November 28, 2014--Best of Behind: The Poppies of Tora Bora

First posted on November 30, 2006, this sadly is still timely. There have been reports that the opium poppy crop in Afghanistan last growing season was at record levels and recently Barack Obama revealed that he is ordering more troops to that godforsaken place and that, in spite of promises, they will be allowed to engage again in direct combat. What's old is new again--

Literally buried in the very lowest left-hand corner of page A14 in yesterday's New York Times was a four-inch-long column titled, "Opium Crop on Rise in Afghan Province."

It summarizes a UN-World Bank report that concludes that not only will it "take a generation to render Afghanistan opium free," but also notes that opium cultivation rose by 59 percent this past year. Yes, by 59 percent! 6,100 tons of poppies were produced which yielded 610 tons of heroin. This constituted fully 90 percent of the world's heroin supply.

So here's my question--What the hell is going on over there?

Along with a legitimate coalition of NATO allies and others (unlike the phony Coalition of the Willing in Iraq), the U.S. has been a major presence in Afghanistan for about five years. We defeated the Taliban, destroyed the al Qaeda sites which in fact were used to train the 9/11 terrorists, and helped set up what appears to be a version of a stable, reasonably democratic government.

True, Mullah Omar and Osama Bin Laden are still above ground, in a manner of speaking, and there is concern about a Taliban resurgence. But I ask again in regard to the poppy situation--What the hell is going on over there?

Aren't we also waging a War On Drugs? If so, it seems made in heaven that almost all of the opium is produced in the very same place where we have tens of thousands of troops on site and where we presumably control the situation in the air and on the ground.

So how about hiring Halliburton to get rid of the poppies? I know this in and of itself would bankrupt the poor farmers who depend on poppies for their livelihoods, but maybe in addition to plowing the poppy crop under we could subsidize the former poppy farmers the way we subsidize corn and wheat growers right here in America. I'm making an issue of this, even though I would vote in a second to decriminalize drugs including heroin, because it is such a good bad-example of our inability to get anything accomplished even when we have declared it a national priority.

We can’t rebuild New Orleans; we can’t teach our kids math; and now we can’t get rid of the poppies.

September 19, 2014--Best of Behind: Off With Their Heads!

This one is from March 27, 2006. Unfortunately, it could have written today--

As a secular liberal I am trying very hard to get comfortable with the idea that there is great diversity within Islam—that not every Muslim is an Islamist radical. That though the Mullahs have control of the government of Iran and run most of the Madrasses in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, over the long course of Islam there have been moderate and tolerant voices, traditions, and practices. I spend a lot of time in Spain, and although I know the period during which much of Spain was under Islamic domination was not exactly a Jeffersonian democracy, Christians and even Jews were tolerated and played open and significant roles in the government, places of study, and the economy.

But the situation in Afghanistan right now, where there is the likelihood that the courts will sentence to beheading Abdul Rahman because he 15 years ago converted from Islam to Christianity, is nudging me toward my own shrinking limits of tolerance.

Like you I know that this is now a hot political issue in the U.S., with President Bush being pushed by the hard Christian Right to intervene. After all didn’t we invade and occupy Afghanistan in retaliation for their harboring and supporting bin Laden as well as to bring democracy to that part of the world? Didn’t we help them write a constitution that attempts to straddle our notion of democracy and their version of conservative Islam? And perhaps, just maybe, didn’t some of us see this as an opportunity to do a little proselytizing on the side?

I know that the Sharia laws about apostasy were shaped as early as the eighth century and when that occurred it was viewed as equivalent to treason—after all Islam at the time was fighting for its very existence and for someone to abandon the religion was literally going over to the enemy.

But that was then and this is now. Some contemporary Muslim jurists who read Islamic history this way also point out that the Prophet never called for the execution of apostates and taught that there should be no compulsion in religion.

