Showing posts with label barack obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label barack obama. Show all posts

Thursday, July 30, 2020

About the filibuster

President Obama today called the filibuster a "Jim Crow relic" at John Lewis' funeral, and I am fine with getting rid of it. The legislative branch already has enough veto points, thanks to being divided in two. The filibuster just makes it that much harder for the government to do the things it should do.

However.

Democrats should remember that when the filibuster goes away, it's gone. They might control the Senate after this fall's elections. They might not. But if they do -- and they get rid of the filibuster -- there will come a time when they won't, when their ability to stop hated legislation by Senate Republicans will be all but eliminated. 

I am ... kind of fine with that. Democracy has consequences. Right now, Democrats can mainly see how getting rid of the filibuster will aid their agenda. Someday, it'll be used against them. That's the price. I am willing to pay it. I suspect a lot of people will change their minds.

Friday, January 20, 2017

Remembering Obama's Inauguration Day: Philadelphia 2009

It was my good fortune that, after a lifetime in Kansas, I found myself living in Philadelphia during the summer of 2008 — as it happens, working in an office one floor down from Barack Obama's campaign headquarters in the city. And one day late in the election, I rode the press bus as it joined the then-Senator on a whirlwind four-stop campaign swing through the city — culminating with a final rally in fabled West Philadelphia.

Obama himself wasn't too memorable. He gave the same speech, told the same jokes at every stop, the message modified slightly for each audience. ("Don't let them give you the okey doke," he warned the largely black audiences.)

What I remember about the West Philadelphia stop: It was the most black people I'd ever seen in one place at one time — probably the most I'll ever see again. And the mood, it bordered on religious. Not that these folks worshipped Obama, no. It's just at this point in the campaign, so much hope was vested in him — the maybe, through him, they were finally being welcomed into full citizenship in America.

I'm so lucky to have been there, to have seen it with my own eyes.

On Election Night, I walked home through Center City Philadelphia with the sounds of celebration emanating from every location on my path.

And on Inauguration Day, I went to work as usual. One of my coworkers went down to Independence Hall to watch the inauguration the big screen. You can see her in this video made by friend Jim MacMillan. She'd been through Jim Crow, lived it, told me about it as she discussed her happiness at Obama's election. So the joy you see on her face this moment — it's real. It's one of the most real things I've ever known.


I don't know what's coming. I'm scared. But this is a good memory. It is history. And it was my privilege to witness it.

Thursday, December 1, 2016

Why does Barack Obama think he's black?

An article at Carolina Journal suggests Barack Obama could've offered more racial healing to the U.S. if he'd identified as bi-racial instead of black:
Much of the Left imposes racial conformity — especially on those it considers its own. You need solid attachment to a demographic group, and not consider yourself different, an individual or, perhaps even worse, part of America’s old-fashioned melting pot. To lead that group there are expectations about what you should think, the language you should use, and how you should characterize others. It’s hardly the stuff of national unity.

Oh how I hate this piece. For a very simple reason.

It decries "the left's" tendency to force people to attach themselves to an ethnic group, rather than America,without mentioning or grappling with the historic reality and cultural (nevermind legal) power of the "one-drop rule."

Obama's decision to present himself as anything but a black man probably wasn't, for much and I'd say most of his life, a decision that really was his to make. Many Americans would've seen him as "black" no matter how complicated the reality of his genetics and upbringing.

Is this still salient? Yes:
The centuries-old “one-drop rule” assigning minority status to mixed-race individuals appears to live on in our modern-day perception and categorization of people like Barack Obama, Tiger Woods, and Halle Berry. 
So say Harvard University psychologists, who’ve found that we still tend to see biracials not as equal members of both parent groups, but as belonging more to their minority parent group. The research appears in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

People forget how recent the worst of our history was. Obama was born before the Civil Rights Act was passed. He was born before the Voting Rights Act was passed. He was born well before Loving v. Virginia was decided. And as the Harvard piece mentions, it was as recently as 1985 "when a Louisiana court ruled that a woman with a black great-great-great-great-grandmother could not identify herself as “white” on her passport."

And, not to throw anybody under the bus: I was told growing up — by people who encouraged me to see Martin Luther King Jr. as a hero — that marrying a black woman would be wrong. Because to make biracial babies would be a disservice to those children.

The past is never dead. It's not even the past.

Our societal effort to celebrate biracial children — to acknowledge the fullness of their histories instead of stamping them with the "minority" label — is both welcome and a relatively new thing. It still gets pushback. I don't know how widespread it really is.

Given that, and given all the history, it's not really remarkable that Obama thinks of himself as black. It's also true that he's never, ever hidden his white ancestry — in fact, has spoken of it prominently and proudly but also sometimes too honestly for white critics to forgive. 

