Killer Politics Page 4

  In this instance, Obama’s global popularity has paid big dividends. In a very diplomatic manner, Obama reminded the rest of the world that defeating al-Qaeda is in everyone’s best interest. He has also wisely reframed this fight not as a war against terror but as a fight against al-Qaeda—the specific group that attacked us on 9/11. The president’s eighteen-month timeline for success may prove to be too optimistic, but giving a timeline sends a message of urgency to the Afghanistan government and, let’s face it, placates the left wing of the Democratic Party.

  I applaud the president’s pragmatism as he deals with the bad hand he was dealt by the Bush administration, and I took as a good sign his somber welcome at Dover Air Force Base in October 2009 of the bodies of eighteen soldiers slain in Afghanistan, something neither Bush nor Cheney ever did. President Obama saw the flag-draped caskets and the weeping families, and he needed to. Every president needs to feel that kind of pain. War should never be easy.

  America lost more than 300 soldiers in Afghanistan in 2009, and has lost more than 900 total since the war began in 2001. More than 2,700 soldiers have been wounded (and not returned to duty), according to official military statistics. Some estimates place civilian deaths in Afghanistan well above 7,000.

  Most Americans seem to believe that the fight against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan is necessary. Upon acceptance of his Nobel Peace Prize, President Obama said, “We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations—acting individually or in concert—will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.”

  However, I do not believe the preemptive war with Iraq was justified. I think it was a blunder that set a dangerous modern-day precedent for preemptive war and seriously damaged U.S. credibility around the world—something only time and credible action in the future can mitigate. History alone knows how this war will play out. What we can be certain about is that Bush’s Iraq folly placed a tremendous financial burden on the nation that has critically weakened us both militarily and financially.

  The number of American casualties in Iraq has surpassed the 2,973 killed on 9/11. The more than 4,300 casualties in Iraq may seem small by historic wartime benchmarks, but it’s not a small number if you’re the one visiting the grave on Memorial Day. Another 31,000 soldiers have been injured in Iraq. The civilian death toll in Iraq is an estimated 100,000.

  THE OTHER BURDEN OF WAR

  Along with the human cost, there’s the financial burden of war—a burden that has human costs, too—in terms of higher taxes, lifelong debt for our children, and lost opportunity to rebuild infrastructure at home. War, first and foremost, is big business. America is the biggest arms dealer in the world. In 2009, the estimate of U.S. government arms sales was $40 billion, up from $32 billion in 2008. In the short term, selling arms builds relationships between America and our allies, like Israel, and keeps production lines moving, but the arms business is not always an efficient process. A 2008 Washington Post report said “the Government Accountability Office found that 95 major [military] systems have exceeded their original budgets by a total of $295 billion.” Look, I know we need new technologies to simultaneously make our country more secure while keeping our soldiers safer, but I can give you 295 billion reasons we need to ratchet up the oversight.

  How much of the 2010 projected $3.6 trillion national budget goes to military spending? According to the Department of Defense, about $670 billion, which includes $130 billion for Iraq—assuming the exit strategy goes according to plan. The price of “victory” is more than $10 billion a month!

  If you add in military-related costs that fall outside the defense budget, the real total of the military expenditures is closer to $1 trillion a year. In any given recent year, the United States has accounted for about half of global military spending—six times as much as China and ten times as much as Russia.

  According to a study by Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize–winning economist, and Linda Bilmes, an economist at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, the total estimated cost of the war when all is said and done will be $3 trillion. If you include Afghanistan and relatable costs to the economy, the total approaches $5 trillion!

  Compare that to the cost of universal health care coverage over ten years—even the most extreme estimates have been around the $1 trillion mark. We could insure the next generation with what we have squandered in Iraq.

  BIG OIL WEAKENS OUR DEFENSE

  There are many things other than war that support or undermine a nation’s ability to defend itself, some of which, like economic strength and an abundant food supply, will be more fully explored when we talk about the other three pillars. There are also national policies, including the way we approach energy consumption and procurement, that directly affect our national security, including the ways we deploy our troops.

  I don’t believe for a moment that we would focus on the desert sands of the Middle East the way we do if all that oil wasn’t critical to our power.

  In reality, our soldiers don’t just protect against invasion at home, they protect our economic interests abroad. America imports some $300 billion in oil each year—20 to 25 percent from the Middle East—to keep the economy humming. (Close to 70 percent of all the oil we consume is imported.) So what you pay at the pump is much more than you think. Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk says the price of gas should probably be $10 per gallon, and I think he’s in the ballpark. There’s no line item breaking down the exact cost to us of subsidizing Big Oil, but a 2005 study by the International Center for Technology Assessment calculated the annual cost of U.S. military expenses related to protecting foreign oil for our use might approach $100 billion a year.

