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.

The Real Culprits in the Trump Presidency

We've watched a year of extreme incompetence in Trump's presidency. Not only does he not understand trade or war or trade wars or any of a hundred other topics intrinsic to governing, he lacks interest in these topics or the cognitive ability to process any data or narratives with more subtlety than a bumper sticker. Since Twitter has allowed a doubling of character limits to 280, even his tweets have taken on a curiously rambling tone, becoming even less coherent. Every successful politician represents some serendipitous match of time and destiny; it may well be that one of the chief reasons for Trump's political success is that his thoughts and policies don't need to be packaged to fit into a 140-character limit but are actually birthed whole at no more than 140 characters. Twitter was the perfect medium for Trump, a medium serendipitously designed to the exact dimensions of his cognitive limits.  

Now that Wolff's book is revealing so much that - as James Fallows says - is an open secret, pundits are coming out critical of his staff for not outing him as grossly incompetent. Among the many open secrets about Trump is the fact that the man who was already prone to repeat stories in a thirty-minute cycle has reduced that cycle to about 10 minutes. This is a man bragging about the size of his nuclear bomb button, threatening nuclear war against the poor people of North Korea whose lives have already been ruined by one madman and could now be ended by another. He's easily distracted and apparently has little interest in consequences. 

The Republican Congress, too, has been criticized for worrying more about protecting Trump than the country. Ryan and McConnell haven't had courage enough to criticize Trump on any of his tweets, positions, or evidence of madness and incompetence. 

There is a group, though, that bears the most responsibility for Trump and has not been criticized at all: Republican voters.

Republican voters excitedly voted for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. These voters cheered on an invasion of Iraq and then screamed about a stream of refugees from Iraq and the rise of ISIS out of the chaos of that country. These voters cheered deregulation of financial markets and then screamed about the Great Recession that quickly destroyed a decade's worth of jobs in just a few years. Like moths to a flame, they want their hand on the burner but are mad about it hurting. These are not people who understand cause and effect that takes months or years to play out. These people are upset about the number of Muslim refugees who have come into Europe but don't see it as connected to their insistence that we literally bomb Iraqis to liberation. These people were upset about the number of unemployed but don't see it as connected to their cheering for deregulation, or in simpler terms, removing rules that made financial markets more fair and safe. ("Why do you make our kids wear helmets when they don't want to!" Games later, "How could you let our kids get these kinds of head injuries?")

Undeterred by how badly the Bush Cheney experiment went, Republican voters went all in on a vice presidential candidate who showed about as much understanding of policy as someone who distractedly listens to talk radio as if it were background music. Sarah Palin was simple minded but photogenic, a beautiful woman unafraid to speak like an internet meme and Republican voters fell in love with her.

Most recently, Republican voters have given us a man who repeatedly demonstrated his disdain for women, his ignorance of policy, his lack of morals and his disregard for truth, data, or experts.

Republican voters will excitedly support some new candidate once Trump is institutionalized (whether this institution is a home for those with Alzheimer's or criminal convictions is as yet uncertain). It would be best if they did not. At this point conservative voters are like that friend who has been thrice married to men who have each turned out to be abusive who is nonetheless convinced that she should marry again. Someone has to tell this woman that her judgement is bad and her husbands are worse, no matter how exciting she finds them.

Republican voters are the real culprits here. If not for them, Trump would be a comical figure, a TV star who took himself too seriously but was nonetheless amusing for that very reason, like a character on Seinfeld. Instead, Republican voters who cannot tell the difference between comedy and tragedy or lies and revelations have given him more power than anyone else on earth. 

Post- 9/11 Interrogations

This week's release of information about the CIA's torture glosses over something fundamental about the interrogations.

Kurt Eichenwald, in 500 Days: Decisions and Deceptions in the Shadow of 9/11 recounts how American interrogators worked at Guantanamo Bay. Reading it, I was struck by how odd their assumption was about the folks they'd captured. The prisoners at Guantanamo were - most of them - soldiers of some kind. Many were from Afghanistan, a place where 92% of the people don't even know about 9/11. (This is not a place where the average person watches the evening news or surfs the Internet for investigative reporting. And where - between Russians and the Taliban - they've had their own atrocities to deal with.)

Imagine that al-Qaeda soldiers captured some American soldiers, took them to an island in the Middle East, and interrogated them about Bush's secret plans for fighting Islam or details about Cheney's underground bunker. It wouldn't even matter if these al-Qaeda interrogators were polite when they asked questions of the American soldiers. It would still be stupid. It wouldn't matter if the al-Qaeda interrogators offered the Americans access to American football games and BBQ or tortured them. No kindness or threat would change the fact that these men were ignorant of what al-Qaeda wanted to know.

These prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were largely low-level soldiers who were nonetheless interrogated daily, as if they had great secrets to reveal. They didn't. The men working at Guantanamo were under pressure to produce results and they tried everything from kindness to threats to torture and nothing worked for the simple reason that the men they'd captured didn't know anything useful.

As with so much in the wake of the Bush Administration's reaction to 9/11, the folks executing policy were struggling to build a skyscraper on a foundation of reinforced cardboard. Even on a good day, when you're given an impossible task, what you try may be unreasonable. And on really bad days, what you try may be immoral.

Biden vs. Cheney - Due Process Loses

I love Joe Biden. Dick Cheney? Well, not so much. And yet Cheney has won the last little tussle with Joe, and this, like so much related to Cheney, infuriates me. He has won because he got Joe to agree with an implied premise in his argument.

Cheney is upset that the Nigerian crotch-bomber was read his Miranda rights. Joe counters that the same thing happened to the ped-bomber from England under Bush's administration. Cheney doesn't think that would-be terrorists deserve rights. Joe seems to (sort of) agree with this inane suggestion, which is why the two VPs upset me.

The executive branch has a duty to execute the laws. VPs, for instance, are sworn into office promising to uphold the constitution. This seems to me a vote of confidence in our laws. And note that our laws are such that having rights does NOT mean that one can't or won't be punished.

So, when Cheney expresses his anger that someone may have hinted that the crotch-bomber (which, by the way, could make for an attention-getting chat name (as opposed to CB handle)) had rights, I have to ask this: if Cheney doesn't trust our laws or due process, why on earth did he waste 8 years of his life as the second-highest ranking member of the branch of government sworn to uphold those laws?

Biden was right to call out Cheney yesterday. He could have gone further and simply said that his faith in our legal system is so great that if an accused terrorist is found innocent he'd accept that verdict as more trust-worthy than trial by media.

I know that it is fashionable not to trust in government. It would be nice, though, if the people heading it up showed a little faith in it.

Dithering

It's no so bad to impulsively ask someone on a date but it seems insufficient as a basis for marriage. Dick Cheney has criticized Obama for "dithering" on his decision about what to do in Afghanistan. Assuming that Cheney's disdain is not proof enough that dithering is worth doing, here's something to consider.

Think about the implications of Obama's decision.

If he pulls out, we risk alienating any ally dependent on our commitment to their cause, risk destabilizing Afghanistan AND Pakistan, lose our ability to encourage the humane treatment of girls and women, lose a potential base in a region of the world that could explode into conflict, and provide the Taliban with a safe haven for plotting and launching the kind of attack that turned the date 9-11 into a tragic event.

If we stay, we continue to pump billions into a cause that has little chance of success, we lose more troops and alienate Muslims by continuing to kill both soldiers and civilians in the area, we are distracted from relationships that will do more to define our future (e.g., our relationship with Pakistan or India, for instance), pay an opportunity cost in terms of less money to spend on things like AIDs in Africa, pandemics, health care in the US, and every other single issue or problem or possibility to which the money and attention could be applied.

It is not just that the first order consequences are important and potentially counter intuitive; the second and third order consequences are worth spending time thinking through. I am going to assume that Obama is doing just that and think it is perfectly fine that he takes his time.

Time will tell, but I'd like to think that Obama is playing chess on the same checker board where Cheney was playing bumper cars.

This is me cautiously appluading

Bush rather casually decided that laws applied to him only as he saw fit. He was - with Cheney's seeming encouragement - an elected dictator. Rather than abide by laws, he apparently thought that as executive he could decide which of the laws applied. This was true even of bills that Congress sent him.

Obama might have just avoided falling into the same, "laws don't apply here" approach. Earlier, Obama said that he wasn't sure he wanted to open up investigations into the torture that was authorized by the Bush administration. Like Bush, he seemed to think that he had discretion about which laws to apply, which wrongs needed to be investigated.

The first step to returning the presidency to its rightful place as beholden to laws and the constitution is for Obama to set aside his squeamish feelings about possible prosecutions against Bush administration officials (including the panicked Dick Cheney). This is not his call and I'm glad to see that he's decided to turn this over to the Justice Department. Executives can't cherry pick which laws they apply.

Random Observations on the Pope and Other Oddities

One can easily tell who the head of the Catholic Church is. The Pope has the tallest hat. I like the idea of using such a simple signal to indicate who is in charge and think that all organizations – from pre-schools to corporations and nation-states - should use the “taller the hat, the more authority” system.