Islam is in no way today so equally imperiled, in spite of how many in the Islamic world view our preemptive wars, and so shouldn’t it be possible for Afghanistan to have a constitution that might serve as a model for the moderate diversity within Islam? We’ll see.

I have a further question—putting aside this history, why should conversion from Islam (or any other religion) be such a burning issue? If yours is The True Religion and your coreligionists are the only ones who will go to your version of heaven, isn’t the very fact of leaving your religion and thereby losing the eternal rewards it offers punishment enough? Why not just let apostates live on and suffer throughout the remaining years of their natural lives and after that be condemned for all of eternity to the punishment they so deserve?

Yet once again, I don’t get it.

August 7, 2014--Israeli (Jewish) Exceptionalism

The outrage and debate continues over civilian casualties in Gaza and Israel. More accurately, about what has been happening in Gaza. There have been relatively few Israeli civilian causalities and, even if there were many more, the outrage would, by comparison, be muted.

Hamas and the Palestinians are not just the underdogs in this fight--improvised rockets versus jet fighters and smart bombs--but they are also not Jews.

This must be said--being not-Jews means less is expected of the Palestinians.

More is expected of the Jews (and I mean Jews as distinguished from Israelis) because of the Holocaust. Because of it, it goes, Jews should know better when it comes to inflicting harm and worse on innocents--people who are killed or wounded not because they are enemy combatants but because of who they are.

Jews were rounded up and mass murdered in Germany, and in much of the rest of continental Europe, because they were Jews. Not soldiers, not resistance fighters. For this reason, Jews should know better. But they also know that the world stood by largely silent. And thus were complicitous. This complicates matters.

By this logic Israeli Jews, and the rest of us who are Jews, should be very careful about setting upon anyone just because of who they are. We should know that if we allow this, worse perpetrate this, "they" will come for us next. As they have for millennia.

This is the Jews' patrimony. Mine as well.

So here we are today seeing the slaughter of innocents in Gaza. Carried out by Israelis. By Jews.

That is not our patrimony nor the lessons we should have learned from our own history.

All right. Point made.

But there is another, related point to make--

To expect Jews, Israelis to act as if there is something often referred to as Jewish Exceptionalism is to apply a higher standard to them than to any other nation or people.

Where is the equivalent outrage about the United States being responsible for hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan? Yes, a few human rights group keep that tally and attempt to grab an occasional headline. But beyond that there is, again, silence.

How much "collateral damage" (that hideous euphemism that means killing of innocent people), how much has there been in South Sudan or Eastern Ukraine? How widely reported has that been? And what martial etiquettes have been assigned to the Russian-backed forces or the Sudan People's Liberation Army? Certainly not the same as those imposed on Jews and Israelis.

But stories about the 1,400 Palestinians who have thus far been killed--admittedly at least half of them noncombatants--have been on the front page of the New York Times for days. Including yesterday, explicitly, with multicolored graphs distinguishing among different categories of the dead, "Civilian or Not? New Fight in Tallying the Dead in Gaza."

This has the tincture of anti-Semitism.

It is no coincidence that anti-Semetic rallies and confrontations have been erupting in many places in Europe, horrifyingly also in Germany. This derives not just from a long history of festering hatred but from the conflation of Israel and Jews--of a nation with a people.

They, we are not one and the same. Many Jews, including me, though we recognize the existential threat to Israel that Hamas and its tunnels and rockets represent and Israel's right to defend itself, not all Jews support a separate state of Israel or the current reactionary, repressive government.

And thus to expect us to be any better than other people is unreasonable. And since it it expressed so one-dimensionally, and leads so quickly to condemnations and worse, all Jews are wise to have their radar tuned to high. Danger of the old sort is lurking.

June 16, 2014--The Middle East? Hands Off

As President Obama feels the pressure to provide military assistance to the collapsing regime in Iraq, he and we should step back and review the last 2,500 years of history. Just a few pertinent highlights!