So Obama thinks of himself as black? Sure. Most Americans would've thought of him that way, too, even if he'd self-conciously tried to identify otherwise. To pin any blame for America's racial problems on a decision that was compelled by America's racial culture is ... silly.
 

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

One last comment about Obama's "apology tour."

Rebecca Heinrichs writes that President Trump is poised to up-end Obama's "apology tour."

While certainly more a realist than idealist, more than anything, President-elect Trump has shown a desire to return prudence to the forefront of American national security and foreign policy, with an unapologetic commitment to American sovereignty and a recognition of American exceptionalism. He ran a campaign promoting the idea that America is unlike other nations. It is better. Unlike his predecessor, he will not highlight or apologize for her imperfections, because her imperfections still pale in comparison to what she is and the standards she holds herself to.
This is a standard for acceptable behavior that applies in almost no other realm of living that I'm aware of. "He has high ideals, so his failure to live up to those ideals means he shouldn't apologize for that failure." It's a standard that eliminates entirely the consequences of actual actions.

It's not a tenable standard. It's not one that Rebecca (who I think I can call a friend) would apply otherwise.

A nation isn't a person, though, so maybe there's an excuse in international relations for unremitting pride, but I can't think of it. Yes, the country has largely been a force for good in the world. Whole portions of the globe are free in large part due to America's actions. But the country has done ugly, wrong, nasty things along the way — both domestically and internationally. There's nothing wrong with pride as long as it's tempered with realism and, yes, the occasional apology.

Maybe you have to be, as President Obama has been, a black man in America to have a mature sense of both pride in one's country and a visceral understanding of its sins — and an understanding of why "we're awesome" isn't really the right response to those sins being acknowledged. Obama's about to leave the presidency, so maybe we won't have to have this argument for awhile. In any case, Rebecca's right: President Trump is unlikely to apologize, ever, for any American action taken on his watch. I wonder what the payoff to that attitude will be.

Saturday, August 6, 2016

Don't Tread on Me (Or: Is the Obama Administration Really Trying to Ban the Gadsden Flag?) (No.)

The latest non-Trump scandal du jour among conservatives is the reported effort by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to consider whether the display of a Gadsden Flag in the workplace amounts to racial harassment. It was first reported by Eugene Volokh here. Here's National Review's take on the topic:

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has ruled that displaying the Gadsden Flag in the workplace — the yellow flag with the words Don’t Tread on Me below a coiled rattlesnake — may be punishable racial harassment.  
In case you’re wondering: That’s it. That’s the extent of the offense. There were no racist statements. No slurs. No threatening looks. A dude wore a cap.  
Ah, but: Complainant maintains that the Gadsden Flag is a “historical indicator of white resentment against blacks stemming largely from the Tea Party.” 
As Hillary Clinton would say: Sigh. There is no evidence that the Tea Party as a movement was motivated by racial animus (even some of the “racist” episodes that critics cited never happened). But there is a strong vein of leftwing historical revisionism that says it was so, presumably because that is easier to accept than the possibility that right-leaning voters circa 2009 had legitimate, defensible discontents. And here’s yet another example. So it turns out the complainant’s logic is just the typical, indefensible sort: The Tea Party is racist. The Tea Party uses the Gadsden Flag as a symbol. Therefore, the Gadsden Flag is racist 

And, naturally, the EEOC bought it. 
Naturally, there's both more and less to this story than meets the eye.

Take a look at the prime document, excerpted heavily in Volokh's post, and the story becomes a bit more clear.

The EEOC acknowledges that the Gadsden Flag isn't necessarily a racist symbol: "After a thorough review of the record, it is clear that the Gadsden Flag originated in the Revolutionary War in a non-racial context. Moreover, it is clear that the flag and its slogan have been used to express various non-racial sentiments, such as when it is used in the modern Tea Party political movement, guns rights activism, patriotic displays, and by the military."

But there have been times when it has been used in the service of racism: "For example, in June 2014, assailants with connections to white supremacist groups draped the bodies of two murdered police officers with the Gadsden flag during their Las Vegas, Nevada shooting spree. ... Additionally, in 2014, African-American New Haven firefighters complained about the presence of the Gadsden flag in the workplace on the basis that the symbol was racially insensitive."

• So what the EEOC wants to do is ... investigate a little bit more to determine whether the Gadsden Flag's use in this case and context was used as racial harassment: "In light of the ambiguity in the current meaning of this symbol, we find that Complainant’s claim must be investigated to determine the specific context in which C1 displayed the symbol in the workplace. Instead, we are precluding a procedural dismissal that would deprive us of evidence that would illuminate the meaning conveyed by C1’s display of the symbol."

