Benghazi – “What Difference Does it Make?”

My most vivid impression, from the days after 9/11/12, was the State Department official testifying to Congress, blandly mouthing the repeated mantra that Benghazi security arrangements followed proper procedures. As if that’s all her responsibility entailed; as if following procedures is all that matters. (Not the odd corpse or two.)

Then we had Gregory Hicks, our second ranking diplomat in Libya in September, testifying recently about his frantic phone calls trying to get armed help to Ambassador Stevens and colleagues besieged in Benghazi. Hicks got a run-around; the military, and State Department, were either unprepared, or uncaring, or just too timorous. Hicks also said he personally briefed Secretary of State Hillary “What Difference Does it Make” Clinton about what really happened, so he was “stunned” and “embarrassed” when UN Ambassador Susan Rice later went public with a different story. And after Hicks agreed to talk to congressional investigators, he was demoted.

Then there was the testimony of Hillary “What Difference Does it Make” Clinton herself. Her famous rhetorical question referred to the “spontaneous protest” narrative versus a calculated terrorist attack. But apparently the Administration itself thought it made a big difference, because it worked hard to massage that difference, with the “talking points” being revised repeatedly. That, we’re told, was just a bureaucratic tug-of-war between the State Department and CIA. In truth it reflected an effort in political spin. The Administration knew straightaway that this was a planned terrorist attack, with no evidence for the “spontaneous protest” fable. Yet, under the guise of being cautious about the facts, the CIA’s factually detailed information about its being a terrorist attack was completely removed from the talking points (it wasn’t merely editing a single word, as White House spokesman Jay Carney insisted). And so hapless Susan Rice was sent out to tell a story the Administration already knew was false.

And what, to the Administration, was the difference? President Obama, running for re-election, wanted us to imagine that killing bin Laden killed Al Qaeda and terrorism. But now here was Al Qaeda, alive and well, brazenly murdering a U.S. Ambassador. That didn’t fit the party line. So better just lie, and put out this hokey story about a spontaneous protest over some You-tube video, that never happened. (To be clear, I’m not saying the President himself lied. His minions did the dirty work. But it is egregious for him to dismiss the whole thing as a “political sideshow.”)

So: what difference does it really make? It’s to understand what happened, to learn from it, and prevent recurrence. And it also makes a difference whether the Administration is honest with us, or deliberately lies for political advantage. Yes, I know, “politicians lie.” But it’s not politics as usual when it’s a matter of national security, and the murders of U.S. diplomats. In that context, mendacity is absolutely intolerable.

That’s what difference it makes, Mrs. Clinton.

Syria’s Red Line – Or Is It Merely Pinkish?

Reuters, March 23, near Aleppo. (Humans died too)

There is good evidence (soil samples, victim images) that Syria’s regime has used chemical weapons (Sarin, and possibly Chlorine gas), according to Britain, France, and Israel.

The Brits call this a war crime. Really? As if aerial bombing of residential neighborhoods, torturing young children, killing over 70,000 people, mostly civilians, and driving out millions as refugees, are not war crimes enough? (I ask again: where is the International Criminal Court? Why not one indictment?)

When President Obama declared that Assad’s using chemical weapons would cross a “red line,” requiring U.S. action, I thought it an empty gesture because once made, using such weapons would be crazy. But maybe Assad knew his man better, and is “crazy like a fox” – using a swodge of chemicals just to show up America as a paper tiger that won’t stop him, thus bolstering his backers’ resolve and demoralizing opponents.

Obama insists on more proof. But as The Economist put it, this “look[s] less like healthy skepticism than an unwillingness to take action” – “unfortunately, all of a piece with Mr. Obama’s lawyerly approach to the whole issue.”

As The Economist further observes, America’s squeamishness “is worsening a dreadful situation,” with the rebels becoming increasingly radicalized as it drags on. Meantime, with the killing unabated in a stalemated war, millions of refugees in dire straits, destabilizing neighbor countries, and sectarian bloodshed spreading, Obama’s “arguing about soil samples hardly seems like an adequate response.”

