Ruminations, March 8, 2009

Wars of choice

In a recent rerun of a Law and Order episode, one of the main characters cavalierly refers to the war in Iraq as a “war of choice.” Many who opposed this war frequently refer to it as a “war of choice,” as if that were a unique situation. All wars are “wars of choice” including World War II.

While many look at World War II as war where we had no choice, to some degree we did have a choice. Our war with Japan in 1941 was a war of choice: Japan’s choice to initiate it but we could have immediately gone to the conference table and negotiated a settlement – which was what many in the Japanese hierarchy had hoped. Germany, on December 11, 1941, declared war on the U.S. leaving us little choice; however, Germany’s declaration was a culmination of steps that Roosevelt took (correctly, in my opinion) that had maneuvered Germany into that response.

Wars, as Clausewitz tells us, are fought for political purposes and politics have some rationale behind them. All wars are wars of rational choice. The rationale behind the war in Iraq was that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq posed a danger; you may disagree as to whether he was a danger but that was the rationale. And it was a similar rationale that led to the Persian Gulf War on 1991.

The Vietnam War and Korean War were thought to be necessary to stop the spread of communism. They were also wars of choice. We could go down the list of wars ad nauseum but all were wars of choice.

Calling the war in Iraq a war of choice does not differentiate it from any other war in which this country has fought. Perhaps those who use that phrase are trying to say that they themselves are not pacifists and would support a war if they had no choice; ergo, since all wars are wars of choice, they are pacifists who are afraid to admit it – not that there’s anything wrong with it.

Is a Puzzlement

In the 1951 musical The King and I, Yul Brenner as the King of Siam sings a song called Puzzlement. In it, the King says that:

There are times I almost think
I am not sure of what I absolutely know.

Sometimes, it seems that the King of Siam might look at President Obama and pronounce him a puzzlement. While there are many issues on which one can agree or disagree with President Obama (e.g., healthcare, the stimulus package, global warming), those issues tend to be understood and thoughtful arguments can be made both in support and in opposition. But there are some actions he and his administration have taken that are puzzling.

• Let’s take his statement last week: "You know, the stock market is sort of like a tracking poll in politics. It bobs up and down day to day.” It’s not like that at all; the market’s trend is definitely down and represents a loss of real wealth and dire predictions for our economic future. While a tracking poll may represent one person’s probability of succeeding to a high office, to hundreds of millions the stock market represents retirement funds, college funds and savings – real wealth. When the market goes up, it creates a feeling of well-being and stimulates consumer confidence and spending. When the market goes down, it creates feelings of panic and dread and causes people to rein in their spending and that, in turn, slows the economy even more.

Obama knows this. Then why is he using the tracking poll analogy? Is it because he has no idea what to do to strengthen the economy that will be reflective in the market? Is it because he is focused on the long term and doesn’t care what happens in the short term? It is a puzzlement.

• Last week, the Obama Administration released several internal wide-ranging documents that the Bush Administration generated after September 11 pertaining to presidential/constitutional powers. “It was the duty of the government,” as former Justice Department (2001-2003) official John Yoo put it, “to plan for the worst-case scenarios.” On September 12, would we have wanted less? Congress, in fact, had directed Bush within a week of the attack “to use all necessary and appropriate force …in order to prevent any future attacks;” it then became necessary to evaluate what constitutional provisions could enable the president to “prevent any future attacks.”

Obama knows that if the United States is attacked on his watch, extraordinary steps will be required. By releasing the Bush Administration documents, is he saying that his administration will not “use all necessary and appropriate force …in order to prevent any future attacks.” Is he releasing the documents as a sop to the anti-Bush extremists? Did he release the documents to distract the citizenry from the economy? It is a puzzlement.

• Last week, Obama’s Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, presented a symbolic red “restart” button to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. This action comes after Obama told the Russians that he may not install a defensive missile system in Poland and Czechoslovakia after all. (The governments in Poland and Czechoslovakia put themselves on the line by supporting the missile system and standing up to Russia and to many in their own countries who opposed the system; Obama’s recalibrating the system has put these leaders in a very precarious position.)

The point is not that Obama should not have new initiatives with Russia or review the missile systems but that there needs to be some continuity from one administration to another and seamlessly handling that is critical. Should Obama embark on some new foreign policy initiative, would he want other countries to oppose him on the grounds that a subsequent American administration may push the “restart” button? It is a puzzlement.

• The cost of health care is not, contrary to the President’s assertion, the "greatest threat to America's fiscal health." We have had a healthy economy in the recent past and the existing health care system is not what dragged the economy down. We all understand that health care reform has been one of Obama’s objectives all along and that is not the question. The question is why he implies that fixing health care is the bedrock for fixing the economy.

Is he linking the two because he knows how to get a debate on health care going but doesn’t know how to fix the economy? Does he think that he cannot achieve a health care initiative unless he convinces us that it will fix the economy? Or does he really believe that the credit crisis, the stock market crash and unemployment will be solved by a new health care system? It is a puzzlement.

Obama seems to be approaching complex issues with a knowing confidence and a determination to fight for his programs; although, there are doubts as to his approach. As the Yul Brenner character says, “Though a man may be in doubt of what he knows, very quickly he will fight... He'll fight to prove that what he does not know is [right].”

Obama is a puzzlement.

American peasantry

Sometimes we feel that the American citizenry is treated no better than peasants. Of course that’s not true. The life of a medieval peasant was pretty bleak. They lived out in the country and often had to ride horses and cook out-of-doors at an open fire. Who would like a life like that?

We are much better off when it comes to taxes than were the peasants of yore. For example, 600 to 800 years ago, peasants in England had to work for the lord of the manor to pay their taxes. Typically, they had to work 50 to 60 days per year to pay their taxes while we fortunate Americans, according to the Tax Foundation, work 74 days to pay our federal taxes and 39 more days to pay state and local taxes. Well, maybe that’s a bad example.

We get a lot of time off through holidays and vacations – which peasants didn’t have. Americans may get up to 15 days a year in holidays plus as much as four weeks vacation – a total of 35 days off. Peasants in England only got church holy days off. Churches in medieval England usually designated upward of 80 holy days per year.

Hmmm. Maybe peasantry wasn’t so bad after all.

Quote without comment

Historian Stephen J. Whitfield writing in his 1996 book, The Culture of the Cold War: “Though the communists generally called themselves “progressives,” this book refers to them as Stalinists – not because I am oblivious to the harshness of the term, but because that is precisely what they were.”

Robert J. Kulak