Somehow all of this has become, in conservative circles, "the Obama Administration wants to ban the Gadsden Flag." But what's really happening is: The EEOC is trying to determine if there's evidence that racial harassment occurred in a workplace. That's the EEOC's job. And if the EEOC does find that such harassment has occurred, it seems obvious from its statement that it won't be issuing a blanket ban on the Gadsden Flag. Instead, it'll be punishing a specific employer for allowing the flag to be used to harass.

Here's the EEOC's explainer of what happened in this case. One interesting fact that emerges — never mentioned by Volokh or the many conservative websites that spread the fear — is that the employer in this case is the U.S. Post Office. A public employer, not a private one.

Now, many conservatives may think the EEOC has no right to be adjudicating such workplace disputes, and that it is an affront to freedom by doing so. That's a different argument. The claim the "Obama Administration" is banning Gadsden? Doesn't hold up to even the mildest scrutiny.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

John McCain never wants to leave Afghanistan

I feel like most of today’s McCain-Lieberman-Graham op-ed about the need to stay the course in Afghanistan could’ve been written four or five or six years ago. But I really want to focus on this particular paragraph:
At the strategic level, our effort continues to be undermined by the perception that the United States will again abandon Afghanistan. This suspicion makes everything our troops are trying to achieve significantly harder. It creates perverse incentives for the Taliban to keep fighting, for the Pakistani army to hedge its bets by providing support to the Taliban, and for our Afghan allies to make counterproductive decisions based on fears of a post-American future.
But here’s the thing: Eventually the United States will leave Afghanistan. The Afghans will remain, and Pakistan will be next door. Everybody knows this.

Now, I don’t know how long it will be before that exit takes place. It might be next year, 10 years from now, or even another 100 years. But history seems to suggest that America will not occupy another country halfway around the world from its own soil infinitely into the future. At some point we will withdraw.

The wisest thing to do is to figure out the best way to withdraw, a manner that best mitigates the possibility of future attacks on America originating from Afghanistan. To hope that we can guarantee 100 percent safety is futile—but there’s a cost-benefit ratio to these things, and if a cash-strapped America has decided that ratio is out of whack after nearly 11 years, well, that’s not unreasonable.

McCain, in particular, would have more credibility if he’d ever demonstrate that there was a war he didn’t want, or want more of. But he’s always urging more, more, more. I get frustrated with President Obama often, but McCain does his best to remind me that we avoided a much worse president, one with a propensity to over-commit American troops to never-ending action.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

You can have your low gas prices, or you can have a nuclear Iran

It's not quite so dire as that, probably, but with Republican candidates hitting President Obama so hard on the price of gas, it's worth noting some of the factors that are driving that price up:
The Iran situation has already raised the price of crude oil as much as 20 percent, according to oil experts.

That fear is tempered by optimism — if tensions ease in the Middle East, experts predict that energy prices will fall, with gasoline at the pump potentially dropping 50 cents a gallon or more because supplies are relatively strong in many parts of the country. Some analysts say the world price of oil could fall to $80 a barrel if tensions eased.
So gas prices are at least partly the result of America's tough anti-nuke sanctions against Iran. What else?
Despite a fall in gasoline demand in the United States and Europe, global oil markets are tightening because demand for energy from Asian countries, particularly China and India, is rising at surprisingly strong rates even as output is declining from several important producing countries.
So: Gas prices are rising because of the law and supply and demand. Capitalism is doing its thing!

A cynic would suggest Republicans should be portrayed as soft on Iran and anti-markets to boot, if they continue to demagogue the gasoline issue. I'd hate to be that sort of cynic.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Obama, religious liberty, and contraception

Some of my conservative friends have challenged me to take a position on President Obama's rule that religiously affiliated organizations must provide contraception coverage as part of the health insurance they provide employees.

Truth be told, I've been torn.

On the one hand, I'm a big believer in religious liberty. E.J. Dionne—no squishy liberal—makes a lot of sense to me when he upbraids the Obama Administration for its choice. He wrote: "Speaking as a Catholic, I wish the church would be more open on the contraception question. But speaking as an American liberal who believes that religious pluralism imposes certain obligations on government, I think the church’s leaders had a right to ask for broader relief from a contraception mandate that would require it to act against its own teachings. The administration should have done more to balance the competing liberty interests here."

