Tuesday, February 27, 2007

The Budget as a Moral Crisis

The Federal Budget, like snow and cold rain, comes in bleak midwinter, and this year’s deepens the glumness of the season. How else to react to a budget that, when read as a moral document, reeks of immorality?

It is a budget that would allocate half of all discretionary spending to “defense,” much of that to an unworthy and now futile war, while asking no one save our volunteer soldiers and their families to sacrifice. For the first time in American history we find ourselves fighting a war – one its perpetrators call “civilizational” – while the lavish tax cuts this budget would make permanent are showered on the richest one percent of Americans, tax cuts that deepen an out-of-control deficit.

Other Americans – the middle class and working poor – are nickled-and-dimed to pay for such largesse. Offset “savings” – nowhere near what’s needed to achieve real balance – are carved out of college tuition assistance, food assistance, farm subsidies, Medicare, and, most galling of all in the context of this war, veterans’ assistance. And, when one protests such blatant class warfare, one finds oneself accused of class warfare. Do they have no shame?

Class warfare? Take the imminent tidal wave called the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) that is about to engulf a largely unsuspecting middle class. Originally intended to capture trillions sheltered by the rich in dubious tax shelters but left un-indexed for inflation, it will, next year, wipe out many middle class tax payers unless there is some relief. This budget promises relief – a one year cut in the AMT – conveniently for election year 2008. But no permanent cut here. In 2009, AMT comes back with a vengeance. The answer, of course, is not a one-time candy-coated sedative for voters, but rather real reform involving, at very least, indexing to spare the middle class on a long-term basis.

If, however, the AMT is scaled back to its original modest intentions, the shortfalls in tax revenues beyond 2008 would be astronomical. In the face of such revenue losses, there would be no way to justify other permanent tax cuts that would balloon an already dangerously outrageous deficit. That deficit is being kicked down the road to our children and grandchildren. This is not just fiscally irresponsible, it is morally indefensible.

In sum this is a budget that widens the gap between rich and poor, threatens the middle class, and promises increased generational inequity. Any way you parse it, it is wrong.

Sunday, January 7, 2007

SOME RANDOM THOUGHTS ON THE EVE OF A 'SURGE'

I offer here for your reflection –without comment, none being needed –some random thoughts on the eve of an announcement of a “surge and acceleration” ever deeper into Iraq.
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Elections have consequences.

President George W. Bush
January 2005
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The war…was unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced by the President….When the war began, it was my opinion that all…should…remain silent on that point, at least until the war should be ended. Some leading Democrats…have taken the same view…I cannot be silent.

As to the mode of terminating the war and securing peace, the President is wandering and indefinite. First, it is to be done by a more vigorous prosecution of the war in the vital parts of the enemy’s country; and after apparently talking himself tired on this point, the President drops down into a half-despairing tone and tells us that ‘with a people distracted and divided by contending factions, and a government subject to constant changes by successive revolutions, the continued success of our arms may fail to secure a satisfactory peace.’ Then he suggests the propriety of wheedling the…people…to set up a government from which we can secure a satisfactory peace; telling us that ‘this may become the only means of obtaining such a peace.’ But soon he falls into doubt of this too; and then drops back to the already half-abandoned ground of ‘more vigorous prosecution’…it is a singular omission in this message that it nowhere intimates when the President expects the war to terminate….[The President] is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man. God grant he may be able to show there is not something about his conscience more painful than his mental perplexity.

Congressman Abraham Lincoln
On President Polk’s conduct of the Mexican War
January 12, 1848
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We have invited our clean young men to shoulder a discredited musket and to do bandits’ work under a flag which bandits have been accustomed to fear, not follow; we have debauched America’s honor and blackened her face before the world, but each detail was for the best. We know this. The Head of every State and Sovereignty in Christendom and 90 percent of every legislative body in Christendom, including our Congress and our fifty state legislatures, are members not only of the church but also of the Blessings of Civilization Trust. This world- girdling accumulation of trained morals, high principles, and justice cannot do an unright thing, an unfair thing. It knows what it is about. Give yourself no uneasiness; it is all right.

Mark Twain
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Why of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don’t want war, neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood.

But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.

Voice or no voice the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for their lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

Hermann Goering
Nuremberg Trials
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One of the great tragedies of our time is that in our desperate incapacity to cope with the complexities of our world, we oversimplify every issue and reduce it to a neat ideological formula. Doubtless we have to do something in order to grasp things quickly and effectively. But unfortunately this "quick and effective grasp" too often turns out to be no grasp at all, or only a grasp on a shadow. The ideological formulas for which we are willing to tolerate and even provoke the destruction of entire nations may one day reveal themselves to have been the most complete deceptions....The American conscience is troubled by a sense of tragic ambiguity in our professed motives for massive intervention. Yet in the name of such tenuous and questionable motives we continue to bomb, to burn, and to kill because we think we have no alternative, and because we are reduced to a despairing trust in the assurance of "experts" in whom we have no real confidence.