The major lesson is that no outside power, from Alexander the Great of Macedonia to the French and British imperialists, from the Soviet Union and now the United States, no one has been able to impose their will on the region.

All interventions, all attempts to subjugate proud and defiant peoples have failed. And worse--have reverberated back disastrously on the invaders, colonizers, and occupiers.

After 330 BC Alexander never recovered; the British and French colonial powers after the First World War never recovered; the Soviet Union collapsed and never recovered; and the United States lost treasure, power, and influence in the region and I suspect will also not recover.

So what to do now?

The right answer is nothing.

We should get out of the way and allow the people living there figure out their own futures, very much including their own borders.

If we could impose a sane and just plan of our own that would endure, I would consider supporting it. But the long reach of history teaches that any attempt to do so is doomed to fail and, worse, will only make things worse.

Look at the current situation in Iraq. The Sunni jihadists have already overrun a third of the country, a country that was arbitrarily constructed at the end of WW I. From the videos showing ISIS's triumphant advance, while the so-called Iraqi army discards its uniforms and attempts to blend in with the benighted civilian population, we see the invaders already in possession of American military equipment that also was abandoned by the Iraqi army.

This was evocative of the experience in Afghanistan where the U.S., still entangled in the Cold War, armed the Mujahideen who were fighting the invading Soviets and, after defeating them (which contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union), morphed into the Taliban which proceeded to overthrow the Afghan government and then turned its weapons, the ones we supplied, on us when we invaded at the end of 2001. And does anyone doubt that as soon as we finish leaving Afghanistan the Taliban will once again take over?

Sounds like current-day Iraq to me.

Seven years ago, presidential candidate Joe Biden was ridiculed when he said that Iraq should be allowed to devolve into three countries--Shiite in the south, Sunni in the middle, and Turkistan in the north.

He was right.

In fact, he could have advocated similar things for the rest of the region, from at least Tunisia in the west to Afghanistan and Pakistan in the east.

Few of the countries in that geographic span have cultural borders--Iran (formerly Persia) and Egypt are perhaps the exceptions--but rather ones drawn for them by various conquerers and occupiers.

For centuries, for their own strategic and economic purposes, dominant Western powers have attempted to contain and control the essentially tribal people who live in this vast region. Since the end of the Second World War, country-by-country this has been unraveling. And at an accelerated pace for the past four or five years. Recall the Arab Spring of 2010.

The emergence of jihadist and terrorist groups--ISIS is just the most recent example--feels especially threatening to our national interest. But it may be more dangerous to attempt to continue to contain these aspirations and energies than let to them play out.

The genie of various forms of liberation cannot be stuffed back in the bottle. It is much too late for that.

It may be less risky to step back and allow these contesting forces to work things out. We may not like this idea or the potential outcomes; but, in reality, do we realistically have the ability and resources to impose an alternative scenario?

Do we see ourselves intervening on the side of the Shia-dominated government in Iraq allied with Iran's Revolutionary Guard? As unlikely, even as preposterous as this may sound, it is being seriously discussed.

Frightening as that prospect is--very much including the blow to our national ego--it represents another reason to back off. If there is to be fighting, and of course there is and will be, at least it will be focused within the region, internecine, and less directed toward us. That could be truly in our national interest.

June 5, 2014--Where's the Stretcher?

There are at least five interconnected issues that will eventually be unraveled regarding the prisoner swap with the Taliban.

None of them good.

First, was Sergeant Bergdahl a deserter, worthy of putting other American soldiers in grave danger as they attempted to free him?

Were any of his fellow platoon members killed or wounded in the process?

Do the high-ranking Taliban prisoners who were traded for Bergdahl present an on-going threat to Americans and our allies as we wind down our involvement in Afghanistan?

Did President Obama and his administration tell the truth about the situation--Did Bergdahl serve "honorably," as Susan Rice claimed on Sunday?

Did the prisoner trade need to occur urgently, as the administration asserted, because the sergeant was in "immediate danger" of dying and thus there was not sufficient time to consult with Congress as required by law?