On the other hand, I believe that women have a right to contraception and to make their own choices about their health care—and that's a choice effectively denied many women if their employer's health coverage won't cover contraception. Charlie Pierce makes this case more pungently than I would, but he's succinct: "Of course, you're not a Dominican Episcopalian making $16,000 a year cleaning bedpans in a Catholic hospital who can't afford the $600 a month co-pay for the birth control she needs to control her heavy bleeding and yet who, through no fault of her own, finds that she has to live with the theological horse-pucky of Humanae Vitae as enshrined as an 'exemption' in American secular law."

Right. And actually, that highlights the real problem here: ObamaCare is kind of a mess.

There were always going to be conservatives who protested universal health care as a tyrannical threat to liberty. But the way the law actually has been implemented—between this rule and the individual mandate that forces individuals to buy health coverage—seems designed to make many Americans feel like conservatives were right.

It is too late to re-fight this battle. But...

We'd be avoiding a lot (not all) of these problems if we simply had a single-payer system provided by the government. Since that seems to be politically untenable—since the preservation of private health insurance companies was apparently a major goal of the process that created the Affordable Care Act—the next best choice would've been a "public option"—a cheap government-run insurance option to stand right beside private options in the marketplace. Either option would've given folks an easy way to obtain the coverage they needed or wanted without trampling on the consciences of their employers. Despite the rhetoric of the right, the government-centric options are those which would've been most compatible with the interests of liberty.

That's what I wish would've happened. That's what I wish would happen still. But we're years away from such developments—if not decades. And we have to decide what to do with the laws we have now.

And ultimately, I have to come down—somewhat reluctantly—on the side of the Obama Administration. Not because I don't believe in religious liberty—but because I believe that in weighing the competing claims, I must side with individuals over institutions. It is not optimum for the federal government to require Catholic charities to go against their conscience. But it is even less optimum, I think, for the government to stand back and let Big Religious Institutions make that choice for their employees.

If those employees do not want contraception, they do not have to obtain it. No harm done. But if they want or need it, they won't have the choice denied them by their employer. Individual choice is preserved.

I know that some of my conservative friends will A) be disappointed in me and B) point out the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, while it does not confer a positive right to cheap contraception. I don't have a good answer to that objection, frankly. But if it is wrong for government to override the consciences of individuals, I'm not sure it's much more correct to let non-governmental institutions do so. Both have immense power over the lives over the lives of individuals.

Again, we wouldn't be having quite this argument if government were providing the insurance instead of requiring others to provide or obtain it. (I have no doubt there'd be spectacular fireworks over whether government-run insurance would cover abortions and the like, however.) But this is where we're at. And the Obama Administration's ruling is the best of several bad choices.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

As long as Obama approves of drone strikes on American citizens, it's OK

Greg Sargent:
Depressingly, Democrats approve of the drone strikes on American citizens by 58-33, and even liberals approve of them, 55-35. Those numbers were provided to me by the Post polling team.

It’s hard to imagine that Dems and liberals would approve of such policies in quite these numbers if they had been authored by George W. Bush.
That's right. I've already written about my angst about President Obama and the way he's gone against my hopes and expectations, where civil liberties are concerned. But Sargent is right: If George W. Bush was commanding drones to assassinate American citizens, the left would be up in arms. But somebody from our tribe is pulling the trigger now, so no big thing, right?

If you trust Obama with that power, liberals, understand: Eventually there will be another Republican president. Maybe not in 2012. But it will happen. Will you trust that president—Rick Santorum, say, or Paul Ryan—to use that power in a way that you also trust? And if not, how do you craft a reasonable rule that gives Obama the go-ahead while leashing President Bachmann? It's probably not possible. If you roll over for Obama, you'll have little standing to complain a few years from now. I certainly won't want to hear it.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

'Send me': These are the SOTU policies Obama won't actually pursue

One of my criticisms of President Obama has been his seeming willingness to sit back and let Congress take the lead on certain issues, refusing to wade into certain lawmaking issues that might force him to get his hands dirty. One reason the Affordable Care Act debate lingered for a year was that the president left most of the dickering to Congress.*

So the way I figure it, when Obama gives a State of the Union address and recommends policies, but casts himself in the passive role in getting those policies passed, you can be sure the president won't actually be pushing for those policies. 

