I have my disagreements with John McCain regarding immigration and campaign finance, but when it comes to understanding the Iraq War, he—unlike our RI senators—is a real mensch. Here are some excerpts from his speech the other day.
No matter where my colleagues came down in 2003 about the centrality of Iraq to the war on terror, there can simply be no debate that our efforts in Iraq today are critical to the wider struggle against violent Islamic extremism. Already, the terrorists are emboldened, excited that America is talking not about winning in Iraq, but is rather debating when we should lose. Last week, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s deputy chief, said that the United States is merely delaying our “inevitable” defeat in Iraq, and that ‘the Mujahideen of Islam in Iraq of the caliphate and jihad are advancing with steady steps towards victory.’
If we leave Iraq prematurely, jihadists around the world will interpret the withdrawal as their great victory against our great power. Their movement thrives in an atmosphere of perceived victory; we saw this in the surge of men and money flowing to al Qaeda following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. If they defeat the United States in Iraq, they will believe that anything is possible, that history is on their side, that they really can bring their terrible rule to lands the world over. Recall the plan laid out in a letter from Zawahiri to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, before his death. That plan is to take shape in four stages: establish a caliphate in Iraq, extend the “jihad wave” to the secular countries neighboring Iraq, clash with Israel — none of which shall commence until the completion of stage one: expel the Americans from Iraq. Mr. President, the terrorists are in this war to win it. The question is: Are we?
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As my friend Brent Scowcroft has said recently, “The costs of staying are visible; the costs of getting out are almost never discussed. . . If we get out before Iraq is stable, the entire Middle East region might start to resemble Iraq today. Getting out is not a solution.” Natan Sharansky has recently written, “A precipitous withdrawal of U.S. forces could lead to a bloodbath that would make the current carnage pale by comparison.” Should we leave Iraq before there is a basic level of stability, we will invite further Iranian influence at a time when Iranian operatives are already moving weapons, training fighters, providing resources, and helping plan operations to kill American soldiers and damage our efforts to bring stability to Iraq. Iran will comfortably step into the power vacuum left by a U.S. withdrawal, and such an aggrandizement of fundamentalist power has great potential to spark greater Sunni-Shia conflict across the region.
Leaving prematurely would induce Iraq’s neighbors, including Saudi Arabia and Jordan, Egypt to Israel, Turkey and others, to feel their own security eroding, and may well induce them to act in ways that prompt wider instability. The potential for genocide, wider war, spiraling oil prices, and the perception of strategic American defeat is real, Mr. President, and no vote on this floor will change that. This fight is about Iraq but not about Iraq alone. It is greater than that and more important still, about whether America still has the political courage to fight for victory or whether we will settle for defeat, with all of the terrible things that accompany it. We cannot walk away gracefully from defeat in this war.
Unlike McCain, our senators cannot distinguish between a civil war and a jihadi “strategy of chaos” that targets the will of the American people. They live in a fantasy world in which we can fight an al Qaeda from a distance, much as President Clinton conducted military operations in Bosnia. But there is no immaculate form of warfare, especially when it comes to counterinsurgency. Sen. Whitehouse may have an excuse for advocating such nonsense, since he has no military experience, but Sen. Reed, a graduate of the US Military Academy, doesn’t. He apparently slept through his classes—both at West Point and while on active duty—on counterinsurgency.
Local Coventry blogger Scott “I am the Duck” Duckworth appears in today’s Nicole Wietrak Kent County Times story about last night’s Coventry financial town meeting…
The next issue on the table was the school budget, with resident Dennis Geoffroy making a motion to add $99,999 to the bottom line of $64.4 million.Only technically? [Open full post]
Resident Scott Duckworth spoke in response to the motion and asked the school committee if the district’s budget had officially been balanced after the state announced its decision to level-fund education aid, which left Coventry $600,000 in the red.
“It is a balanced budget that we put together, which, as we all know now, is $600,000 short of what we requested,” said School Committee Chairman Raymond E. Spear (R-Dist. 1).
“But if you don’t have the money for it, then it’s not a balanced budget,” retorted Duckworth.
“Well, technically, no,” answered Spear, “but we are aware of the place we’re at and we recognize that the budget is going to require cuts of up to a half a million dollars or more.”
In the end, 105 residents voted to give the additional money to the school department compared with 144 who opposed the action.
The spreading of the popular vote notion from presidential politics to senatorial, here on Anchor Rising, has brought out the shadow of a key principle that is in danger of being forgotten in our coastal parochialism.