It is too soon to know the answers to all these questions.

But I can put at least one to rest--the sergeant's physical condition.

I am not a physician and generally tend not to trust long-distance diagnoses, but viewing the Taliban-supplied videotape of Sergeant Bergdahl's release, it is clear that the Americans who came in by helicopter to pick him did not bring a stretcher with them.

If he was in such dire shape, wouldn't they have?

And if he was so physically endangered that it was necessary for the Obama administration to bring the deal to a swift conclusion, would he have been fit enough, unaided, to hop, as he did, into the waiting helicopter?

Questionable.

June 2, 2014--Negotiating With the Enemy

"Now you're the one who sounds like a Republican." I was happy to have the opportunity to turn the tables on Rona.

"You mean because I'm against the prisoner exchange with the Taliban?" I just smiled. "Well, I am against it so I that makes me a Republican, so be it."

"I'm just fooling with you," I said. "Some Democrats are raising questions too."

"Mainly those facing tough reelection challenges in November. Some of the same one who early on called for General Shinseki's resignation because of the VA debacle."

"I can see your point. At least, to some extent."

"You mean you're OK with us negotiating with the Taliban?" Rona asked, "The enemy?"

"I know that was the GOP talking-point way of discussing this on the Sunday talk shows."

"But they conveniently forgot that a Republican president, Richard Nixon, with Henry Kissinger, negotiated secretly for years with the Vietcong, the enemy, before finally making a deal to end the war in Vietnam."

"And, another Republican president, Eisenhower, agreed to negotiate with the enemy, the North Koreans, to end that war."

"To end wars, unless you can get away with demanding unconditional surrender, like at the end of World War II, you always negotiate with whom your fighting."

"And even with Japan, in WW II, we negotiated with them about keeping the emperor. Many in the U.S. wanted him deposed, but we allowed him to remain. So what's your problem this time?"

"I have a problem with exchanging prisoners before a larger deal can be struck with the Taliban."

"I have some trouble with that too," I conceded.

"A couple of things. First, I don't like the idea that we agreed to release five very bad guys who have been imprisoned in Guantanamo--hold off for a moment about that issue--allowing them to go to Qatar of all places. The deal calls for the Qatar government to keep an eye on them and not allow them to travel for a year--you know how much that agreement's worth--in exchange for an American soldier who has been held as a prisoner of war for five years."

"Among the five Taliban, according to the Times, which I have right here, so let me read what it says--two at least are 'senior military commanders said to be linked to operations that killed Americans and allied troops as well as implicated in murdering thousands of Shiites in Afghanistan.'"

"Correct. One was the head of the Taliban army. Bad enough guys to be held at Gitmo without trial for more than 10 years but OK to release for one American soldier. Which brings me to my other point."

"Which is?"

"About the soldier. When you sign up for combat, and all our troops are volunteers, you know the risks. You could be wounded, killed, and even taken prisoner. And the deal is that if you're captured you're likely to be held until the war is over, a full truce is worked out, and all prisoners are then exchanged. And in the particular case, to make matters worse, he may have been a deserter, going over to the Taliban side."

"But, Susan Rice and Chuck Hagel, on the same Sunday shows, implied that this may be a prelude to a larger agreement with the Taliban. We've been trying to engineer something like that for years."

"Which would be a good thing," Rona said, "But why can't we wait until a deal is struck, or at the minimum, when we're real close to having one, before exchanging prisoners? This feels very premature and, who knows, very political."

"Political?"

"You know, with the VA mess and the resulting bad political news for the Obama White House, maybe they wanted to do something that would show dramatic concern for the troops."

"And if the released Taliban get back into the fray, how many more Americans will they maim and kill? How good for our troops would that be?"

"Fair point. But I have another idea. Admittedly a crazy one."

"Shoot," Rona said.