I was in the gym and did not hear the commentary, but CNN showed nuns giving the pope a standing ovation. Is that really newsworthy? Nuns clapping for the pope?

I heard that when the pope finished his speech the other day, Bush leaned forward and whispered to him, “Awesome speech.” Future historians are likely to conclude that democracies were doomed when we made a man who is basically a 10th grader the head of the free world. “Awesome speech?” Really?

I was down by the beach the other day and a couple of beach bums were walking down the side walk in classic attire: flip flops, shorts, and Hawaiian shirts. The scrawniest of the two, though, had recklessly embellished his outfit, inexplicably donning boxing gloves at some point in his day. A third guy caught up with him and exclaims, “Are you wearing boxing gloves?!” At last, I think. Someone will call him on the obvious absurdity of this. “Yeah,” the guy smiles. “Awesome!” said the third beach bum, his tone conveying nothing but admiration. I looked down the street for George W., wondering if he knew that his buddies were enjoying this beautiful spring day without him.

Last week, airlines stranded about 3.7 million travelers. (Okay, perhaps I exaggerate, but does the actual number really matter?) And yet they persist in scheduling flights for 8:07 PM arrivals, even as they miss scheduled times by a matter of days. There ought to be a rule: an airline has to be exactly on time on at least two consecutive days before they can pretend to be so accurate. Meanwhile, why not just say, “We’ll arrive sometime after 8 PM. We hope.”

Critics have decided that Obama is elitist. He is one of three remaining people who is likely to become our next president. Is “elitist” an accusation or a statement of fact?

A salesman from Provo, Utah is suing his former employer for waterboarding during a team building exercise. “You saw how hard Chad fought for air,” the boss allegedly announced. “I want you to go back inside and fight that hard to make sales.” One can only speculate that when Cheney heard about this new trend towards the trivialization of torture, he said, “Awesome.”

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.

All the News That's Fit to Post

A rare 710-year-old copy of the Magna Carta was sold at auction for $21.3 million this week. The sale price made Bush regret, for the first time, that he sold the Bill of Rights for only $4.7 million.

A fire broke out in Dick Cheney's suite of offices, near the White House. The fire was traced back to an overheated paper shredder. The fact that the fire broke out on the same day that a federal judge ordered an investigation into the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes was just a coincidence, said an aide.

Home prices dropped around the country last month. Investors pining their hopes on median home prices of $3.7 million by 2020 expressed surprise and disappointment.

Britney's 16 year old sister Jamie Lynn Spears announced that she is pregnant. Defending her decision to keep the child and raise it herself, she said, "Our mother was young when she had us. Parenting is not that hard."

Storms have left residents of the midwest without power for 10 days. Al Gore, touring the region, said "Try going without any power for 10 years, then complain to me."

Two weeks away from the first contest in Iowa, Huckabee and Giuliani are in a tie for the Republican nomination and Clinton and Obama are tied for the Democratic nomination. Pundits and reporters could not be happier. "After a year of campaign coverage, we might finally have a story," said an excited Anderson Cooper.

The wives of David Letterman and Jay Leno are desperately working behind the scenes to end the writer's strike. "He still feels compelled to do stand up every night. He stands in front of the TV and tells me jokes," Leno's wife said, "but as it turns out, he is not that funny."

The Federal Reserve is proposing new regulations for the mortgage industry. "Under the new rules, those that issue subprime loans would have to show that borrowers can realistically afford to pay." Apparently, it never occurred to them that they could simply let the subprime lenders make bad loans but refuse to bail them out when borrowers default.

Lord Voldemort Un-Masked

Tonight I completed the last Harry Potter book. Rowling has created a world and set of characters that folks will still be reading about a century from now (folks who read only about 40 pages a year and will thus need 100 years to get through the entire 4,000+ page series).

The one thing that I should have seen coming? The rather Mission Impossible-like scene in which Ron Weasley pulls off Lord Voldemort's mask to reveal a sneering Dick Cheney. It explains so much.

Cheney Tasered, handcuffed, and sent for psychiactric evaluation

Now that I have your attention, this whimsical bit of news from The Week Magazine:

Bad week for ...
Executive privilege, after a Connecticut man, captured following a high-speed car chase, tried to talk his way out of trouble by telling cops he was Vice President Dick Cheney. John Spernak, 42, was promptly Tasered, handcuffed, and sent for psychiatric evaluation.