My rule of thumb for determining what those policies are? When the president asks Congress to "send me" a bill—instead of suggesting he'll send Congress a bill to get passed. The passive "send me" happened four times in the State of the Union:
• He won't push to take tax breaks from companies shipping jobs overseas and give them to companies building their businesses here: "So my message is simple. It is time to stop rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas, and start rewarding companies that create jobs right here in America. Send me these tax reforms, and I will sign them right away. " 
• He won't push for the DREAM Act—which provides a path to citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants. Heck, he didn't even call it by name. "Let’s at least agree to stop expelling responsible young people who want to staff our labs, start new businesses, defend this country. Send me a law that gives them the chance to earn their citizenship. I will sign it right away." 
• He won't actually push to promote jobs and energy efficiency in one fell swoop: "Of course, the easiest way to save money is to waste less energy. So here’s a proposal: Help manufacturers eliminate energy waste in their factories and give businesses incentives to upgrade their buildings. Their energy bills will be $100 billion lower over the next decade, and America will have less pollution, more manufacturing, more jobs for construction workers who need them. Send me a bill that creates these jobs." 
• He won't push Congress to stop using its position to enrich its members: "So together, let’s take some steps to fix that. Send me a bill that bans insider trading by members of Congress; I will sign it tomorrow."
Congress has its role, and the president can't necessarily bend the branch to his will. But I think that the president hasn't always applied the leverage that he has. When the president asks Congress to take the lead, it seems likely he's washing his hands of his own good ideas.

Maybe President Obama isn't so bad on signing statements

The Congressional Research Service offers an overview:
President Reagan initiated this practice in earnest, transforming the signing statement into a mechanism for the assertion of presidential authority and intent. President Reagan issued 250 signing statements, 86 of which (34%) contained provisions objecting to one or more of the statutory provisions signed into law. President George H. W. Bush continued this practice, issuing 228 signing statements, 107 of which (47%) raised objections. President Clinton’s conception of presidential power proved to be largely consonant with that of the preceding two administrations. In turn, President Clinton made aggressive use of the signing statement, issuing 381 statements, 70 of which (18%) raised constitutional or legal objections. President George W. Bush continued this practice, issuing 161 signing statements, 127 of which (79%) contain some type of challenge or objection. The significant rise in the proportion of constitutional objections made by President George W. Bush was compounded by the fact that his statements were typified by multiple objections, resulting in more than 1,000 challenges to distinct provisions of law. Although President Barack Obama has continued to use presidential signing statements, the Obama Administration has used the interpretive tools with less frequency than previous administrations—issuing 20 signing statements, of which 10 (50%) contain constitutional challenges to an enacted statutory provision.
I still believe that if you're going to use a signing statement to challenge a law, you might as well go ahead and veto the law. And certainly, conservatives have delighted in chiding President Obama for using the statements at all. (Their objections were mostly muted during the Bush presidency.)  But if Obama is wrong to use signing statements in this fashion, it's apparently the case that he's only 1 percent as wrong as his predecessor was. Obama: The lesser evil!

Monday, December 12, 2011

National Review's disingenuous editorial on gay rights

National Review's editors aren't happy with the Obama Administration's new efforts to protect gay rights abroad:
Support for human rights has a place in foreign policy, albeit a subordinate one. Among those rights, certainly, is the right of homosexuals to be free from violent attacks and other draconian punishments. As Clinton rightly notes, if there are fundamental rights at all (and the foundational premise of this republic is that there are) then they “are not conferred by the government,” but ours “because we are human.” The secretary then goes on to claim that human rights and gay rights are “one and the same,” which we suppose is true insofar as the latter collapses into the former. What we don’t understand is how Clinton’s view — that being human vests us with certain rights — entails or even is compatible with a second set of rights that one enjoys by virtue of being homosexual. When Clinton says, “It is a violation of human rights when people are beaten or killed because of their sexual orientation,” no recourse is required to a gay right. The words “because of their sexual orientation” are superfluous. When she says that the horrors of “corrective” rape against women who are suspected of being homosexual are violations of a right, to what right could she be referring besides the right not to be raped, simpliciter?
Which makes a certain amount of sense on its own. It doesn't make sense in light of National Review's longtime efforts to call attention to Christian persecution abroad. Here's a typical example from earlier this year:
The Arab Spring has not been kind to Egypt’s Christian minority. Over the weekend, Muslims apparently incited by Islamist hardliners again terrorized Coptic Christians, in what is now a pattern of attacks against them and their churches. Possibly the Islamists are jockeying for political power in this transitional period, or even trying to immediately effect a religious cleansing similar to the one that has happened in Iraq.

Coptic Christians in the Imbaba district of Cairo report that on Saturday night they were assaulted by Muslims who looted and burned St. Mina’s Church and the Church of the Virgin Mary and attempted to burn St. Mary and St. Abanob Church. The press has reported that, according to the Copts, twelve people were killed. According to the Egyptian interior ministry, which habitually downplays or ignores attacks against Christians, possibly six victims were Christian and six were Muslim. More than a hundred people were injured, as Copts fought back with sticks and stones.
By National Review's logic today, we shouldn't really care so much that Christians were the victims of those attacks in Egypt; isn't it bad enough and criminal enough that anybody was beaten or attacked? Who cares what the motivating factors were?