Thomas Merton
On Vietnam
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During the last three years U.S. armed forces have been used repeatedly to defend our interests and achieve our political objectives....The reason for our success is that in every instance we have carefully matched the use of military force to our political objectives. President Bush, more than any other recent President, understands the proper use of military force. In every instance, he has made sure that the objective was clear and that we knew what we were getting into. We owe it to the men and women who go in harm's way to make sure that their lives are not squandered for unclear purposes.

....But we also recognize that military force is not always the right answer. If force is used imprecisely or out of frustration rather than clear analysis, the situation can be made worse.

Decisive means and results are always to be preferred, even if they are not always possible. So you bet I get nervous when so-called experts suggest that all we need is a little surgical bombing or a limited attack. When the desired result isn't obtained, a new set of experts then comes forward with talk of a little escalation. History has not been kind to this approach.


Colin Powell
On President George H.W. Bush and
Operation Desert Storm
October 8, 1992
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The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating. There is no path that can guarantee success, but the prospects can be improved….

Our most important recommendations call for new and enhanced diplomatic and political efforts in Iraq and the region, and a change in the primary mission of U.S. forces in Iraq that will enable the United States to begin to move its combat forces out of Iraq responsibly.

The Iraq Study Group Report
December 6, 2006
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Surging forces is a strategy that you have already tried and that has already failed….Rather than deploy additional forces to Iraq, we believe the way forward is to begin the phased redeployment of our forces in the next four to six months, while shifting the principal mission of our forces there from combat to training, logistics, force protection and counter-terror.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
Letter to President Bush
January 5, 2007
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There is no question that the situation in Iraq is very dangerous and not improving, particularly in Baghdad with respect to the sectarian violence….I don't believe that increasing U.S. forces in Baghdad in the way and size being discussed— with a temporary surge of between 10,000 and 40,000 troops— would secure the city. I think it would be the wrong way to go.

Representative Heather Wilson, R-NM
January 5, 2007
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I ask the government: Is there any hope of success or are we pressing on without any probability of victory?

Lieutenant Matsuoko
Imperial Japanese Navy
1943
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The war horse is a vain hope for victory, and by its great weight it cannot save.

Psalm 33:17
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Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

Jesus the Christ
Matthew 5:9
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He shall judge between the nations,
and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.

The Prophet Isaiah
Isaiah 2:4
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Peace always seems a weary way off. As Jeremiah lamented, “We looked for peace, but no peace came.” But to give up on peace is to give up on God….

Peace does not come rolling in on the wheels of inevitability. We can’t just wish for peace. We have to will it, fight for it, suffer for it, demand it from our governments as if peace were God’s most cherished hope for humanity, as indeed it is.

William Sloane Coffin
Credo
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If you’re at the edge of an abyss the only progressive step is backward.

William Sloane Coffin
Credo
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Where have all the young men gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the young men gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the young men gone?
Gone for soldiers every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Covered with flowers every one
When will we ever learn?
When will we ever learn?

Where Have All the Flowers Gone
Pete Seeger
1961

Saturday, January 6, 2007

Respect

Respect! It’s a word I learned to use in a new way once a long time ago in Europe. It is, I learned, not just a leaden noun, but an honorific salutation, used to address someone, like a professor, of proven intellectual prowess, or, better yet, someone whose demonstrated decency and integrity commands just that – respect. It was the first word that came to mind Tuesday night, when I heard that Gerald Ford had died. And, soon enough, other words – decency, integrity, kindness, humility, and moral courage – came rushing forth.

Playing on the “what ifs” of history – What if he had not been appointed vice president to replace a disgraced Spiro Agnew? Had not been called to replace a disgraced Richard Nixon? Had not pardoned Nixon and beat Jimmy Carter in 1976? Had run as Reagan’s vice president? – a commentator on MSNBC likened Gerald Ford to Forrest Gump.

Hearing that, I was reminded how, a few years ago, someone, glancing up from my biography during a failed foray into Vallejo politics, had also likened me to Forrest Gump – so often in the shadows of great events, in the company of great men and women, but always vaguely out of focus. And, as I struggled for sleep in the midst of a howling windstorm, I recalled how our lives – Gerald Ford’s and mine – had crossed so briefly, so tangentially in that unlikeliest of places – Krakow, Poland.

It was 1974 and I was consul in Krakow, struggling to reestablish an American presence in southeast Poland for the first time since 1946. Personally and professionally, the twin weights of Vietnam and Watergate were draining our morale and haunting our efforts… like some menacing Golem stalking the alleys of the ancient city. The nightly news on the BBC, my station of choice, (the Voice of America having lost all semblance of credibility) was a depressing drumbeat.

