Trade Wars, Immigration and the Invasion of Iraq

I remember feeling so utterly baffled as to why so many of my fellow Americans were eager to invade Iraq. The reasons we were given were so odd. Saddam might have weapons of mass destruction. (Without convincing proof that reason could be used to invade any nation.) This was retaliation for 9-11. (We already knew most of the terrorists of 9-11 were from Saudi Arabia and none were from Iraq and that Osama bin Laden was behind the attack, not Saddam.) We could "liberate" the people of Iraq by dropping bombs on them. Finally, the idea was that at the instant Saddam were taken out, democracy would bloom in its place. (There is no history to suggest that every community is a democracy waiting to bloom with the removal of a despot. The predecessors to democracy are more complicated by far.)

There were no experts who believed any of these weird claims. None of this made sense. And yet Americans were so excited to go do this and Bush and Cheney and Condoleezza Rice assured us that it would work. (Didn't explain how it would work or even what the risks were but instead just adamantly insisted that it would. As it turns out, this is a big sign that the person talking to us doesn't know what they are talking about.)

I never did understand how it was going to make our lives better here in the US but it did turn out to cost us $4 trillion, kill 4,000 American soldiers and somewhere between 100,000 to 2 million Iraqis, triggered a refugee crisis that still rocks Europe, was the catalyst for forming ISIS, which still terrorizes that region, and Iraq is not only now less stable but now so is its neighbor Syria. It turns out that anger isn't really a great guide to good policy.

Now Trump and his supporters are just as excited about immigration and trade as Bush and the country was about invading Iraq. Like then, this will create huge misery for others, some misery for us, and will cost us a lot.

Like the Iraq invasion, trade wars and cracking down on immigration apparently gives a lot of people a cathartic release but it is costly - like shooting up heroin before driving onto the freeway.


Trump has increased spending on border patrol. He was taken the dramatic and hateful steps of seizing children from asylum seekers coming to this country. He has claimed that trade wars are easy to win. Now he's even looking to rescind citizenship from people who have already been granted citizenship.

There are no experts who agree that trade wars are easy to win. Even the Trump administration's cost-benefit analysis of immigration saw it as net positive, and besides the rate of illegal immigration has been seriously lowered in this century. 

Illegal immigration is the weapons of mass destruction of this administration, the weird policy fixation that no expert understands but nonetheless seems to trigger every tribal instinct that drives GOP voters. 

I know that some voters are hopelessly enamored of the power to take lives, whether it be through actual killing in an invasion or in the form of seizing children from their parents as they cross the border. Obviously you people are beyond reaching. But there are some folks who don't get excited about creating misery for others who have nonetheless continued to be Republican. If this is you, if you are excited about the crack down on unfair trade and immigration, ask some important questions.

How much is this anti-trade, anti-immigration effort going to cost? 
How is this going to make your life better? 
Which experts defend this and how do they explain it? 
At least importantly, how does Trump himself explain how this is going to make life better? Is there data to support any of these claims?

As an American voter, you can increase or decrease the level of misery on the planet, including your own. Take that responsibility seriously.

Using the Iraq Invasion as a Pattern for Deficit Reduction

The push for radical reform in the budget process reminds me of the Iraq invasion.

Like Saddam Hussein's rule, the deficit is a real problem that makes people with a conscience and reason uncomfortable. This is reality. And then, from this thread of reality, the right-wing weaves a cloth of deceit as follows.

1. Make the real problem suddenly urgent. For no good reason, we had to oust Saddam now. Same with the deficit that the Republicans ignored for roughly a decade.
2. Ignore the problem that "solving" this problem will create other, bigger problems. Occupying Iraq was incredibly expensive, complicated international affairs, and got us into a situation from which there was no easy way out. Reducing the deficit when unemployment is over 9% and the economy is already growing slowly will create similar complications.

And then you simply manipulate the media into the belief that no other issue matters. With Iraq, the neo-cons won once they got everyone to believe that the only thing that mattered was that you had a strong opinion. Their victory did not start with getting people to side with them. Their victory began with getting people to think that this - of all issues - was the one that mattered. So it is with the deficit reduction. Because everyone would agree that Saddam should be removed or that the deficit should be reduced. That is not the question; the question is whether it should happen now and whether it should happen at the expense of any other option or whether this is the best thing for the country.