The U.S. Senate is constructed as it is partly to capitalize on the diversity of a (small-r) republican nation. The states aren’t merely political units; they are somewhat independent cultures unto themselves.
In other words, for the Senate and the President both, folks from different regions will have different perspectives, not just different political and economic motives, and that true diversity is crucial to the strength and progress of the United States.
Your tax dollars at work (double entendre intended).
[Open full post]The police say that Joanna “Rosa” Gonzalez, a 28-year-old mother of two in Wanskuck, was employing dozens of people including her mother, her sister, their boyfriends, and their children in a crack-cocaine enterprise that covered the city from the North End to the West Side.
The operation was run as efficiently as if Gonzalez had taken a page out of a business-management textbook — so lucrative, the police said, that she and several other welfare recipients working for her drove expensive luxury cars and made thousands of dollars. It was a family business, said Lt. Thomas Verdi, head of the Providence police narcotics unit, where even the young children were involved as lookouts and drug runners with drugs stashed in their backpacks for delivery.
But the business closed last week, when the police locked up 17 people, charging Gonzalez, her family and other alleged top managers under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act. The Providence police and Drug Enforcement Agency announced the outcome of “Operation Rosa” yesterday.
***
Gonzalez, who is 8½ months pregnant, is being held without bail at the Adult Correctional Institutions, along with her alleged drug supplier, “enforcer,” “banker,” “managers” and “distributors,” said Assistant Attorney General Bethany Macktaz. Her two children, ages 9 and 12, are now in the custody of the Department of Children, Youth and Families. “It’s just sickening,” Verdi said yesterday. “[Gonzalez] was pretty much grooming them to do what she does.”
The police searched five residences and four bank accounts, seizing $52,000 and a loaded .32-caliber pistol that was stolen.
They also seized vehicles worth a total of $300,000 that were owned by some of the drug operators claiming welfare checks, according to Providence Detective Sgt. Patrick McNulty.
That included Gonzalez, who had a Porsche, 2002 Kawasaki motorcycle and Nissan Maxima, McNulty said. Her alleged “banker,” Virgen Chadheen, 40, who the police said was on welfare, had a Cadillac Escalade. Her alleged “supplier,” John Delarosa, 33, whose wife receives state assistance, had a Mazda MPV and a Mercedes S550. And police said welfare recipient Henry Grullon, 36, an alleged business “associate” and boyfriend of Gonzalez’s sister, owned a Lincoln Navigator, BMW 745i, Suzuki and Honda motorcycles — and a rundown Dodge minivan.
Question for fans of electing the President by popular vote: What do you think of Professor Larry Sabato’s proposal for “reforming” the Senate (via Joseph Knippenberg of the Ashbrook Center)…
Because each state, regardless of population, elects two of the 100 senators, just 17 percent of the nation’s population elects a majority of the Senate. Sabato would expand the Senate by giving the 10 most populous states two additional senators, the next 15 most populous states one new senator and the District of Columbia its first senator.After all, if we are going to govern the country on the principle that big states rule and small states obey, shouldn’t we make that change uniform throughout the government?
Second Question for the same fans: If you really believe that popular vote for President is a top priority, why not implement it through the undeniably Constitutional strategy suggested by previous Anchor Rising commenter “Rammer”…
The potential to win the Electoral College, but lose the popular vote for President only exists because of the fixed number of seats in the Senate, which is Constitutionally mandated at two per State. Historically this sort of mismatch happens once every century or so, but if that is too often then there is no need for interstate compacts or Constitutional Amendments, by changing one law we could substantially reduce the possibility.[Open full post]
The simple fix is to increase the number of seats in the U.S. House from 435 to twice that number or more. Those seats would be apportioned by population and the weight of the Senate votes in the Electoral College would be reduced proportionally.
As your local correspondents to the right-side of American politics, Anchor Rising should make a note of Senator John McCain’s rapidly fading Presidential candidacy (he’s doing poorly in fundraising, downsized his campaign, and has fired most of his senior campaign staff). However, for those of use who spend too much time watching politics, even before the succession of bad news, it had become pretty obvious that his campaign had become the equivalent of an NFL team going into week 17 that needed not only to win its last game, but also needed 2 or 3 other things to happen in order to make the playoffs.
In McCain’s case, the scenarios were…
McCain makes round 1 of the “playoffs” with…
McCain neither helped himself enough, nor got any of the extra “help” he needed (the Romney dog thing doesn’t count). His supporters are disappointed, but no one is really surprised.