Experience shows that there is a kind of situation where reluctance to face a need for active involvement merely guarantees worse consequences down the road. We should have learned this from Rwanda, and from Bosnia. Now, alas, we’re being taught it again in Syria. “How many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died?”

Furthermore, as The Economist concludes, to let Assad cross a red line with impunity sends the wrong message when we’re telling the world that Iran’s building nuclear weapons will cross a red line.

Alexei Navalny and the Kremlin Kriminals

Mikhail Khodorkovsky was one of Russia’s richest men, and among them all, possibly the most above board. Yet Putin’s Kremlin Kriminals, in 2003, used trumped up tax evasion charges to effectively steal his company and toss Khodorkovsky in prison, where he still remains. His real crime was funding political opposition to Putin.

Sergei Magnitsky wasn’t so lucky. His “crime” was to expose massive official corruption, which resulted in those selfsame officials imprisoning him, where he does not still remain. The 37 year old lawyer died in his cell in 2009.

But the Putin regime isn’t letting this case rest. No sirree, they’re determined to get to the bottom of the crimes in question – by putting Magnitsky on trial, despite having already murdered him. And when America adopted sanctions on the Kremlin Krooks deemed responsible, their retaliatory response was to ban adoption of Russian children by Americans.

Now we have Alexei Navalny. This courageous political blogger too was very effective in exposing official corruption, and played a leading role in last year’s anti-Putin demonstrations. So Russia’s judicial system has set about prosecuting – no, not the corrupt officials Navalny fingered, don’t be silly – why, Navalny, of course. He’s on trial now for alleged embezzlement from a state timber company while he was advisor to a regional governor. As The Economist put it, that the company was actually paid for the timber in question, and there’s no evidence Navalny had a role in the transaction anyway, “seem to be details.” He faces up to 10 years in prison. Don’t bet on acquittal.

And the real criminal is . . .

I had the privilege of visiting Russia when it was a free country. How thrilling that was. How tragic it is now. Martin Luther King once said the moral arc of the universe is long but it always bends toward justice. I have a dream – to see Russia again, and forevermore, free at last, free at last.

“Up yours, my policies helped the poor more than any damn socialist ever did.”

Cartoon by Jim Morin, Miami Herald

Margaret Thatcher: The Lady’s Not for Turning

Margaret Thatcher was a great hero. The model of a politician who was in it not to be something but to do something. And boy, what she did.

Margaret Roberts, grocer’s daughter, candidate for Parliament, 1951, her second try; elected 1959

Thatcher became Britain’s first woman prime minister at a time when that was amazing. It’s no longer true in modern nations that a woman must be twice as good as a man to get half as far; but it was true in the ‘70s. Margaret Thatcher rising, from modest antecedents, to surmount not only those gender obstacles but immense political obstacles as well, makes her a promethean figure.

Indeed, when she came to power in 1979, the gender novelty was a footnote. Britain was in deep trouble; it was called “British disease,” the final legacy of three decades of socialism and, particularly, labor unions holding government by the balls. It wasn’t that Thatcher lacked that anatomical feature; rather, hers were too big for the unions to squeeze. She broke their power, showing how entrenched interests can be overcome with sufficient political will. She also lifted the smothering blanket of statist paternalism to resuscitate economic vitality. British disease was cured.

Eurocrat Jean-Claude Juncker is often quoted: “We all know what to do, but we don’t know how to get re-elected once we’ve done it.” What rot. Margaret Thatcher gave a famous speech acknowledging the political pressures for a policy U-turn. “You turn if you want to,” she said; “the lady’s not for turning.”* Unlike Juncker, she trusted voters, and believed that right policies can be successfully defended in public debate. And, despite vicious opposition, she did get re-elected, twice. (In 1990, her own Conservative party, to its eternal shame, lost its will and dumped her.)

Her first re-election did owe something to the Falklands War. In 1982, an Argentine junta thought to curry popularity by grabbing the Falkland Islands, a British possession. They didn’t imagine an enfeebled old European nation would actually fight them. But fight them Margaret Thatcher did, and not just with words. She sent the fleet.

