; it may not even be the most important. Our research shows that if you want to avoid poverty and join the middle class in the United States, you need to complete high school (at a minimum), work full time and marry before you have children. If you do all three, your chances of being poor fall from 12 percent to 2 percent, and your chances of joining the middle class or above rise from 56 to 74 percent. (We define middle class as having an income of at least $50,000 a year for a family of three.)
Many American families need supplements to their incomes in the form of food stamps, affordable housing and welfare payments. But such aid should not be given unconditionally. First, the public is concerned that unconditional assistance will end up supporting those who are not trying to help themselves. Second, new research in economics and psychology has shown that individuals frequently behave in ways that undermine their long-term welfare and can benefit from a government nudge in the right direction.
And third, policies with strings attached have had considerable success. One example is the 1996 welfare reform law, which required most adult recipients to get jobs, and dramatically increased employment and lowered overall child poverty. In the midst of a recession, we can’t expect everyone to work. But social policies will be more successful if they encourage people to do things that bring longer-term success.
What this seems to say is that “opportunity” is not what keeps the children of the poor from economic progress. Rather, it’s the passing along of poor habits and values.
The poor, by and large, are those who have made bad decisions: Dropping out of school, having children out of wedlock, and been satisfied with government supported subsistence living. Their children, in turn, are trapped in the same pattern of behavior by being surrounded by a culture that sees these things as the norm and actively discourages responsible behavior.
This point is emphasized when one looks at the part I omitted from Myth 1:
The United States is exceptional, however, in the opportunity it offers to immigrants, who tend to do comparatively well here. Their wages are much higher than what they might have earned in their home countries. And even if their pay is initially low by American standards, their children advance quite rapidly.
And Myth 3:
3. Immigrant workers and the offshoring of jobs drive poverty and inequality in the United States.
Although immigration and trade are often blamed, a more important reason for our lack of progress against poverty and our growing inequality is a dramatic change in American family life. Almost 30 percent of children now live in single-parent families, up from 12 percent in 1968. Since poverty rates in single-parent households are roughly five times as high as in two-parent households, this shift has helped keep the poverty rate up; it climbed to 13.2 percent last year. If we had the same fraction of single-parent families today as we had in 1970, the child poverty rate would probably be about 30 percent lower than it is today.
Among women under age 30, more than half of all births now occur outside marriage, driving up poverty and leading to more intellectual, emotional and social problems among children.
So, again, the problem is behavioral rather than one of raw “opportunity” in any macro sense.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that those who came up poor had the same advantages as the children of the wealthy and the upper middle class. The latter were much more likely to be surrounded by role models that steered them in the right direction. Further, there are huge advantages conferred by wealth and connections, such as a much greater likelihood of getting a good primary and secondary education and not only going on to college but a much higher propensity of going to a “good” school that opens up doors much harder to walk through for those who went to Podunk State Directional University.
This is interesting, too: “we have seen a growing tendency among well-educated men and women to marry each other, exacerbating income disparities.” My strong guess is that well-educated men have always married bright, socially adept women. But those sort of women are now likely to be college educated. Further, beyond the social advantages marrying that sort of women always brought, the fact that most married women continue to work outside the home even after they have children means that there are economic incentives as well.
UPDATE: Dave Schuler amplifies my point above about culture:
Many of the poor live in nearly self-contained communities and their exposure to the breadth of possibilities in the United States is really quite limited. There are places where the only lives that the kids can imagine for themselves are pimp, prostitute, hustler, professional athlete, performer, or cop. Becoming an accountant or a hospital administrator is unimaginable.
The editors at Foreign Policy magazine used the occasion of the first anniversary of Barack Obama’s election as president to ask a “a group of experts” to grade President Obama’s foreign policy performance. I was honored to be among the graders.
My B-minus was exactly in line with the consensus: “Obama scored only an average of a B-: five As, nine Bs, four Cs, and five Ds.”
President Barack Obama inherited two unpopular wars and a global financial crisis. Despite mostly continuing President George W. Bush’s policies, he’s rebooted America’s image in the world and avoided most of the landmines. His top-level foreign policy staff — from Vice President Joe Biden to National Security Advisor Jim Jones to Secretary of Defense Bob Gates to the State Department’s Anne-Marie Slaughter — is superb. While I seriously questioned his choice of Hillary Clinton to become secretary of state, she’s mostly been solid. That said, he’s made some serious missteps on the security front with Afghanistan and Iran, and his relationship with Europe is not nearly as strong as it should be, given the warmth with which his election was received.