Final note: Rasmussen’s latest head to head poll has John McCain trailing Hillary Clinton, 38%-47%. Those numbers kill any chance of an electability argument becoming the basis of a miracle comeback.
I just returned from two weeks at Ashland University in Ohio where I taught two courses as part of an excellent program for teachers of American history and government. It is a program that serious teachers in Rhode Island ought to investigate: the Master of American History and Government (MAHG) degree program, a unique curriculum designed specifically for middle and high school teachers of history, civics and government.
The program was created to address the lack of proper history and civic education in our schools. The AU MAHG provides teachers with a deep and broad understanding of American history, government, and civics by focusing not on methodology or classroom management, but on the substance of the disciplines. The program is unique in that it stresses the use of original historical documents in the classroom.
The AU MAHG is tailor made for teachers. Courses consist of intensive week-long seminars offered only during the summer. This summer, a total of seventeen courses are being offered over five weeks.
The MAHG program has gained a national reputation. Last year, nearly 300 students from 50 states took courses in the program. Though most are teachers taking courses for professional development, more than 60 students from around the country, including Alaska and Hawaii, are currently enrolled in the degree program. The program provides a unique and convenient alternative for teachers across the nation seeking a master’s degree.
This was my sixth year teaching in the program. I had the opportunity to teach one intensive week-long course on Sectionalism and the Coming of the Civil War and another on the Civil War and Reconstruction. The students were interested and motivated. It was a pleasure to teach such dedicated professionals.
I hope RI teachers will look in to this program. I hope to see some of you in Ashland Ohio next summer. If you are interested in the syllabi for all the courses offered this year, click “Summer 2007 Schedule” on the menu to the left on the MAHG site.
I’m not a dead-ender on Iraq, but I do think we’ve got to give the new–albeit too-long in coming–strategy time to work. I suspect readers will just breeze on past this post as many, probably most, already have their minds made up. To them, we are frozen in time: the situation in Iraq will always be as it was in November 2006, just before the election. And that’s not a coincidence. The domestic political component of the entire war debate is probably the most troubling to me. Without further (or much) ado–and in addition to Don’s related post–here are some reports/opinions that inform my own current views on Iraq.
[Open full post]Turns out President Bush is only partially to blame for the high gas prices….(h/t and a wink)
An eagle-eyed Senate GOP aide, perusing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Web site, calls attention to her assertion there that “Americans are paying more than double for gas than when President Bush first took office.”
She says the average price per gallon when he took office in 2001 was $1.47 and had reached $3.22 by May 21.
So that means gas prices went up by $1.75 a gallon over six years. But more than half of that increase, 90 cents, our source says, has come in the past six months — the six months that she’s been speaker of the House. Our source says the average price per gallon on Jan. 3, the day before she became speaker, was $2.32.
More here. Personally, I blame it on the Red Sox signing Dice-K. Ever since then….
[Open full post]While we’re on the subject of pensions, the reason that many people believe that the public sector needs to move away from defined-benefit pension plans to defined contribution type retirement plans (and that the government has to move away from a defined benefit Social Security system) goes beyond the rationale that “it’s the way the private sector does it”. Rather, the argument is basic demography.
In 1955, during the golden age for corporate pensions, the fertility rate in the United States was about 3.6 children per woman. By 1980, the fertility rate had dropped to 1.8 children per woman, and it has hovered around a rate of 2.0 since then. That’s a devastating change if you’re trying to structure a rational, sustainable defined benefit pension plan.
Defined benefit plans have to be supported by succeeding generations, but in 1955, this wasn’t a big problem. In 1955 each couple “contributed” 3.6 new people, on average, to the next generation. Jump forward 25 years, and each of those new couples added 1.8 people to the generation after that. That means, over two generations, there were 6.8 younger people per older citizen (3.6 in the first generation, plus 1.8 times 1.8 in the second generation, [i.e. the fertility rate of 1.8 in 1980 times half of 3.6, because it takes two to make a couple]) available to support a pension system.
However, starting with women of childbearing age in 1980, there were only 1.8 new people per couple in the next generation. There’ll be only 2.0 young’uns in the generation after that. The result is only 3.6 younger people per older citizen (1.8 in the first generation, plus 0.9 times 2.0) available to support defined benefit pension plans for the current generation entering/nearing retirement.
That means — even before accounting for increased life-expectancy — you have to whack people currently in the workforce twice as hard now as you did 25 years ago to pay for public sector pensions, because there are only about half as many people relative to the retiree population. And if the United States follows demographic trends in the developed countries of Europe, this problem will only get worse.