  It’s important to understand the hidden costs in oil because when it comes to energy independence, free market purists rail against subsidies for biofuels or other homegrown energy sources, like solar or wind technologies, without ever acknowledging that the existing system already dramatically subsidizes Big Oil. Keeping one or more of our eleven carrier groups parked in the Persian Gulf doesn’t come cheap.

  The point here is obvious. The less we depend on the rest of the world for energy, or anything for that matter, the less pressure we put on our military.

  We should not shy away from subsidizing domestic energy to free us from dependence on foreign oil—starting with OPEC’s oil. This outfit (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) has had us hamstrung for years. Let’s find a way to stop doing business with them. Politically and militarily, that makes us more independent and stronger. Energy independence is a major step toward better defending the nation.

  We need to phase out our use of petroleum-based fuels in favor of clean and renewable energy, like hydrogen, but we also need to recognize that there will be a long transition phase. Ethanol from corn may not be ideal, but it should be part of the transition until cellulose-based ethanol is fully developed. Synthetic fuels from coal should be part of that transition as well. Until these emerging fuels can stand on their own in the marketplace, government subsidies almost certainly will be necessary. When the cost of these subsidies is debated, it will be important to remember that Big Oil is already being subsidized in dollars and in American blood.

  THE PATRIOT ACT VS. THE CONSTITUTION

  After 9/11, the Bush administration pulled the Patriot Act out of some neocon’s drawer somewhere and shoved it down our throats. If you voted against it, the implication was you were soft on terrorism. With little debate and without many people even having read the law that granted sweeping new police powers and steamrolled right over the Constitution, the Patriot Act was approved.

  The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees that “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause….” The Patriot Act violated the Fourth Amendment; it o
pened the door to warrantless wiretaps. In 2007, a federal judge struck down the part of the Patriot Act allowing the FBI to obtain e-mail and telephone data from private companies for counterterrorism investigations.

  Still, because of this act, we may now have to redefine what an illegal search is and what the inevitable ramifications are of being searched. Do we want to live in a world in which every e-mail and every statement is analyzed to decide if we are an enemy of the state? Do we want our credit card purchases and library records examined by the government? Do we want them tracking us by our cell phones? What about facial-recognition software? It can be used to spot known terrorists in airports. But it could also to be used to track your every move. Your cell phone tells Big Brother every move you make.

  “The Patriot Act’s key provisions focus primarily on data collection. The underlying assumption is that the real problem here is a lack of information,” said James Walsh, former executive director, Project on Managing the Atom/Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, in an opinion piece in the San Francisco Chronicle. “The history of intelligence failures suggests, however, that often the problem is not a lack of data, but rather making sense of the data you already have. Sometimes it’s the case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand has. After the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the FBI discovered that it already had copies of maps and detailed plans of the attack before it happened.”

  After dissecting all the missed opportunities to thwart the plot to destroy the Twin Towers in 2001, it became obvious that turf battles between the FBI and CIA and other federal agencies were part of the problem. Even where there were no turf battles, there was no information shared. Had information been shared and proper procedures followed, most of the hijackers would never have been allowed to board. Once they were aboard, the communication between the FAA and the military was so slow, an effective defense—which would have meant shooting down passenger jets—could not be mounted. Communication between President Bush and the White House could not be established for some time during the crisis. In short, the intelligence part of our defense system failed.

  Before 9/11, the Bush administration had many pieces of the terror plot puzzle sitting right in front of them, but they were unable to put them together in time. British Intelligence had warned two years earlier that planes might be used to attack American targets. The Bush administration knew this. By the summer of 2001, elements of the government knew a terrorist attempt by al-Qaeda was about to happen. The president even received a memo while on vacation in Texas about bin Laden’s determination to attack within the United States. But no action was taken. If you had reliable intelligence that terrorists were going to attack within the United States, wouldn’t you at least increase security at airports? Wouldn’t you advise the FAA, the military?

  Despite his warnings to the incoming president, Bill Clinton bears responsibility, too. After the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the terrorists were brought to justice, but an examination of the holes in national security should have ended the turf wars and improved information sharing between agencies like the FBI and the CIA. You can’t put the puzzle together if people are hoarding some of the pieces.

  After a terrorist plot was uncovered and a suspect arrested in Denver in 2009, we learned that law enforcement agencies both domestic and international had been tracking those involved for two years. Najibullah Zazi, a native of Afghanistan, reportedly received training in al-Qaeda camps. That indicates a much more functional flow of information, and it suggests that good old-fashioned police work, properly authorized, is still the most effective defense against these criminals. Over the course of a two-year investigation, there is plenty of time to obtain proper search warrants.

  THE PATRIOT ACT WAS AN OVERREACTION

  We got a wake-up call in 1993, but when it came to improving the flow of information between law enforcement agencies, we didn’t answer the call for eight more years, and when we did, we overreacted.