There are other similarities as well. Blowhards drown out experts. They insist there is only one way to make this happen (shock and awe or budget cuts without tax hikes). They replace nuance or discussion with sheer repetition. I'm sure you could think of other examples.

I fear that the right will again do their damage. Pity. One might have thought that with a Democratic president and Senate, it would have been more difficult for them to destroy the Republic. Still, destruction is always easier than building; just ask the Americans first involved in the defeat of Saddam's army and then involved in building the country.

The Use of Bad Language & Nation-Building

"Wisdom begins with a definition of terms."
- Socrates

Joe Biden got a lot of flack awhile ago for using some coarse language that was picked up by the mic. In one way, however, he avoids the bad language that seems to pervade our media and politics.

Our single biggest policy mistake in the last decade has seemed to stem from a confusion of nation-building (which we always say we're doing) and state-building (which is what we're attempting in Iraq and Afghanistan).

We had some success helping to re-build states within nations after WWII (in Germany and Japan) and let that give us confidence that we could build nations within states after 9-11. Biden seems to me the person most clear that those two are distinctly different missions with timelines that differ by orders of magnitude.

Article here.

The "Oh Nothing" Decade Is Ending

Last decade was the 90s. The decade before, the 80s. This decade just ending? We ought to give something phonetic to the 00s. I suggest the Oh nothings.

First we had the Y2k bug. Computers would crash! The market would crash! Airplanes would crash! We spent billions converting computers and software. Wait a minute. You mean all the computers are fine? What is it? Oh, nothing.

In 2000 we heard, it's a new millennium! Everything will be different! Everyone will be rich with tech stocks. Robots will bring your slippers. It'll be wonderful! Wait? What is it? Where are my millions? Where are my slippers? What did the new millennium bring? Oh, nothing.

When George W. Bush was sworn in, there was a measure of excitement. We have a new compassionate conservative! We're bringing morality back to the White House. A non-partisan approach. Leadership and wisdom. Wait? What? What is he saying? What is his IQ? Oh, nothing.

9-11! Terror! The world is ending! Lives are in danger! The economy will collapse! Wait. No more attacks? What are is Osama doing now? Oh, nothing.

Invasion of Iraq! Our troops may face fierce resistance. We'll find WMDs! Wait? What? You've found ... oh, nothing.

Blogging was going to give everyone a voice. Make us all famous. Allow the little guy to hold politicians accountable. It was going to change .... oh, nothing.

Rebuilding Iraq. A light of democracy in the middle east. Peace at last. Prosperity for those poor Iraqis. We'll give them ... oh, nothing.

Obama won the election. He was going to get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Close GITMO. Get the economy going again. End greed on Wall Street. Change the world as we know it. He was going ... what is that you said? Troop surge? Unemployment in double-digits? What has he changed? Oh, nothing.

This last year, we heard that the economy is going to crash. We'll have a Great Depression! Banks will fail! Everyone will be homeless! Wait. The economy dipped a few points and then started to rise again? What is going to happen? Oh, nothing.

In the end, the events of the decade seemed like those teaser leads the TV news uses to bring you back from break, hoping that by the time the commercials are over and they tell you the actual story you won't realize that it was ... oh, nothing.

It's Not War

The latest Newsweek reports on the length of American wars. By their accounting:

Vietnam War 8 years, 5 months, 21 days
American Revolution 8 years, 4 months, 16 days
War in Afghanistan 7 years, 11 months, 22 days
Iraq War 6 years, 6 months, 9 days
World War II 6 years, 2 days
World War I 4 years, 3 months, 15 days
Gulf War 1 months, 13 days

War is a battle to invade or repel an invasion. It may or may not topple a government when it is over. At its conclusion, either a government has surrendered or two governments have negotiated a peace.

Occupation is a battle to rule a people. There is only one official government. If there is no government change to come, no opposing army to surrender, and no land to conquer or give up, there is no way to "date" the end of that battle.

The War in Afghanistan threatens to become the longest American war because it is an occupation. You can date the fall of Iraq or the Taliban supported government in Afghanistan. By that measure the wars were short. There is no good way to date the end of the occupation - or even a good way to end an occupation.

[It's worth noting that the American Revolution also ended with victory on the side of the lesser power whose chief advantage was that they had no where else to go as they battled an occupying force.]