I see her still as Britannia, with helmet and spear, standing resolute on the prow of a warship, steaming toward the Falklands.

*It’s a pun on the title of a play about Joan of Arc, “The Lady’s Not for Burning.”

“Ask” — A Very Personal Story

There’s a radio show called “The Moth” where people get up and tell stories, often highly personal and self-revelatory. I’ve wondered what story I might tell. Well, here’s one.

When I was a kid, I was sick a lot, and small and shy, and skipped some years of school making me younger than my peers, all of which retarded my social development. I must have been the youngest in my law school class, and still lived at home. I had little interaction with anyone, let alone with girls – unthinkable for me while under parental scrutiny. My hormones were normal, but I just repressed it.

In 1970, almost 23, I became a lawyer and moved away, and finally felt free to pursue women. It was akin to a new toy when I discovered I could get dates on the slenderest of pretexts. Like a supermarket check-out girl: “Hey, I’ve seen you in the cafeteria,” I said. “Wanna go out?” She did. Quite attractive and intellectual too.

So I dated a lot. But building a relationship was a different matter. How a couple reaches a concordance to have sex was a mystery to this still inhibited and somewhat clueless fellow. I wanted more, a real intimacy (especially because I still didn’t actually have friends), but it seemed elusive.

Active in politics, it was at a 1971 political meeting that I first met “Jane McCall.” School board candidate, wife of “John” (my ward leader, a charismatic man with a romantic Scottish burr), mother of two, Jane was thirty, petite, honey-colored, lovely, articulate, vivacious, enthralling. I suddenly saw everything I desired in a woman. On the spot, I all but fell in love with her.

Edvard Munch: “Despair”

I walked home with a leaden ball of despair in my heart. Of course Jane was unattainable; that was a given; but how could I ever hope for one like her? Jane McCall made all the girls I’d been chasing seem trivial, third-rate, a waste of time. It wasn’t that Jane herself was out of reach; the ideal she represented felt unattainable.

Years went by; further Jane McCall encounters only intensified the feeling. Meanwhile, with the girls I dated, sometimes a relationship might seem to be developing, but it never panned out. I would see romantic couples everywhere, and yearn for what they had.

In 1974 there was “Rosemary Ryan.” A tall, long-haired, slender sylph, warm, funny, gentle, smart. After our first date, her reaction was an enthusiastic, “Wow!” I could hardly believe this; virtually Jane McCall caliber. We dated for a while, it was lovely, we seemed like soulmates, and of course I ached to take it to the next level. But she confided that she was having an affair with a guy she couldn’t even talk to, who only wanted her for sex. She even took me to a party where I met him. What fun. In the end, Rosemary avowed, weeping copious tears, that she and I could never be lovers. Her last words to me: “You haven’t suffered enough.” Well, maybe; but I thought I was suffering plenty right then.

A vicious cycle was operating. The more I wasn’t having sex, the more intimidating it seemed. In hindsight, some girls I dated might have been seducible, but I was too timorous. I felt myself sexually handicapped. I wasn’t bad looking, but rather short, and realized this was a deal-breaker for many women (including, finally, Rosemary). But it seemed there was more to it. I came to feel like a sort of untouchable, wearing sign on my back reading, “Don’t have sex with this man.” Or maybe even, “This is not a man.”

I had dated a fellow lawyer during stints at hearings in New York City. In my usual timid pattern, I had tried to get romantic – up to a point – but when “Karen” failed to say, “take my clothes off,” I would desist and say goodnight. But, unusually in this case, after the relationship fizzled, I continued to see her occasionally as a friend. Following the Rosemary Ryan debacle, I opened up to Karen about my problem. And she explained to me The Facts of Life. How a woman has sexual desires too, but may be shy and inhibited, waiting, even hoping, for the man to be the initiator, and probably wouldn’t slap him. Karen’s sage advice came down to one word: just “ask.”*

This sounded like a good plan, and I resolved to try it at the earliest opportunity.

Soon after, an acquaintance told me his wife had left him. I assured him how sorry I was to hear this terrible news. Then I ran to the phone and asked her out. She, after pondering for some minutes, said yes.