I don't excuse the religious persecution, by the way. I find it repugnant and contemptible, just as I find it repugnant that gays are targeted for beatings and rapes and murder. But National Review isn't really in a position to suggest, with a straight face, that we should focus on behaviors to the exclusion of motivations.

Mitt Romney is rich? So is Obama

Over at The Philly Post, my column this morning is about how I don't really care about Mitt Romney's attempted $10,000 bet with Rick Perry:
The fact that our presidential candidates are rich isn’t a big deal. The fact that Mitt Romney wants to make a $10,000 bet isn’t a big deal. The fact that Romney and Newt and Perry all the rest of them want to govern the country on behalf of the rich—that’s the big deal. The fact that they want to do so at a time of skyrocketing income inequality is a big deal.

Instead of having a forthright discussion about those issues, though, we’re forced to sit through a kind of minstrel show where rich candidate after rich candidate after rich candidate pretends to be a “regular guy” with the “common touch.” And it has nothing to do with whether or not that candidate would be a good president.
Obama is among the rich candidates, incidentally, and Republicans are just as interested in tarnishing him with a silver spoon. To wit, take Andrew Malcom's column in today's Investor's Business Daily, which takes the Obamas to task for all their ... Christmas decorating:
The extravagance of 2011's decorations, however, are striking given the widespread joblessness, pale economic growth, home foreclosures and grim outlook for 2012, not to mention the incumbent president's historically low approval rating heading into his reelection bid.

How simple, politically astute, symbolically helpful and cost-effective it would have been for the Obamas this year to say that in sympathy with so many struggling countrymen, they were curtailing holiday decorations to match the sacrifices of others.
How tedious. I could get into all the ways that White House Christmas decorating isn't just about the family occupying the White House, but serves as part of the national celebration, but ... meh. How tedious.

Obama is comfortable. Romney is comfortable. There is no likely candidate for president who isn't far and away richer than the rest of us. So who cares? The question is: Who do you trust to govern on behalf of your interests? Net worth makes little difference in answering that question.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Does intervening in Uganda meet the Mathis Test?

Ooh. Self-referential headlines are ugly, aren't they? But back when President Obama announced the United States would intervene in Libya's civil war, I set out a list of questions to help guide me through decisions on supporting or not supporting America's military interventions abroad. Now that Qaddafi is dead, it's a good time to apply those questions to America's latest intervention—the sending of 100 troops to Central Africa to aid the fight against the brutal Lord's Resistance Army.

Here are the questions, slightly revised:

A: Does the party against whom the United States is considering military action threaten U.S. security? No. The Lord's Resistance Army isn't attacking the United States or United States' interests. Now that the U.S. is getting involved, though, maybe that changes.

B: Is the party against whom the United States is considering action committing genocidal-levels of violence, such that even by the standards of war or civil war the conscience is shocked? Yes. The numbers are staggering. LRA's campaign of terror in Uganda has displaced 2 million people; the forces are said to have raped, mutilated, or abducted another 66,000 residents; and Michael Gerson's account is especially striking: "But (LRA leader Joseph) Kony’s crimes are vivid at close hand. When I was there in 2006, I talked to a boy forced by LRA rebels to execute his neighbors in order to break his ties with the past and to deaden his sympathy. I met another who was forced to bow in Kony’s presence — the rebel leader claims divinity — but who dared to look up in curiosity. The LRA soldiers took out one of the boy’s eyes in punishment." The conscience is shocked, and this violence is taking place on a widespread level to destabilize and horrify an entire region. It's important to note that humanitarian reasons—while significant—aren't as important as national security when weighing these questions. Answering "yes" here doesn't necessarily mean we should send the troops.

C: If the answer to (A) or (B) is "yes," are there non-military means that could effectively mitigate the threat? No. The Lord's Resistance Army is a non-state actor; sanctions wouldn't work in this case.

D: If the answer to (C) is "yes," do that. If the answer to (C) is "no," then: What is the desired end state of U.S. military action? A return to a previous status quo? Regime change? What? I'd have to say the death or capture of Joseph Kony. He claims divinity for himself; he runs the LRA as a cult of personality. Cut off the personality, and the cult is likely to be greatly diminished.

E: What is the worst-case scenario that could develop from U.S. military intervention? Is the scenario more or less threatening to U.S. security than the current threat? That LRA, which has ignored the U.S., becomes motivated to attack America and its interests because of the 100 U.S. troops that are helping track him down. From a security standpoint, the potential costs of blowback are more than the costs of doing nothing. But how likely is that blowback? We probably wouldn't know until the attack occurred.