Town Hall Confusion

These town hall meetings in which loud crowds protest the encroachment of health care into the lives of all Americans leave me perplexed. When we invaded Iraq – a move certain to kill thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of Americans (and, as it turns out, a move that has killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of Americans) – there were no loud protests, no town halls, no “this is not my America,” cries from an angry and disenfranchised polity.

Now that we’re moving towards health care that covers millions more Americans and promises to end the 8,000 annual deaths of those without coverage, we kick into free speech, full protest mode

Post 1,000!

About 1,000 days ago, I began blogging. This, my 1,000th post, seems - rather recursively - to be itself cause for a post.

Ron's Top 12 Reasons to Blog

Politics (is mentioned in 24% of the 999 previous posts)
This is a democracy but an immature one. Why immature? Chiefly because we are given choices far more often than we are given the freedom to create. Would you like vanilla or chocolate we are asked at election time, as if dessert were the question rather than exercise or entertainment or something salty.

Right now we have self-determination in the individual sphere and mostly acceptance of reality in the public sphere. To reach a point at which we know how to engage in dialogue that creates jointly determined communities will take democracy beyond our present state of choosing between party-defined options.

And this will begin with a participatory journalism that takes commentary about politics from institutions like newspapers and TV and gives it to individual bloggers. This is easily the most exciting time for politics since the emergence of Democracies in the century between 1776 and 1861.

Absurd (19%)
The older I get the more convinced I am that so much of life – so much of you and me – is absurd. How seriously we take ourselves. How carefully we follow rules evolved out of earlier times and circumstances for different people. How ridiculous is the human drama of giving in to or resisting the animal impulses that seem to simultaneously mock and anchor our more idealized and lofty selves. This is to say, laughter still seems to me the best response to life.

Policy (13%)
Absurd is a great segue to policy: to point out that society is just a game is, of course, one big step towards changing the rules. Society is invented, just made up; policy and laws and rules and culture are ways we create this game.

Policy is essential but boring. Software crashes if the code is poorly written. Policy poorly played crushes rather than nurtures individualism, obstructs rather than facilitates the human experience, creates waste where it finds abundance, and leaves unimagined the unlived life. One reason for my optimism in spite of how much I find absurd is that we’ll find a way to better engage the imagination and reason and passion of communities in the formulation of policy through the use of simulation. The oldest simulation device is still with us, of course: that is the story. We write to lament what could have been and cheer what might still emerge.

Bush (12%)
My favorite quote from the 2008 election? Picking up on Molly Ivin’s claim that Bush was born on third and thought he hit a triple, one Senator said that Bush found himself on third and promptly stole second. One more reason for optimism? Although the man-boy left massive bills and destruction in his wake, Western Civilization may yet survive. I choose to make this mean that civilization is wonderfully resilient.

Social Evolution (10%)

Why is this such an exciting time to be alive? Because the pace of progress has accelerated so much that we may well be the first generation to be born into one age and die in another. To return to medieval Europe would be like traveling to Mars. The past is a different world. So is the future.

I still think that there is something akin to DNA for society and that evolution traces back to changes in four factors: land, capital, knowledge and entrepreneurship. The next society could be the first intentional society. We will get to witness and be part of social evolution as has happened only a few times before in history.

Barack Obama (7%)
This is a shockingly high number of posts for the new president, given that for more than half the time I was posting he was not in the public eye (which is code for – I didn’t know about him). I still have hopes for this man. He might yet be a great president.

Iraq (7%)
Perhaps the most epic non sequitur of all foreign policy history: the party that didn’t believe that government could effect changes as relatively simple as lifting people out of poverty or mitigating racism chose to use government to transform a totalitarian regime with theocratic impulses into a shining light of democracy in the Middle East. This will remain Bush’s legacy – proof that ignoring complexity might be the best way to create really complex situations.

Finance (6%)
The revolution of the last century was not religious or political: it was in finance. We created a new kind of capitalism and by century’s end, the individual was able to get credit, insurance, and investments that were available only to the elites at the beginning of the century. Like all revolutions, though, people got hurt. And continue to. We have yet to learn that the point of finance is to enhance autonomy and choice for individuals – not to enhance the prestige and profits of banks (anymore than the point of politics is to enhance the prestige and power of the king). Finance is wonderful and we’ve yet to fully realize what options it opens up to us.