"While we busy exchanging prisoners, why not release everyone we're holding in Guantanamo? You know, all 150. That way Obama would get to fulfill at least one of his campaign promises--to shut it down."

"Now, you're going too far."

"At least, I don't sound like a Republican!"

April 3, 2014--Very Foreign Policy

Barack Obama came into office offering the hope that he would work effectively to reset America's tattered international relations

After nearly a decade of failed preemptive wars and empty preened for having "won" the Cold War, it was time, he intoned, for a fundamental change of direction.

It seemed as if Obama understood the issues both from study and having spent formative years in the less-developed world. His very being offered the promise of new approaches--less Western, less chauvinistic, more nuanced.

During the 2008 campaign he made a powerful speech in Berlin that outlined his global vision and called for dramatic new approaches in our relations with allies, adversaries, and the uncommitted. Then, early in his presidency, in Cairo he outlined a new agenda for America as he saw us interfacing with Islamic nations and aspiring peoples. His very words, it was thought, would spark change.

There was so much hope unleashed that the Nobel Prize Committee awarded the Peace Prize to Obama preemptively. In anticipation of all that he would for certain accomplish.

But by now almost all of this early promise has been unfulfilled.

Where in the world, after nearly six years, have we seen any of this promise realized?

In the Middle East? Just yesterday Mahmoud Abbas effectively scuttled any possibility for improvement in relations between Israel and the Palestinians. In a funk, John Kerry cancelled a meeting with him and flew home. Mission not accomplished.

Russia moved into Crimea and threatens the rest of Ukraine. The famous reset button is long forgotten. Mentioned now only for the purpose of mockery. Relations are so frayed between Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin that they can barely be in the same room together.

What to make of Syria? A country, an ancient civilization destroyed while we couldn't can't figure out how to be influential much less directly helpful. Obama drew red lines and than ignored them.

And what about Egypt? We were complicit in the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak and now, after a reasonably democratic election that saw the Muslim Brotherhood brought to power, after they were deposed by the generals, we see in place an even more oppressive regime than Mubarak's. It is also impervious to U.S. influence.

Then there is Saudi Arabia. Whatever one thinks about their leadership (very little), for 70 years we have had a mutually beneficial relationship. We buy their oil and sell them arms to defend themselves from and buy-off Islamists living and plotting in their midst. Because of our feckless policy with Syria and the Saudis' perception that by showing uncertainty and weakness Iran will soon have nuclear weapons, they have not just distanced themselves from us but are actively thinking about developing nuclear weapons of their own. It may be a hold-one's-nose relationship, but it has been useful to us and our European and Asian allies and, out of self-interest, needs to be retained and strengthened. Does anyone anymore think Obama is capable of this?

Where else?

Thanks to Obama's anti-terrorist polices, including the overuse of drones and grossly intrusive N.S.A. surveillance, even formerly friendly foreign leaders such as Angela Merkel are estranged. Also, Delima Rouseff, the president of Brazil, will not longer talk civilly with Obama thanks to our listening in on her private communications. Was any of this spying necessary? Are we safer for it? It is difficult to imagine anyone believes we are.

The Japanese have less and less use for us; and the Chinese, resenting Obama's "tilt" to Asia, if they didn't hold so much of our debt, would distance themselves further from us than at present. They have not been helpful in containing the North Korean nuclear threat and equally uninterested in weighing in about nuclear proliferation in Iran. The want the oil. And, frankly, our T-Bills.

Turkey, once held up as the ideal moderate Islamic nation, is unraveling and we have totally lost influence there. And forget Sudan, Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan, or the Central African Republic.

I could go on.

Making this list late last night got me good and depressed. What, happened, I wondered, to all that initial promise now so dissipated?

One could say that sometimes out of nationalistic chaos a new, preferable order will emerge. What we are seeing are the final gasps of a failed colonial paradigm. The remnants of 18th century empires; the redrawing of the redrawn borders at the end the First World War; and yes, America's economic empire. All are in their death throes. And death throes are always painful and difficult.