Then, late one August night, there was Alistair Cooke, reporting from America that Richard Nixon had resigned and that Gerald Ford would momentarily be sworn in as our 38th president. Overjoyed, I got up early next morning and rushed to my office well before the arrival of our Polish staff. Behind my desk – as behind those of all ambassadors and consuls – there hung a picture of the president, until then Richard Nixon. Ripping it from the wall, I tossed it upside down into the trash basket beside the desk. Rushing to our ground floor reading room, I retrieved a 1973 Sports Illustrated. There on the cover, shortly after he had replaced Agnew as vice president, was a youngish Gerald Ford in his University of Michigan football uniform. Putting it in a frame, I placed it in our street front display case, flanked by an American flag and a vase of red flowers. Below it, I placed a bold, stencil-penciled sign: Nasz Nowy Presydent (Our New President). Pride and hope had returned to America and to this American in Poland.

And less than a year later - on July 29, 1975 – that new president was to pay a visit to Krakow on his way to Helsinki to sign the historic agreement that was as close as we ever got to a peace treaty ending World War II in Europe and that opened the way to the human rights movement that lead to the unraveling of Soviet rule on that continent.

We had a week to prepare, with the advance team arriving with but twelve-hours’ notice. I’ll never forget calling Krakow’s mayor, Jerzy Pekala, back from his vacation in the Tatra Mountains or informing the colonel in charge of the Polish Air Force base outside town that a USAF C-141 would be landing at dawn with tons of equipment and a White House team of dozens.

In the blur of preparations that followed, three events remain vivid in my mind. First was the large meeting at city hall among three overlapping, competing teams – the President’s; that of Poland’s Communist Party boss Eduard Gierek; and the Mayor’s. I was surprised to see seated across from me the head waiter who had catered so many dinners at my home…surprised that is until the introductions began. “Colonel ---, UB (Secret Police),” he announced. We both smiled.

Then there was the head of the President’s traveling Secret Service detail who had developed a nasty infection in, of all things, his trigger finger. Before week’s end he required minor surgery. It was carried out at the Pediatrics Institute – the “American Children’s Hospital” – by Dr. Jan Grochowski, a friend who was second in command at the Institute.

Finally, there was the detailed walkthrough at the Wawel, the ancient castle where Gierek would host the official luncheon for the Fords. One detail to be nailed down was the designation of a quiet room, where Mrs. Ford, still undergoing chemotherapy, could catch a short nap. Another thing to be “nailed down” was the carpeting over the wooden floors, especially where there was a step or two. Whether there was any truth to the Chevy Chase routine or not, the President’s political team did not want to see a repeat of that stumble on the airplane steps.

As the day of the visit approached, the consulate was transformed into an electronic nerve center, crawling with officials from Washington and our embassy in Warsaw. We were even issued calling cards, a few of which I still have, that proclaimed us the “Krakow White House.”

The visit itself proceeded without a hitch, including the moving tribute at nearby Auschwitz under a banner that proclaimed Nigdy nie wiecej (Never Again!). Henry Kissinger was there and, as he insisted, his young son David. So, too, was a young Dick Cheney, then-White House Chief of Staff, who, at the time, seemed so friendly and reasonable. I always wondered whatever happened to that reasonable demeanor. Funny, last night on MSNBC, Tom Brokaw wondered too.

There was one last speech before the packed thousands on the city’s square, Europe’s largest. Standing with St. Mary’s Church over his shoulder, he invoked the memory of Krakow’s native son Tadeusz Kosciuszko. Kosciuszko was, the President said, not only a “hero of America’s war for independence and America’s war for liberty,” but also of “the independence of Poland and the freedom of all Poles.”

There was a motorcade to the airport, a raucous “wheels up” party, and the quiet dismantling of the “Krakow White House.” And I was left with the pride and hope and a suddenly easier task in downtown Poland.

And, this Wednesday morning, I’m still ruminating over the “what ifs,” including one that occurred barely a month after President Ford returned to the States. It was September 5, 1975 on a visit to Sacramento. In an assassination attempt, the first it turned out in as many weeks, Lynette “Squeaky Fromme had cocked her pistol before being wrestled to the ground by a brave and familiar looking Secret Service agent, Larry Buendorf, his hand now healed. Before I left Krakow a few weeks later, I made sure Dr. Grochowski got a copy of the New York Daily News front page emblazoned with the picture. When I visited several years later, it was hanging proudly on his wall.

What if? What if, indeed? What if we didn’t get our “accidental President,” a simple, decent man, who had the moral compass and found the courage to heal a wounded nation? Who had the guts to pardon his predecessor and, two weeks later, to grant amnesty to those who had resisted the draft? Who had the sense to end a senseless war? Who reassured a nation wrought with fear and confusion? Oh, how I remember the innate commonsensical rightness of the words of his first address to Congress: “Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.” Would that we could call up such wisdom and humility today?

Recalling, too, how he refused to allow that pompous “Hail to the Chief” to be played before his appearances, I trust they’ll find something more appropriate to play at his funeral. Might I suggest “Fanfare for the Common Man?”

Whatever they play, as they lay him to rest, I’ll be off in my distance, praying a Gump-like “Respect, Mr. President. Respect!”