Media (5%)
Blogging is the new media. Media is the old blogging. Facts are quickly becoming boring and for good reason: we want to know about realities we could create, not the ones that already exist. Right now we’re toddlers at creating a new reality, often conflating vision with hallucination, fantasies with goals. We’ll get this right yet, though. And it will do more for our sex appeal than whiter teeth. Media will become an instrument for testing policy and provoking hope: it’ll be the beta test product for societies that have yet to emerge.


Economics (5%)
Economics is where culture and habit and technology and wants and ability all spill together to create society. We are products of systems and progress is an odd dance between the individual and the system in which she finds herself. If we get the next stage of social evolution right, we’ll have an economy that is sustainable and that enables autonomy rather than is voraciously consuming what it can’t replace and fuels fear and conformity. Again, I am wildly optimistic about the possibility of creating this.

Business (4%)
We have freedom of religion for the believer – not just the pope or imam. We have freedom in the political realm for citizens and not just aristocracy. It’s time for freedom within the realm of business for employees and not just entrepreneurs: it is time to popularize entrepreneurship and extend the power of social invention to a broader swath of people. This will begin within the corporation. It’ll be a business revolution. If we don’t have it, we will collide with reality in spectacular and disastrous ways. Maybe one reason for my optimism is that I feel so strongly that failing to capture this opportunity will have such dire consequences.

Bernard (4%)
Perhaps my optimism has already given me away as someone whose psyche is suspect. If that were not enough, I did not get my first invisible friend until my mid-40s. I have become fond of dining with Bernard, learning what he has to say. I would even go so far as to claim that he is, in some very real sense, another person. Perhaps Bernard is my future – an old guy hoping to be taken seriously. Or perhaps he is just an opportunity for an alternate me to unfold into the world of time and words, a person who cannot appear in the world of time and space.

And this blogging adventure brought with it at least one major benefit I did not have the imagination to anticipate when I began about 3 years ago. I have become friends with so many of you fellow bloggers – people I now consider neighbors in this world of words. I have loved this odd forum and getting to know you. Welcome to my 1,000th post party. Grab a seat and join the conversation. Oh right. You already have.

Thanks to those of you who've guest blogged, regularly commented and given me great material to read and respond to:
Allen, Lifehiker, Thomas, Holly, Chesca, Milena, Cody, Pinky, Emily, Dave, Sarah, Norman, Damon, Ben, and Daryl.

And of course, thanks to Sandi for putting up with my penchant for thinking with my fingers so incessantly (and even for those nights when I've typed in my sleep upon her skin, waking her without a decoder ring to decipher what nocturnal message I've sent.)

Out of Iraq: The Good, the Barack, and the Confusing

Before I launch into criticism of Obama's planned withdrawal from Iraq, let me set the context. I don't think that we should have invaded. I don't think that we should be there. I am happy that Obama is serious about leaving Iraq. There. With that said, I find myself once again cringing at one of Obama's plan.

Obama said that combat troops will be out of Iraq by August 31 of next year. I find this announcement nothing but confusing.

I work with project plans for a living. In order to launch a new product, teams have to make a series of events take place: products get designed and tested or molecules manufactured and tested, and factories get set up, etc. Lots of things have to happen between now and when a product launches. It is popular but wildly misleading to simply say, "Oh. We'll launch this product in May of 2014." In the world of development, teams face so many unknowns that declaring that they'll hit a date 5 years out is just silly.

When we plan product development, it is not unusual for us to put together a plan that predicts 2 years, say, for tasks and 1 year for uncertainty. That is, we'll make two years out the goal and three years out the commitment, but we can only say that we have about a 5 to 10% chance of being done in less than two years and about a 5 to 10% of being done in more time than three years. If we want to hit market quickly we don't want to settle for 3 years from now. If we want to bring to market our best product, one in which the features and quality are great, we can't commit to two years because resolving issues may require more time than we hope. So, we forecast a range.

By contrast, leaving a country we've invaded is messy, unpredictable, and complicated. If Obama has certain prerequisites to troop withdrawal, it boggles the mind that he can predict with such accuracy exactly when those prerequisites will be met. He can, however, predict this moment 18 months from now to the day. If, instead, he just wants to leave by a certain date, regardless of what prerequisites have been met, why wait 18 months out? Why not leave sooner if the date is a commitment of his regardless of prerequisites met?