It’s unclear to me for which of the host of reasons this guy was Tasered and sent for evaluation. His high-speed car chase? Telling the cop he was Cheney? The cop actually believing that he was Cheney? The mind reels with possibilities.

You've Been Tagged - Mention a "Censored" Story on Your Blog

The more time I spend before the bank of TV's at the YMCA, the lower my opinion of cable news. Anna Nicole, the making of Deal or No Deal, Anna Nicole, Disney allowing gay couples to wed, speculation about who fathered Anna Nicole's child, and a fireman in a bikini and wig are, apparently, the really important stories of our time.

Meanwhile, you can actually read about real stories that have been effectively censored by the main stream media at Project Censored. (I might quibble with their use of the term "censored." "Studiously ignored" might be a more correct term, but I don't blame them for using the more inflammatory word.)

What kinds of stories have our august "news" providers decided are less important than the question of who inseminated Anna Nicole? Among the 25 "censored" stories are these amazing tidbits:

* Halliburton has been charged with selling nuclear technology to Iran
* Homeland Security has awarded a contract to KBR (a subsidiary of Halliburton) to build detention centers on US soil
* Cheney's Halliburton stock rose over 3000 percent in 2004, soaring from about $240,000 to more than $8 million in the same year that Halliburton was awarded more than $10 billion in contracts from the Bush-Cheney administration.

These are just three of the stories that, in the estimation of the folks at Project Censored, have been inexplicably ignored. Do your bit - broadcast at least one of the 25 headlines on your blog. Why should the news we consume be defined by a handful of big companies intent on subordinating news to titillation? This your chance to shame the mainstream media into doing its job.
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Folks who've posted or opined on at least one Project Censored Story:
ThomasLB at Living Next Door to Alice
CCE at MadMarriage

Dick buys Duke a Yacht

In the summer of 2002, Mitchell Wade negotiated a price of exactly $140,000 for a yacht.

About that same time, Dick Cheney's office awarded Wade his first-ever federal contract for exactly $140,000.

2 weeks later, federal taxpayer money in hand, Mitchell Wade bought the yacht and gave it to his buddy, San Diego-area Representative Duke Cunningham.

Last year, Wade and Cunningham were convicted of fraud and both sentenced to jail.

San Diego-based US Attorney Carol Lam led the investigation that resulted in Cunningham's confession and jail sentence.

After last November's elections, Bush fired Lam.

Question: Was Lam fired before she could make a connection between Cheney's $140,000 contract and Cunningham's $140,000 yacht?

More here.

Cheney's Troop Withdrawal Plan

Dick Cheney has finally agreed to a troop withdrawal by summer. There is only one catch: he wants to route the troops through Tehran.

Cheney Doctrine Observation Week

Much has been made of the Bush doctrine, his decision to treat any country that harbors terrorists as the equivalent of terrorists. Less has been said about the Cheney doctrine, his proclamation that the US will respond to even a 1% probability of WMD in the same way that we'd respond to the certainty of WMD.

In this context, it makes perfect sense that Cheney would shoot a lawyer. Given that they were hunting together, Cheney could reasonably conclude that there was a high probability (I'm not particularly good with numbers, but probably considerably higher than 1%) that his friend was armed. Cheney merely responded as made sense to him.

I think that we Americans should set aside a week each year in which we all practice the Cheney doctrine in our own lives. If you think that there is even a 1% chance that someone has a gun (keep in mind that 40% of Americans report a gun in the home), respond as if they did. If you're a pacifist, hide indoors, locked in the cellar. If you are a no-nonsense kind of guy, just shoot the suspects you encounter throughout the day. (And here, unable to offer the vice president's advice on the matter, I can only point to his example: merely clip your suspect or leave him with the equivalent of a "flesh wound;" there is no reason to turn this personal observation of the Cheney doctrine into a blood bath.) If you're not sure what you are, just scurry frantically, dashing from behind the cover of cars, post office boxes, buildings and grocery store aisles as you furtively go about your daily work and errands.

Regardless of who you are, the most essential thing is to let the terror wash over you, shutting down your frontal lobes and letting the reptilian brain take over. Just keep in mind that a 1% chance of bad things happening is the same as absolute certainty that bad things will happen. Car wrecks, cancer, and, yes, even gun shot wounds are to be greatly feared during this week, seen as inevitable unless you take forceful action. While this may be the mental health equivalent of buying lottery tickets to fund retirement, it is recommended for at least two reasons. One, only this kind of fight or flight response will keep you safe throughout Cheney Doctrine Observation Week. Two, the reptilian brain is rarely disconcerted by the policies of the Bush administration.