Following dinner, we went to my tiny one room apartment on some vague pretext of playing chess. Sitting on the bed, she said, “Well, what now?”

Taking a deep breath, I replied, “We could play chess, or . . . go to bed.”

Good God, I had said it.

Her hand rose to my cheek, but not to slap it. I’ll never forget the look in her eyes – an uprush of hunger.

In that instant my life was transformed; from black-and-white to Technicolor.  And this was not just any woman. This was Jane McCall caliber.

In fact, it was Jane McCall.

It’s so ironic. I’d dated a parade of girls, some second rate, or third rate, some borderline sluts, and not with any of them had I been brash enough to just “ask.” Now here is Jane McCall, the one woman I’d worshipped, on a pedestal, for years, the unreachable dream incarnate, and the first moment I’m alone with her, almost vulgarly, I just “ask.” And she leaps into my arms.

My romance with Jane did not last long. A callow lover, I myself was not Jane McCall caliber. Even naked in my arms she was still a fantasy for me. And losing her didn’t even hurt, because afterward I was a different man. No longer was I the man with the sign on his back. Now I was The Man Who’d Slept With Jane McCall.

Another irony is that never again would I “just ask” – at least not so crudely. In 1975 I met a girl with whom I spent twelve years. It was a troubled relationship, and she finally left me. Within another year, I found Therese, and we’ve been happily married for almost a quarter century. In relation to all those I’d ever pursued, Therese is absolutely the finest of the lot. And I’m more in love with her now than ever; still constantly viewing our marriage through the lens of my history four decades past. It’s this story that brought me, by a long tortuous path, to Therese; and this story that makes our love so powerful for me.

* “Ask” became a chapter heading in my autobiographical memoir. Years later I read physicist Richard Feynman’s, and was amused to see a similar chapter heading: “You just ask them.” (His answer, too, for bedding women.)

Even in Africa

When William Easterly reviewed Matt Ridley’s The Rational Optimist, he called “disturbing” Ridley’s use of the word “even” regarding Africa, as in saying something good is happening “even in Africa.” Easterly, from a politically correct high horse, sneered at Ridley as “equality challenged.”

Strange perhaps that Easterly himself authored a book titled The White Man’s Burden” !

That’s a cheap shot – but so was Easterly’s. The fact is that most of Africa for decades was obviously, er, “progress challenged,” a graveyard for dreams; so to say that a positive trend is visible “even in Africa” is entirely appropriate. Is it somehow anti-equality to recognize the reality of Africa’s problems?

This blog has long expressed great optimism about progress and the human future. So let me now add too: even in Africa.

Ouattara

When in 2010 I heard news that Cote D’Ivoire’s President Gbagbo, who had lost a (long-delayed) election, was refusing to accept the result, I said to myself, “Here we go again. How many lives will this cost?” The answer was several thousand. But in the end, Gbagbo did not get away with it, and is now a guest of the International Criminal Court awaiting trial. His successor, Alassane Ouattara, a former IMF economist, seems to be responsibly working to tackle the nation’s problems. This is the new Africa.

It is portrayed in an excellent recent survey by The Economist. After colonialism ended, much of Africa was plunged into a morass of incompetent and corrupt, rapacious government by venal dictators, who did what they did because they were pushing on an open door; i.e., civil society did not have its act together sufficiently to stop them. But that has been changing; the door is finally closing, as seen in Cote D’Ivoire, and in many other African countries. Democracy is very much on the rise, more and more elections are being held, more and more fairly, and one by one the dictators have been going; and with them, a lot of the conflict and violence that such rule tends to propagate.

Even (that word again) in places like Sudan, Congo, Angola, and Somalia, no pillars of democracy, violent conflict has been ebbing. Somalia is beginning to rebuild itself as a functioning nation. Sudan’s split into two countries, I had feared, would spark a new war, especially over contested oil resources. But that situation too seems to be calming down.