Getting out of Iraq is a great idea. Too bad that Obama either doesn't know what he means by that or hasn't bothered to tell us.

Shoe Throwing Blogger Reports from the Road (it is cold in the midwest without shoes!)

You know the difference between Muntader al-Zaidi - the guy who threw his shoes at Bush - and us bloggers? Muntader al-Zaidi actually got George to change his position.

I like the idea of throwing shoes at George Bush on 20 January as he leaves office. It could be like rice at a wedding. It might even catch on as new tradition for seeing off the outgoing president. (After 4 to 8 years in office, they always seemed to have inflamed some portion of the shoe-throwing polity.)

But I Thought That a Post-Bush World Was Supposed to Make Sense!

We have moved from talk of bailouts to massive economic stimulus packages without any intervening discussion. Somewhere in that transition I got lost.

I understand a bailout of banks. Capitalism without capital is like a party without people. If banks collapse, so will credit markets. But a credit crisis is different from a slow down. (Related, sure, but different.)

Unemployment in October hit 6.5 percent – up from 6.1 percent in September. This is not good news but it hardly seems like justification for spending another trillion or so to “stimulate” the economy as Obama's people are suggesting.

Remember how Afghanistan became Iraq without any backward glance? The Taliban hatched the plot for 9-11 and we overthrew the government that coddled them. That made sense. And then suddenly, we were headed to Iraq. No one could ever explain to me (sorry Davos – that includes you) why this was not the grandest non sequitur of all foreign policy blunders.

Today, I get a similar feeling about this talk of economic revival. We’re supposed to believe that 6.5% unemployment is historic, is awful, and requires an unprecedentedly huge stimulus package? Back in the early 80s, when I was doing my undergrad in economics, 6% unemployment was considered the "natural" rate - the percent of the work force that would probably be unemployed at any given time.

Economic stimulus is a completely different topic than propping up credit markets. Sadly, no one covering the news seems to make this distinction.

Households have been saving 0% of income for years. Now they are spending less. Spending less is a good thing - adjusting us towards something sustainable. A recession seems unavoidable as the economy adjusts to this new reality. This is not a bad thing – just an awkward thing. Like puberty.

Unemployment will go up more. So, we should extend unemployment benefits, fund education and retraining. We should make it easier on the poor and those who are struggling. These ought not to be short-term measures, though. This should be normal policy. And distinct from spending trillions.

Meanwhile, it might be worth considering the possibility that borrowing huge sums of money to fund government spending might not be the best reaction to narrowly averting a credit collapse.

Obama’s team of advisers is talking about spending another trillion or two (or three) – in addition to what has already been spent. To stimulate the economy?

Am I the only one who doesn’t see a recession stemming from a shift in the economy as different from a near collapse of credit markets? And I was so convinced that once Obama was elected I would stop feeling like I was from Mars and policy makers were from (“it’s not even a planet!”) Pluto.

Sigh. At least I'll still have something to blog about. If only it were some topic other than disasters boldly blundered into. Some days I wonder how I remain an optimist.

Success in Iraq (like everything else Bush does, it is unsustainable)

Years ago I worked with Jay, a man who had a rather droll wit. He once told me that he was having trouble with his TV. "I only get good reception if I sit on the couch and raise my right arm into the air. It is bad enough in normal times but it is really a hassle when I'm trying to watch TV while eating," he said as he demonstrated the arm up maneuver.

This image has come to me as I listen to reports on Iraq and Afghanistan. Right now, violence has lessened in Iraq. But we are paying warlords money to keep the peace. We have the equivalent of airport security procedures for people coming into Basra (imagine that every time you came back into your home town you had to walk through metal detectors and put your packages through x-ray machines) and other places. We have peace, but there is a real question about how long we can keep the one arm up in the air, pretending that this is how we had always intended to watch TV.

I wonder if the simplest way to characterize George W. Bush's administration isn't with one simple word: unsustainable. From budgets, infrastructure investment and global warming policy to his efforts in Iraq, George seems to have a knack for strategies that can't be sustained.