On the other hand, I thought, might there be some important cases where the Obama foreign policy is actually working?

What about India, I asked myself. I haven't heard much from there recently except occasional nuclear saber rattling over border disputes with Pakistan. Weren't we substantially estranged from them during the Cold War? Wasn't India tilted toward the Soviets? Yes, but haven't we in recent years been able to establish a "special relationship" with them? Facilitated by that fact that both of us are leery of China? Actually, hasn't Barack Obama been adept at maintaining and filling in the details of what that special relationship could mean? Didn't he call our relationship with India the "defining partnership of the 21st century"?

Indeed he did, when he visited in 2010. So what have I been reading recently in the New York Times?

Sadly, more of the same.

As reported there, "Almost four years later, the United States and India have found themselves on opposite sides of the world's most important diplomatic issues," from Ukraine where India is siding with the Russians to disagreeing about U.S. military policy in Afghanistan.

A senior Indian diplomat summed matters up this way--"There is a feeling that no one in this administration is a champion of the India-U.S. relationship." That should not be. India is the second most populace nation and has a burgeoning economy. Having a sound relationship with them should be a national priority.

When looking for an explanation about how, in this instance, high hopes have been dashed, Jonah Blank, an analyst of the now nonpartisan RAND cooperation said--

In this administration there is a small group of people in the White House making all the decisions, so issues that are important but not urgent rarely get the attention they deserve.

This sounds sadly familiar. Many who have written about the inner workings of the Obama White House say the same thing--Obama has chosen to cut himself off from almost all outside influence and depends upon a very few ultra-trusted advisors who go back to his Chicago days.

He famously said after being elected, "Make no new friends in Washington." At that he has been remarkably successful

This may be a good approach to negotiating one's way though the political thicket in the Windy City but no way to run the world.

February 28, 2014--Afghanistan 2006

Kevin O'Leary was a guest last week on CNBC's Squawk Box. He is the chairman of the $1.5 billion O'Leary Fund and a co-host of Shark Tank, a TV reality show that has budding entrepreneurs pitching their business ideas to self-made millionaire investors.

During his Squawk appearance he and the hosts got into a discussion about corporate tax rates. Currently, the U.S. federal rate is 35% and is in the news as Republicans in Congress are once more pressing to have it lowered to 25%, claiming that having a 35% rate puts us at a competitive disadvantage with corporations in other countries, even socialist ones such as France where the rate tops out at  33.33%. (And while they're at it, they want to cut individual top rates from 39.6% also to 25%.)

In the UK, the GOP points out, the top rate is only 23%, in Germany 29.55%, in Denmark 25%, Norway has a top rate of 28%, and in uber-socialist Sweden it is just 22%.

Taking even right-of-center hosts Joe Kernen and Becky Quick by surprise, O'Leary said he advocated a zero tax rate for corporate profits. The same rate that prevailed in Afghanistan in 2006.

To his astonished hosts who demurred, he argued that this would allow corporations to take their resulting increased profits and invest them in corporate expansion or investment in job-creating enterprises.

Becky Quick in particular went uncharacteristically ballistic. She is usually stone faced. It's her signature persona. Being inscrutable and unflappable. But O'Leary's proposal was even too much for her and she let him have it, lecturing him that people like her and him who are among the top 1% of earners should be willing to pay their fair share in taxes, at least as much as at present.

Rhetoric aside--and what she said was rhetoric infused--what she and other co-host Andrew Ross Sorkin failed to do was cite the overwhelming, widely-available evidence about the actual rate companies pay in taxes. Not the rate that's on the books.

If on average corporations pay, say, 25-30%, maybe there is a case to be made to lower the official rate to help make them globally competitive. If there is evidence that companies that have figured out strategies to pay less in taxes and as a result have been actual job creators, again, there may be a  case to be made to significantly lower taxes for all corporations.