Africa has also seen a lot of material progress, with rising economic growth and incomes, falling poverty, more education, sanitation and better health, and a growing middle class. Real income per person rose over 30% in the last decade (compared to a 10% fall in the two before it). Opinion polls show almost two-thirds of Africans think this year will be better than last. (Only a third of Europeans do.)

This is an obvious consequence of reduced violence, and mainly reflects the overall better quality of governance that democratic politics brings, with officials accountable to voters. A key factor is the general abandonment of socialist and statist economic approaches in favor of more market-oriented, trade-oriented, and investment-oriented policies. It was a hard lesson to learn, but it’s finally being learned in Africa. (In this, Africans may be ahead of those advanced sophisticates in Europe.)

Such changes don’t “just happen.” There are great historical forces in play. The problems that befell post-colonial Africa entailed the basest elements of human nature, with the ascendancy of the worst people. Conversely, the turn-around reflects the efforts of that other and vastly greater segment of humanity, motivated to improve quality of life not only for themselves but for their fellows. Ultimately, that force is the more powerful, and must prevail.

Even in Africa.

My New Book – Angels and Pinheads

My new book is Angels and Pinheads: A Guide to Which is Which and What’s What. In 226 pages it packs 146 entertaining and provocative essays, commentaries, book reviews, etc., on a wide range of topics, skewering numerous sacred cows; the kinds of things you shouldn’t discuss at Thanksgiving dinner lest you wind up with gravy and mashed potatoes in your face.

The entries are selected as the best from this blog. Of course you can read them here, but the book provides a handy little package that you can enjoy at the beach or in the john.

It’s published by Verity Press International at just $9.95. For more information and ordering details, click here.

Trust, Honesty, and China

So, China is going to eat our economic lunch and dominate the globe? True enough, China has much going for it, mainly hugeness, but also what’s really the world’s most unrestrained free market capitalism (the non-state-owned sector, that is). But not so fast. One element that helped make capitalism so successful in the West seems distinctly weak in China. That is an ethos of trust and honesty.

Sneer cynically if you like, but the fact is that commerce could hardly function at all without a basic level of trust and honesty among participants, and its lack is punished by the market. That’s certainly illustrated in my own business of trading in coins. In dealer-to-dealer trade, especially where authenticity of merchandise is an issue, trust is extremely important. A sleazy dealer soon gets a rep, and weeded out. And we keep each other informed about untrustworthy customers too. They’re actually rare. I send nearly all my orders in advance of payment, with only a tiny percentage of problems. Businesses don’t thrive in the long run by ripping people off, but by catering to their needs. This ethos is embedded in our DNA. In the West, at least.

The Economist recently reported on Yale’s baleful experience setting up shop in China. Now, of course cheating is a real problem in American schools. But it seems Chinese students carried it to a whole new level. Most were literally amoral: getting ahead was all that counted, and the means didn’t matter. Thus plagiarism, for example, was endemic. And an essay by NPR’s Louisa Lim, in the Times Book Review, made a similar point about Chinese culture with regard to how government operates at all levels, with pervasive corruption, bribery being central to the Chinese way of life.

Recently too we learned of the Chinese government’s large scale cyber hacking operation, stealing sensitive information from foreign businesses. Now, Western companies are not all angels, and corporate espionage does happen. But for the government to create a whole bureaucracy to do it?

Cartoon by Dave Granlund

And, when caught out, to simply brazenly lie? All this bespeaks a mentality very different from ours.

Columnist David Brooks has observed that it reflects China’s seeing world economic competition as akin to war, with deceit and skullduggery being natural weapons. However, Westerners would regard this as self-defeating, because it destroys the trust that lubricates free exchange. But Brooks fears what he calls a “brutality cascade” in which the rules of the game tend to become those of the most ruthless player.

Yet, he says, there’s another path: strive to establish norms of legitimacy upheld by the broadest possible coalition, isolate the violators, and make it clear that joining the “friendship circle” pays great benefits while staying outside will prove costly.

Chinadigitaltimes.net

I want to be clear that not all Chinese are amoral. I’ve done business with many good people there. But it’s obvious that there’s an important cultural difference, that I believe will handicap China in building its world economic role. Dishonesty and corruption creates a foundation of sand for an economy. If China wants to become the global economic kingpin, it will have to grow up and become a responsible adult.