F: Does the United States have the military and financial resources to bear the burdens of that worst-case scenario? Yes. At 100 troops, our footprint is light and the cost—as these things go—is unlikely to break the federal bank.

This series of questions doesn't produce a neat, mathematical "yes" or "no" answer. On the "for intervention" side, you have the serious of Kony's acts, the inability to address them through non-military means, and the relative cheapness of the operation from a U.S. perspective. On the "against intervention" side, though, you have the fact that Kony doesn't now threaten U.S. security—but that intervening raises the likelihood he will.

And that's, ultimately, why I come down against the U.S. deployment to Central Africa—though it's a closer call, in my mind, than the Libya intervention. The U.S. troops are supposedly going there on a training mission, to "advise" the African troops on how best to combat the LRA and pursue Kony; they only shoot if shot at. Being there makes it quite likely they'll be shot at, and shoot. At that point, we're at war, even if minor. To what good end?

The interesting thing about the deployment is that it is, apparently, an effort to help the countries of Central Africa help themselves, by training troops from those countries on how to pursue Kony and battle the LRA. That's going in the right direction. If there's a way to do that without putting armed U.S. troops in the field against this villain, I might well support that.

Final thought: This set of questions almost certainly leads to a U.S. foreign policy that is a good deal more risk-averse and less adventurous than we've had in the post-Cold War era. I'm OK with us. I want our leaders to clear a high bar before taking us to war.

John Yoo: Obama didn't kill Qaddafi enough

Torture advocate John Yoo gives Obama some credit for Qaddafi's downfall, but with a caveat:
But Obama does not get full credit, I think, because he took so long to intervene. Recall that the U.S. intervened only after the U.N. Security Council approved intervention. Obama chose to wait until Qaddafi had driven the rebels into a last holdout in Benghazi. He chose to restrain our operations along the lines set out by the Security Council, which forbade ground troops. This prolonged the ouster of Qaddafi into a full-blown civil war and resulted in more disintegration of the nation’s institutions than was necessary. To the extent that it is harder to get a new government to stand up and to collect and control Libya’s arms, part of the blame must also go to Obama’s delay because of his undue sensitivity to foreign opinion and the U.N.
Yoo doesn't really offer a basis for American intervention into Libya's foreign affairs that would demand unilateral American action, though. In the absence of a threat against Americans or U.S. soil—and Qaddafi posed none—President Obama was exceedingly wise to partner with other nations in the matter, lest the whole thing look like a bit of American empire-building ... a perception that might actually damage our interests in the Middle East, not strengthen them.

I don't think there was a sound American basis for intervening militarily. I feel certain that President Obama's decision to go to war there was constitutionally suspect, and that Congress was feckless in exercising its own power over the matter. For John Yoo, though, the world is endless ticking time bombs that can be solved only with the power of an unchecked Imperial Presidency. Whatever you think about that attitude, it is not keeping with the best traditions of American governance.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Michael Gerson on Uganda and the president's conscience

Michael Gerson offers what I think is the best defense of the president's decision to send 100 American soldiers to Africa to aid in the fight against the Lord's Resistance Army, but I think he makes a slight misstep at the end:
Some critics insist that military force should be used only to secure the narrowest definition of national interests. But it is the president, not his critics, who must live with the ethical consequences of inaction. And most presidents conclude, as Obama has done, that a broader national interest is advanced when America aids its friends and shows its decency.
I think most of us want our president to have a conscience. But the presidency isn't about the president's conscience—few men or women who hold the office will leave the White House with their souls unbruised, I suspect. The president, to some extent, is required to get away from the mushiness of his own feelings and make cold, clear-eyed decisions based on A) what is allowed and permitted by the Constitution and B) what best advances and defends the interests of the American people. There's a cost-benefit calculation involved in the latter decision, and Gerson may have convinced me it's worth it in this case, as long as the American footprint remains very small and limited. But I don't really much care about the president's feelings about this. It's the national interest that should matter, no matter how narrowly or broadly defined. The president's gut is not the same thing.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

President Obama, and the assassination of an American citizen

Ben and I talk about the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki in this week's Scripps Howard column. Rather than do our usual point-counterpoint thing we did something new and rare for us: We agreed, and combined a single column explaining our shared civil liberties concerns. An excerpt:
How was al-Awlaki marked for death? According to the Washington Post, the Justice Department wrote a secret memorandum authorizing the lethal targeting of al-Awlaki. Reuters reports that al-Awlaki was then targeted by a secret White House committee -- and that the president's role in ordering the decision is "fuzzy."