Afghanistan: C-. Obama carried out his campaign pledge to send more troops and to put more emphasis on the war but he quickly lost confidence and now seems mired in a struggle over grand strategy. He fired a competent general to replace him with another, presumably to double-down on counterinsurgency, and turned around three months later to question his own general’s recommendations for carrying out the obvious implications of said strategy.
Europe: B. Obama came into office with a huge popularity boost and was viewed as a breath of fresh air after eight years of Bush. But he’s fumbled the “special relationship” with Britain and has raised serious doubts in Eastern Europe. See my recent article for a detailed explanation.
Iran: C+. Jim Jones’ pronouncement that we could live with a nuclear Iran was a welcome step down from the previous talk about it being “unacceptable.” Unfortunately, the situation has been largely bungled from there, with Obama having seemingly returned to his campaign trail Pollyannaish view of the power of chit-chat.
My colleague Shuja Nawaz, director of the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center, also gave him a B-minus.
President Barack Obama’s momentous election heralded a change in U.S. foreign policy and raised expectations of revolutionary developments around the globe. He certainly lifted the dialogue to a new and higher moral level and promised engagement. But progress has been evolutionary, not revolutionary, because U.S. policy is rooted in national interests that do not change dramatically with a change in the occupant of the White House. This has been difficult for people around the world to understand. Regarding the Middle East and the Muslim world in general, Obama’s rhetoric has resonated more abroad than at home. He must change the discussion at home, not just to ensure Israel’s security but also guarantee implementation of Palestinian rights within a tight time frame. On Iran and India, he missed an opportunity to give Richard Holbrooke, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, a larger canvas to ply his skills by handing over Iran to a separate envoy and ceding to India’s pressures to exclude that country from the important dialogue on Afghanistan. Its problems can only be solved by taking a regional approach and drawing in the major neighbors: India, Iran, Pakistan, the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, Central Asia, Russia, and China. Restricting Holbrooke to Afghanistan and Pakistan reduced his ability to move all the chess pieces in the game.
Also, in Afghanistan, there is no savvy civilian equivalent of Gen. Stanley McChrystal representing the transatlantic view and strengthening the hand of Ambassador Karl Eikenberry with his Afghan hosts. (Paging “Dr.” Ryan Crocker!) And no Afghan voice has been brought into the discussion of the Afghan strategy. There is still time to save the situation before domestic electoral agendas take over in 2010 and then again in 2011. America’s first “global president” who promised the world an impossible dream must strive to avoid settling for the politically possible. He inherited multiple chess games and is moving from crisis to crisis at home and abroad. So, how well has he done? As my high school principal in Rawalpindi, the Rev. “Paddy” Byrne, used to pronounce on most report cards: Needs Improvement. For his high aims but relatively slow results to date, one can give Obama an A for effort but only a C+ for promised actions to date. Overall score: B-. This is an interim grade. The spring semester might produce better results at home and perhaps abroad.
Feel free to provide your grades and analysis in the comments below.
In addition to uncertain healthcare services, economic disadvantages, and finding a place to call home, veterans certainly do not need any more challenges. Unfortunately, the wounds of war can be less obvious than those that we can see. Psychological disorders and sicknesses caused by toxic exposure can be the most damaging aspects of war that veterans bring home. Toxin exposure in particular is of particular concern as previous exposure to asbestos among veterans is causing incidence of the aggressive cancer mesothelioma to rise among former members of the armed services. We must not leave those who risked their lives for our nation in the cold. Our veterans have never questioned the right or wrong of war when it mattered most. They simply did as they were trained. We must now show the same unwavering determination, in all ways we are able, by affording those opportunities to which they are entitled, including financial, medical and emotional support to all veterans.
Today marks the 30th anniversary of the seizing of the U. S. embassy in Tehran by factions of the revolution that overthrew the shah. President Obama has issued a statement on the occasion which I will reproduce in full here:
The Supreme Court hears oral argument today in 