As Chinese author Wang Xiaofang has written, quoted in the Times essay, “The habit of falsehood is fatal to a culture. But to us, falsehood is the essence.”

State of the Union: US: Sweden

So the President gets up there and unveils a host of big new government programs. Then he says they won’t add a dime to the deficit. That would be true only if:

a) They don’t pass Congress, or
b) Taxes are raised, or
c) Other programs are cut

As to (c), of course the President has proposed no such cuts. In fact, after years of talking about a balance of tax hikes and spending cuts, and indeed campaigning on that issue, Obama in the recent fiscal cliff deal got taxes raised without any spending cuts at all.

Cartoon by Eric Allie, Townhall.com

This he actually thought was a glorious triumph; liberals are cock-a-hoop that they’ve really stuck it to Republicans.

The Pre-K education proposal epitomizes how they think. Pre-K is actually desperately needed to help disadvantaged kids who are otherwise being done down by crappy schools. But does Obama’s proposal target those kids? No. It’s “universal.” Which means that just like Medicare and farm subsidies and so many other government programs, it will mainly give yet more welfare to the affluent, with the disadvantaged getting only a lesser share of the benefits.

This is not the time to be adding a big new “universal” federal program.

Whatever benefit it may buy will be more than wiped out when the shit hits the fan and our economy sinks under the weight of unsustainable debt. That’s true of all Obama’s economic initiatives. They will all come to nothing and worse if we don’t tackle the one big monster looming on the horizon, our debt. Eyes closed to this, Obama is taking us down the road to ruin.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The Economist recently ran an illuminating survey of the Nordic countries. Remember Sweden, the poster boy for a tax-and-spend “social welfare” state, of cradle-to-grave government cosseting, soaking up the lion’s share of GDP? Well, it’s not your father’s Sweden anymore. That model, the Swedes and other Nordics realized, was doomed, so they reformed; in The Economist’s words, they “put an end to the region’s magical thinking about welfare.”

So they enacted sweeping pension and benefit reforms and put their budgets in balance; Sweden reduced national debt from 84% of GDP in 1996 to 49% in 2011; government’s share of GDP fell by a whopping 18 percentage points. The Nordic countries have also become much more enthusiastic toward the free market and entrepreneurialism, moving their economies away from statism. They embrace free trade and resist the siren song of protectionism. The Swedes now even let private companies compete with government bodies to provide services; a majority of new kindergartens and health clinics are being built by businesses, and citizens can shop around.

This includes school choice; Sweden is now the world’s leading adopter of vouchers. Almost half its schoolkids are in non-public classrooms. And the most comprehensive study of the results shows great performance improvement – especially in the public schools, which competition has forced to raise their game. (Milton Friedman, father of the voucher concept, said the point was not that privately-run schools would be better; rather, all types of schools would be better if they must compete.)

Finland too is a hotbed of educational success. Interestingly, Finland spends proportionately less on schools than America, and teacher pay is relatively low. Yet Finland attracts high quality teachers by giving them something more valuable than money: respect, and thus a high degree of autonomy and responsibility for what they do in class.

So, does all this reform throw granny over the cliff, as in liberal nightmares? No. As I keep saying, rich countries have plenty of money to take care of the needy; it’s welfare for the rich that’s bankrupting us. Nordic budgets have not been balanced on the backs of the disadvantaged. What they have done is to create the conditions for everyone to flourish. And, by all accounts, their populations are quite happy with the change, facing the future with a positive attitude.

Why can’t America get its act together like that? Yes, I know all about our frozen politics and the influence of special interests (like the teachers’ unions). But Sweden and Finland were not utopian paradises free of such societal baggage. Those fat and happy with their old paternalistic policies were equally wedded to them. But their special pleading was overcome. It takes leadership and grit. I continue to believe Americans would support sensible reforms like the Nordics, if only some real leadership were shown.

I guess we’ll have to await another president. Let’s hope it won’t be too late.