But the evidence readily at hand was never presented. O'Leary was never confronted with the fact that on average, large corporations' effective rate is just 12.6% in federal taxes. Even taking into consideration what they pay in state and foreign taxes, their actual (as opposed to on-the-books) rate is 16.9%.

And there is no evidence that shows a positive correlation between effective tax rates and job creation.

I'm not sure how O'Leary would have responded, but at least the discussion would have been fact-, not opionion-based.

If I know these numbers from Congressional Budget Office studies, I do not understand why Quick and Sorkin, who do this for a very nice living, wouldn't as well.

January 16, 2014--Bomb, Bomb, Bomb

I am reading about the Cuban Missile Crisis in Robert Dallek's excellent biography of John F. Kennedy, An Unfinished Life.

During the 13 days that it lasted, as the United States and the Soviet Union came eyeball to eyeball, facing the all-too-real possibility of a massive nuclear exchange, the unanimous advice JKF got from his military leaders, including Strategic Air Commander Curtis LeMay, the inspiration for General Jack D. Ripper in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, was to take the opportunity to launch a full-scale nuclear attack on the USSR. They felt that we still had the military edge but only if we attacked them preemptively.

Thankfully, for the sake of human life and civilization, JFK resisted that advice and here we are living to tell the tale.

Kennedy had been burned by a version of the same kind of advice 18 months earlier when the CIA and his generals advised the new president to support the invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles in an ill-fated attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro.

From that fiasco, JFK learned to be suspicious of his military advisors. Their job, he realized, was to wage war. Not peace. And as commander in chief, with the wisdom of our Founders that the military should be under civilian control, he needed to be leery of predictable advice to attack and invade.

I was reminded of those fateful times the other morning when former Defense Secretary Robert Gates appeared on Morning Joe to promote his memoirs, Duty.

As has been widely reported in the press, not only does Gates take frequent swipes at Joe Biden (inaccurately claiming that in 40 years of public life he has always been wrong in his policy recommendations) but also one of his presidential bosses, Barack Obama. Obama, he claims, not only did not "passionately" support the mission of soldiers mired in Afghanistan, but also was to "suspicious" of his generals' advice.

To that I say, "Thank you President Obama."

Let us recall that it was his generals who pressed him to send more troops to Afghanistan in another ill-fated effort to defeat the insurgents and stabilize the Afghan government under corrupt President Hamid Karzi. And beyond that, as Obama became more aggressive in declaring that we would withdraw all combat forces from there by the end of this year, it was his generals who went public, advocating that we leave a residual force in Afghanistan for 20 more years.

As JFK said in January, 1961--

When at some future date the high court of history sits in judgement on each of us, it will ask: "Were we truly men of courage--with the courage to stand up to one's enemies--and courage to stand up, when necessary, to one's associates?"

Gates should know that history as well as that of the Eisenhower presidency before taking a too causal look back on his service under George W. Bush and Barack Obama. At least eight times during his presidency, former Allied Supreme Commander, General Dwight Eisenhower faced down advice from his generals to preemptively wipe out the Soviet Union with massive strikes. They pressed what became a familiar mantra--that the U.S. would for only a few more years have the nuclear edge and that since war with the USSR was inevitable, we should get it over with while we had the advantage.

And at least eight times, Eisenhower, who more than any president was skeptical about such military advice, declined to launch the nukes. Better than anyone else, Ike knew that as surgeons will more often than not say, "Operate," generals will invariably say, "Bomb. "

Under the radar right now, while focusing most of our attention on Governor Chris Christie's exquisite agony, members of the U.S. Senate are quietly advancing legislation to ratchet up the sanctions against Iran. At the very moment that for the first time in decades there is a glimmer of hope that we may be able to negotiate our way to some sort of accommodation with them about their nuclear weapons program. Iran has already signaled that if this new sanctions bill is approved by Congress, overriding what would be a certain presidential veto, they will back out of further negotiations.