  The Patriot Act was an overreaction.

  Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) observed in 2005, after terrorist bombings in London, “Let’s remember that London is the most heavily monitored city in the world, with surveillance cameras recording virtually all public activity in the city center. British police officials are not hampered by our Fourth Amendment nor by our numerous due process requirements. In other words, they can act without any constitutional restrictions, just as supporters of the Patriot Act want our own police to act. Despite this they were not able to prevent the bombings, proving that even a wholesale surveillance society cannot be made completely safe against determined terrorists. Congress misses the irony entirely. The London bombings don’t prove the need for the Patriot Act, they prove the folly of it…. Most governments, including our own, tend to do what they can get away with rather than what the law allows them to do. All governments seek to increase their power over the people they govern, whether we want to recognize it or not…. Constitutions and laws don’t keep government power in check; only a vigilant populace can do that.”

  What we don’t know is what we don’t know. What I mean by that is that only a select few high-ranking government officials have an idea of the methods being used to gather information and how much directly violates the Constitution. Nor do we have any idea how much information is being gathered on the Internet, through eavesdropping, or even from spy satellites, and how much of it is valuable in the fight against terrorism. Nor do we know how much of it has the potential to be used for political purposes—and that is where the danger lies.

  Somebody, please convince me that there is enough oversight in these matters!

  Why did we let the Patriot Act happen? It all comes down to fear. If our government can keep us fearful, as the Bush-Cheney administration did, we will lose sight of what it means to be Americans. But if we believe our ideals are too important to compromise for the momentary illusion of safety, if we can accept that the world is sometimes a dangerous place and choose to just keep living in spite of it, we will keep the flame of freedom alive.

  Pillar #2: Establish a Sound Fiscal Policy

  When, in the final days of his administration, President George W. Bush called on Congress to approve TARP (the Troubled Asset Relief Program), the elephantine $700 billion fund to steady the financial sector, I supported the bill. My gut and Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) both told me that if we didn’t rescue the banks from their own bad behavior, it would be catastrophic, affecting everyone, at every economic level.

  Conrad put it this way: “The patient was on the table, we had to do something and fast.” He acknowledged it was one of those deals where you operate with one hand and hold your nose with the other. When we secured all that bad debt, we privatized the profits of investment banks (the banks get to keep the profits) and socialized the losses (the American people get the losses).

  An awful lot of true conservatives thought that we ought to let the banks go broke. As a former Republican and a guy who still likes a balanced checkbook, I was torn. But my instincts told me that the cost of bailing out these turkeys was less than letting them drag everyone else down, too. As it has played out, it seems these measures did save us from a far worse global meltdown.

  However, Wall Street emerged as clueless and tone deaf as ever, lavishing extravagant pay on executives with government bailout money. The backlash hurt Democrats, and ironically so did efforts to oversee executive pay, which were seen as socialistic.

  We were living in a pump-and-dump balloon economy, in which stocks and real estate are overvalued (and the crooks who set it up get out fast, just before a crash). And the dust hasn’t settled yet. Plenty of smart people warned against rampant speculation in the housing market, and a whole lot of other smart people took advantage of it while the getting was good.

  If you proposed the mortgage business model that American bankers were using before 2008 to any sane society, the people would either arrest you or drag you in for psychoanalysis. But h
ere mortgage lenders earned bonuses for processing loans with escalating payments to people who could not afford the homes they were buying. (How is that not a crime?) In the days of old-fashioned banking, a banker was very motivated to do due diligence on his customers, because the bank’s money was on the line. For the bank to survive, most of the loans had to be good. But under the rules of the game that created this recent debacle, lenders were able to make these bad loans, bundle them with others, and sell them with a bogus Triple A rating to investors.

  And what agency in its right mind would rate these toxic assets Triple A? Oh, enablers like Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s, and Fitch, all of which profited immensely from this ratings charade. Meanwhile, banks no longer had to wait thirty years to profit from a mortgage. They got a quick, clean score, and passed the bad loan off down the line like a hot potato. With the quick return on their investment, banks were eager to make even more bad loans. By 2006, there were $2.5 trillion in mortgages floating around Wall Street, and no one could tell the good from the bad because, hell, they all had the gold seal of approval from rating institutions. The rating institutions “made the market. Nobody would have been able to sell these bonds without the ratings,” Ohio attorney general Marc Dann told Jesse Eisinger for a piece in Portfolio magazine.

  These false mortage ratings drove up real estate buying and artificially increased home values, so Americans did what they foolishly had been told was acceptable—they used the roof over their heads as collateral for more loans and for unsustainable consumer spending. Dumb. Instead of treating our homes as sanctuaries, we treated them as banks. There was greed on Wall Street and naïveté and ignorance in the suburbs.