Fighting the Viet Cong in the Middle East

This morning, thousands of San Diegans are discussing how the Chargers could have won yesterday. Two weeks in a row, the Chargers would have won if games were only two minutes shorter.

But the Chargers are 0-2. The “could have won” sentiment is very real but largely irrelevant.

This month’s Atlantic reports that the biggest proponents of staying the course in Iraq are those who think that we could have won in Vietnam. We could have won, I suppose. The Nazis could have won World War 2.

And had we won in Vietnam, what would have been different today? Would Asia have been saved from the dominoes of communism and instead be a hotbed of capitalist activity – even places like communist China?

Why did Americans lose interest in supporting a decades-long war in southeast Asia? Because sometimes it matters less what you could do than what you ought to do. Could we eventually “win” in Iraq? Could be. You could keep that job but lose your family life. You could buy that car but not afford a vacation for the next five years. The real question is whether this victory is worth pursuing at the cost of sustained deficit spending and loss of life. Would our foreign policy be better served by investing $100 billion a year in Iraq or into research on alternative energy?

It is worth remembering that Osama bin Laden never thought he could topple the American government directly; he did, however, think that he could get us to over-react in ways that would seriously weaken our country (driving deficit spending, for instance, that could strain our financial markets) like when an immune system turns on itself in an allergic reaction.

Could we win in Iraq during the next century, as McCain proposes? Perhaps, assuming that we have nothing better to do with our time, attention, and resources between now and 2100. And assuming that the focus on "winning" over there doesn't mean that we lose here at home.

Make Sense - Not War

There are a number of inherent conflicts in Bush administration policy on terror. Perhaps the simplest conflict for this group advocating preemptive war and torture is this.

1. There are evil doers in the world who are willing to kill or hurt innocent people in the pursuit of their goals.
2. It is so important to stop these people that one should not hesitate to kill or hurt innocent people in the pursuit of these evil doers.

It rather reminds me of the bumper sticker I once saw: all violent people should be shot.

It Is Time to Sue George Bush for Policy Malpractice

But I don't understand why these sharks just thrash about on the floor and then die. They were so powerful in the ocean.

Tim Hackler asks, Is democracy a natural state of mankind?, in a provocative editorial. He offers this:

Here is a thought experiment to put things in perspective. Imagine a map of the world in 1800. color in all the countries that took part in or were directly influenced by the Enlightenment (let us say, England, Scotland, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Slovenia, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Greece, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, the US, Canadian, and the Scandinavian countries).

Now jump forward two centuries and color in all the countries with working democracies (as defined by the Economist Intelligence Unit). It is virtually the same map. Every one of those 22 nations (or their derivatives) today has a working democracy. And how many countries have a fully functional democracy but were not among, or did not spring from, those 22 countries? Just one – Japan.

I completely agree that Enlightenment thinking is predecessor to democracy - or at the very least, it needs to be coincident with it. A particular way of thinking about the world based on reason and data is necessary as a foundation for one particular version of that - the use of reason and votes in the formulation of policy.

But as with the shark, context is often the least visible thing in the equation - yet it is crucial.

The whole notion of evolution, though, depends on context. The environment determines what works and what does not – natural selection is a slow but appropriate response to the environment. Without an environment, natural selection has no traction, no relevance. The finches immortalized by Darwin’s study were different from one another because the food they ate – their environment – was different.

It is likely no coincidence that the man who though he could kerplunk democracy down into Iraq without a context like Enlightenment thinking is a man who is disdainful of evolution. “Let there be democracy,” George declared, but to no avail. He was speaking into a void.

It is not bigotry to point out that different societies are at different stages of development. It says nothing about a 6 year old’s intelligence to suggest that she is not ready for college. It says nothing about Iraqi’s potential to say that the country is not ready for Western-style democracy.

At least 150,000 Iraqis have been killed since our invasion. About 4.2 million Iraqis have been displaced by the violence (a comparable percentage of the US population would equate to nearly 2 million dead Americans and 50 million American refugees.) Now, we've reached the milestone of 4,000 dead American soldiers.

Some brave souls continue to work on reviving the shark. It’s not obvious, though, what they can do without water. If you bring a shark into the forest, you can pretty much guarantee casualties. This, more than anything else, will be George Bush’s legacy. When future generations talk about his lack of environmental awareness, they could just as easily be talking about his foreign policy as his energy policy.