Maybe this is a geopolitical example of bad cop (Congress), good cop (Kerry-Obama); but with the Israeli leadership doing what it can to derail negotiations and Congress, very much including many Democrats under the influence of the Israel Lobby, we would be faced with another dangerous situation where bombing not negotiating threatens to become policy.

May 9, 2013--Tea Party in Syria

I suppose, flushed with the delusion of success in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the two senatorial amigos, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, have been turning up the heat on Barack Obama to get militarily involved in the civil war in Syria.

Even the justification is the same--as with Saddam, it is being trumpeted, Syrian president Basha al-Assad, possess weapons of mass distruction (WMDs) that he is deploying against his own people. They should recall that after we toppled Hussein, we found none and it may be that the evidence in Syria is just as ambiguous--yes, chemical weapons appear to have been employed but maybe not by Assad. It is emerging that it might have been the Syrian rebels who used them on themselves, perhaps to incite war mongers such as McCain and Graham, and to impel President Obama to too casually talk about how their use would be a "game changer" that crossed a "red line." Meaning . . . meaning, I am not sure what. And it sadly appears that Obama himself didn't have a clear plan in mind when he uttered these macho clichés.

McCain and Graham are on Senate committees that provide access to information about what is actually going on in Syria, and it is not a pretty picture. But just from reading a decent newspaper--if they don't have time to do their committee homework (after all it takes up hours and hours to appear on TV every day)--they would see that in addition to the hideous bloodshed, al Qaeda forces are taking more and more control of the fighting, and to arm them would only provide these jihadists with weapons to turn against us and our allies after they inevitably take over. Another lesson from Afghanistan--when we armed the Mujahdeen who were resisting the Russian occupation of their country, after Russia lost (a further lesson) they used those weapons, are now using them, against U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

The French ambassador to Afghanistan soberly said recently that as soon  as the western presence is further reduced (by 2014) things there will revert to Taliban control and girls and women will once again be forced to wear burkas. No wonder, then, that President Hamid Karzai desires to see the suitcases of CIA-supplied cash continue to be delivered so he and his family can sock away their blood money in Abu Dhabi. The good news for the Karzais--they have been assured by the U.S. government that these bribes will keep on flowing. One less thing for them to have to worry about.

Meanwhile, in McCain-Graham's other favorite Middle Eastern conflict, Iraq, we are seeing evidence of an incipient civil war. In this case, as in many other parts of the region, the roots of the conflict are religious and cultural, with faction pitted against faction.

In Iraq it continues, as it has for many centuries, to be Shiites versus Sunnis. Saddam's regime was run largely by the minority Sunni community through the Baath Party. When he was taken down, in spite of our efforts to see a diverse, democratic government replace his brutal dictatorship (at the time it was called "nation-building"), this policy pipe dream lasted for just a few years because all the while the majority Shia, having taken control, slowly and deliberately squeezed out the remaining Baathists.

So what in response have the displaced and discriminated against Iraqi Sunnis been up to? As we see in Egypt and Syria, they are turning for support to the most extreme Islamist elements who, if left to their own devices, would turn the entire region into a series of Islamic republics.

Let us not be naive about this agenda. Over time we will see the Muslim Brotherhood here; al Qaeda there. Jordan could be next and, who knows, maybe even Saudi Arabia after that, where the ruling dynasty has been paying off Osama bin Laden's Wahhabis in order to keep them from overthrowing the the House of Saud.

But the trajectory in this extremest direction is clear. And unwittingly we have been helpful in encouraging it by the very fact of our involvement After all, how would we feel, what would we do, where would we turn if a powerful outside force invaded and occupied our country? Don't you think that extremist elements in our own country--in the NRA or Tea Party, for example--would attempt to take control of the situation? I suspect the militias and dead-enders would be more effective in grabbing power than our political and economic elites.

If all else fails for McCain and Graham, there's always Benghazi. Who would have thought I'd be missing their third amigo, old Joe Lieberman.