If killing al-Awlaki was justified, then why is both the process and the justification for this killing secret? As the Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf observed, "Obama hasn't just set a new precedent about killing Americans without due process. He has done so in a way that deliberately shields from public view the precise nature of the important precedent he has set."

There is a precedent for letting the government operate quietly on matters of national security, while ensuring a minimal level of due process. In 1978, Congress -- reacting to Watergate-era scandals -- established the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, empowering the judicial branch to monitor and approve of wiretapping against suspected foreign intelligence agents in the United States. That court has rarely denied a wiretapping warrant, but it has served as the public's check against executive branch overreach. That's an example Congress might contemplate anew.

Perhaps al-Awlaki deserved to die. But the best way to ensure the government doesn't abuse its power -- or use it later on merely to silent inconvenient critics -- is to provide checks, balances, and some level of transparency.

Friday, September 30, 2011

If you care about civil liberties, can you vote for Barack Obama?


I wrote this in April. Given today's assassination of a U.S. citizen with Al Qaeda ties, it's a good time to restate it.
First, do no harm.

That's where I start with my philosophy of governance. Maybe it sounds conservative. I don't think conservatives would have me as one of their own, though, because I think it is also wise—where possible—for republican government (as the servant of the community) to provide services we can't otherwise provide for ourselves. A safety net for the poor. Universal healthcare. NPR. Stuff like that.

But a government charged with providing such services to—and on behalf of—the citizens has a basic obligation that supersedes those: Do no harm.

Do not torture people.

Do not lock away people without due process of law.

Do not eavesdrop on people without a warrant.

Do not subject people to cruel and unusual punishment.

Do not deprive people of their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

If a government cannot do those things, the rest—the social services, the safety net—is just a payoff. If a government cannot do those things, then it is probably no longer a government that derives its power from its citizens, but instead is (or is on its way to becoming) a government that rules its citizens. It's not always easy to tell the difference between the two, but the distinction is there—and it is important.

I have lost confidence in the ability of Barack Obama to first do no harm.

He is in charge of a government that—despite promises to end torture—is clearly trying to break the will of one of its own citizens in a military brig.

He is in charge of a government that prosecutes suspected terrorists in whichever format seems most likely to guarantee a win for prosecutors, instead of giving every suspect equal access to the law.

He is in charge of a government that seeks ever more-expansive ways to spy upon its citizens. He is in charge of a government that claims the right to kill a citizen without any kind of legal proceeding. He is in charge of a government that proclaims itself legally immune from efforts to hold it accountable for transgressions. And he is in charge of an administration that reserves to itself the right to make war without permission from Congress.

I voted for Barack Obama in 2008 because I was mad. I was mad at George W. Bush for doing everything I've listed above, plus a few other things. I was kind of mad about Republican governance that seemed interested, mainly, in catering to the interests of the rich, but I was mostly mad about how the Bush Administration had reserved to itself unlimited, abusive wartime powers—in the name of prosecuting a war without end. Obama seemed to promise more than that.

He has delivered, on these matters, almost exactly what came before. I can no longer trust Barack Obama, or the Democratic Party, to be truly on the side of civil liberties.

Adam Serwer, a liberal, wrote: "Point is, though, if you voted for Obama in 2008 expecting a restoration of the rule of law, a rejection of the Bush national-security paradigm or even a candidate who wouldn't rush headlong into wars in Muslim countries expecting to turn back the current of history through mere force of will, then you don't have a candidate for 2012. You probably don't have a party either." He is right.

Conor Friedersdorf, a conservative, wrote: "Since his January 2009 inauguration, President Obama has embraced positions that he denounced as a candidate, presided over a War on Drugs every bit as absurd as it's always been, asserted the unchecked, unreviewable power to name American citizens enemy combatants and assassinate them, and launched a war without seeking Congressional authorization. His attorney general's efforts to live up to his boss' campaign rhetoric have been thwarted at every turn. And presiding over the disgraceful treatment of Bradley Manning, he has lost the right even to tout his record on detainee policy. On civil liberties, President Obama cannot be trusted." He is right.

For a long time, I have paused before the decision I find I must make. Democrats are awful, but Republicans are worse. They'll do all of the above—gleefully, without any pretense of a furrowed brow—and they'll do it while doing everything they can to exacerbate inequality between the very rich and the rest of us.

After the darkness of the Bush years, I came to convince myself that the lesser evil is, well, less evil. At some point, though, the lesser evil is still too evil to support. I don't believe Barack Obama is evil. I believe he is better than his opponents—but not in the critical realm where the "do no harm" rule applies. And I do not believe he is good enough.

The president has announced his re-election campaign. At this point, he will not have my vote. He has until November 2012 to earn it back. I do not expect he will.