A Life of No Regret and Less Reflection

In the news:

Washington - US President George W Bush says he has no regrets about the invasion of Iraq five years ago. In a speech at the Pentagon, Mr Bush said that "removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision - and this is a fight America can and must win". The president dismissed what he called "exaggerated estimates" of the war costs.

So, we know that George has no regrets. This is unsurprising, as regrets actually require enough imagination and curiosity to consider alternatives. But I am surprised that he didn't mention what is, to me, the obvious lesson of the Iraq War.


When an aging, short, overweight, bureaucrat in a suit tells you that something is "a slam dunk," what he really means is that it cannot be done.

Dick Cheney, Sensitive Soul

News:

The Sept. 11 commission reported yesterday that it has found no "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda, challenging one of the Bush administration's main justifications for the war in Iraq.

Along with the contention that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials have often asserted that there were extensive ties between Hussein's government and Osama bin Laden's terrorist network; earlier this year, Cheney said evidence of a link was "overwhelming."

I've been too hard on Dick Cheney. Once, I even went so far as to call him one of the three stooges of the apocalypse. But it turns out that I've been wrong. Dick Cheney is just a man easily overwhelmed, a sensitive soul prone to hide in undisclosed locations when he becomes emotional.

Look at his picture. It is easy to label the man as angry or hostile. One is tempted to discount his mis-read on Iraq as an inevitable outcome for a man who listens to his gut, an organ that must be perpetually in turmoil, feeding him a string of curses that would make even a drunken sailor blush. ("No, I don't have data. But my gut tells me that Iran has a secret weapon that will make our boys in uniform begin to feel oddly attracted to each other.")

But look again at that expression. Think about a man who finds even a paucity – no, an imagined dollop - of data to be "overwhelming." It is hard not to see this face as one about to collapse into tears, or perhaps cries of fright. It is rare that such sensitive souls make it to such lofty positions of power. It is time that we see Dick Cheney for who he really is. Dick Cheney is a beacon of hope for every child who has found himself crouched beneath his desk in reaction to moving poetry or reports of starvation. Easily overwhelmed, yet unafraid of power.

I feel like such a cad. I am overwhelmed with regret.

If I Had 3 Trillion Dollars

I’m offering a meme that tests the limits of imagination. What would you do with $3 trillion? This is not “take your family to Disneyland” money. This is "buy the whole Disney company" money – and then look around for another 50 companies with similar market cap.

The Bush Administration initially estimated that the Iraq invasion and occupation would cost $50 to $60 billion. White House economist Larry Lindsay said it would cost $100 to $200 billion and was fired for his effrontery. The total cost of the invasion and occupation is now estimated to exceed $3,000,000,000,000 - $3 trillion.

To put it in perspective, this would be equivalent to a car mechanic estimating a repair at $739 and then charging you $44,340 when you came to pick up the car. (“$3 trillion! For that much I could have bought a NEW country!”) To miss an estimate this badly is ludicrous; to miss it on such an astronomically huge amount is insane.

$3 trillion is a staggering sum. If you magically got $1 million each time you sang the chorus of Barenaked Ladies’ “If I Had Million Dollars,” you would have to repeat that chorus 3 million times. Assuming it took you 20 seconds per go and singing 12 hours a day, you would need 1 million minutes, or nearly 4 YEARS of singing just to generate $3 trillion.

Here are some things I could do with that much money.

I could buy the world coke – at the current street price of $137 a gram, I could buy everyone on earth one gram – and then have money enough left over to put 1 billion people through rehab at $2,178 each.

I could buy a million dollar McMansion for 3 million homeless people. If I forced them to share the homes in groups of four, say, I could house about 12 million.

I could end the hunger that kills 6 million children around the world each year – for a century.

I could retire to the south of France. Actually, I could buy the south of France.

What about you? What could you do with $3 trillion? As you answer this meme, let me know: I’ll add the links to your responses below this post. Meanwhile, sing along with the Barenaked Ladies, substituting this blog post title for their song title. It's not easy work, spending $3 trillion. You'll need some inspiration.

Fallujah is the Model?

NBC reports on how peaceful Fallujah has become in a piece you can see here, Fallajuh in Transition.

Most troubling is how unquestioning they are about how this city has become so peaceful. Quite simply, U.S. Marines monitor all traffic in and out of the city through five check points. Everyone must have a photo ID and bags, purses, and pockets are searched. Violence has dropped by 90%.

I find two things hard to imagine. One, that violence would have much room for expression here. Two, that Fallajuh looks anything like the model of what Americans thought they were buying when sold on the notion of democracy in the Middle East. Imagine that each time you entered your town or city, you had to go through the equivalent of airport security.

There are so many problems with offering Fallajuh as a model of what should be, but I will focus only on one. While this strategy makes the city more peaceful, its success depends on U.S. Marines standing guard year after year. Peace in Fallujah depends on our maintaining a police state indefinitely. As I've previously written, this suggests that even as measures of violence will drop with the troop escalation, this strategy just gets us further into the brier patch.

I don't know how we can reach any conclusion other than this: we've freed the Iraqi people from the militaristic rule of a despot for the militaristic rule of an American bureaucracy. That NBC can report on this as if it is a success is to show how much this administration and the press have distorted the notions of freedom and democracy or even what is worth fighting for.

When You've Had Enough of the Real News

Lawyers within the CIA authorized the destruction of hundreds of hours of videotapes documenting the interrogation of Al Qaeda officials. According to one intelligence official, they were never told “Hell no,” to queries about whether they could destroy the tapes, so they did. [And, sadly, this lampooning of our modern world begins with a report in which I've inserted nary a word of fiction.]

I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, announced Monday that he was dropping the appeal of his conviction for perjury and obstruction of justice in the C.I.A. leak case. Asked why he thinks he’ll nonetheless get off, Libby said that he was never told “Hell no” when he asked if he could out Valerie Plame.

U.S. representatives Monday insisted on removing firm targets for reducing carbon dioxide from draft guidelines for negotiating a successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, set to expire in 2012. Explaining that it would be too hard to enforce mandatory regulations, the Bush administration said that it is entertaining the notion of going to an all voluntary legal code – from drug uses and prostitution to murder and safe driving, it just seems like it would cost less to let all citizens simply regulate themselves.

This week, Michael Vick was sentenced to 23 months in prison for actions that resulted in the untimely death of pit bulls. When issuing the sentence, the judge said that had Vick’s lack of judgment merely resulted in the deaths of Arabs or soldiers, he might give Vick another chance but the court simply could not condone killing animals.

Oprah announced this week that Obama is “the one.” Meanwhile, Huckebee told crowds that only divine intervention could explain his surge in the polls. Both candidates promised that if elected, they would change the name of the position from president to messiah.

Led Zeppelin’s reunion concert was praised as a bargain at only $250 a seat. Stockholm is building an ABBA museum. With writer’s strike not looking to end any time soon, it is now official. Entertainment consumers have officially given up on expectations of anything new.

An assistant to the Queen of England said that the Queen has wicked sense of humor and does great impressions. “Her imitation of Helen Mirren in particular is just uncanny,” said the assistant.

Bush is said to be resentful of the media for not giving him more credit on his progress with the latest surge. In Baghdad, civilian deaths have dropped from at least 838 deaths in June to 274 in November, the AP count shows. “Now that the country has moved from a state of utter chaos to simply the least safe place in the world, I deserve some credit,” he said at a press conference. “I think that critics of my policy owe me an apology.”

Bush's Big Lie

Former White House spokesman Scott McClellan reveals in a new book that Bush asked him to lie about the outing of Valerie Plame. Sadly, Bush wanted McClellan to lie in order to restore his credibility after the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

It would be hard to think of a more poignant symbol of this lost presidency than a lie told to restore credibility. But the real lie of his presidency is not a lie that will be revealed in memoirs. Rather, it's a lie that is always and never mentioned.

One of the first lessons learned studying economics is the lesson of opportuinty cost. Any one thing you choose to do with your time or money comes at the expense of countless other things. If you spend the money on remodeling, you won't have money for a new car. If you spend the evening at the opera, you miss the basketball game.

The big lie that Bush has been telling is that nothing this country could do would better the planet or the lives of Americans more than spending a trillion (or two) in Iraq. The lie McClellan revealed pales in comparison to this. I can think of no bigger lie that Bush could have told. And this is a lie that Bush has never tried to hide. He doesn't even know that it is a lie.