Talk about a slow news day. A seaman named Hicks is suing his ship’s owners because they refused to take any protective measures (hiring security, arming the crew) when sailing in pirate infested waters. They got hijacked. Three navy snipers finally freed their captain.
Chrysler, says CBS News, is headed for bankruptcy. The DOW is currently up by one hundred points. General Motors is sloughing off over a thousand dealers. Here in Michigan, 70mph winds blew a Chihuahua away (it was later found). Arlen Specter became a Democrat—after polls showed he had no chance to win a Republican primary in 2010.
WHO warns of a swine flu pandemic, the people at Moody warn that as many as one sixth of all mortgage holders will be foreclosed, new jobless claims dropped a few thousands, car bombs are going off in Iraq again. Pakistan is teetering.
President Obama holds a news conference to celebrate his hundredth day. (Do we have to remind pundits and historians that the term “hundred days” originally referred to Napoleon’s return to power in France—and ended starkly enough at Waterloo?)
Roosevelt’s “hundred days” got a lot of bills passed. Many of them did not survive court scrutiny, and none of them fixed or ended the Depression. Obama says he’s proud but not content. Former Clinton Secretary of Labor Reich opines that we will need another stimulus package next fall.
Banks that took billions in federal bailout funds go right on refusing to ameliorate mortgage rates for the same taxpayers that are keeping them in business. A prominent senator grouses that the banks “own the Senate”.
Could it be that Coolidge was on to something when he sat, did nothing, took naps, and let the nation totter on without governmental harassment? Of course, he did have the wit to refuse to run again only a year before it all went bust. How much better would things have been in October, 1929, if “Silent Cal” had been an activist president? Any?
There’s an old saying, “Man proposes; God disposes”. That’s as true for presidents as it is for anyone else. Could G. W. Bush have ever guessed that someone would crash the World Trade Center and the Pentagon all in one morning? Certainly altered his presidency.
If there is a major pandemic (that’s still an “if”), could Obama (or McCain) have guessed six months ago? Certainly had an impact on the issues brought up in last night’s press conference.
When Wilson took office and launched his reforms, could he have imagined that within eighteen months, the thousand year old structure of central Europe would be swept away and the great colonial powers we had known throughout our history would be left dead men walking?
You can’t know. All of the major headlines of today were unknown and even unthinkable when Senator Barack Obama announced he was running for president. You can look at almost any part of the globe and spot the possibility of something program shattering occurring.
What will happen when we are confronted with the reality of a Social Security Program that cannot meet its obligations? How will we pay for a desperately needed national health program—especially if political exigencies force us to keep the private insurers in play too?
I can’t see anything much changing in that case. For it to work, there has to be a single payer that can force lower costs. That’s off the table now as every health spokesman cow tows to the insurance industry in the most slavish tones. (Pity elections cost so much, isn’t it?)
I remember how enthusiastic I was in the mid-1960s when Lyndon Johnson was passing all of his Great Society legislation. I felt that government had all the answers—and the means to arrive at those answers.
We passed the laws, put vast new programs in place—and we still have millions dropping into poverty or left without health insurance of any kind. Something didn’t work. There’s a racial divide that still splits this nation from side to side.
It would be nice to be able to be optimistic about President Obama’s plans and proposals. He certainly means well, he plays the hope message well, and he comes across as thoughtful and likeable. (If you like cute and cuddly, he has great taste in dogs.)
Something doesn’t feel right. I keep remembering Wellington’s words at Waterloo (he won, incidentally): “The battle is joined; the event is in the hands of God.”
That cloud of dust Wellington spent the day anxiously watching—is that our reinforcements coming up, or is it the other guys?
That’s just one of the questions we cannot answer. Not after one hundred days. Let’s just hope that Obama realizes this too. We’re going to have a lot more “slow” news days until we can be sure.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Paying Off The Mortgage
This two, or is it three or maybe more, maybe much more—trillion dollar bailout, rescue or whatever you want to call it raises some interesting points. Apparently a fair number of Americans believe we won’t be able to pay it back—that we are burdening future generations.
This isn’t a Burden—it’s a Mortgage on the future. That means a “death pledge”. You promise by your life to pay it back. If you don’t … . We may possibly have given our entire nation’s future in a death pledge without even thinking about it.
What happens when a whole nation cannot repay? This is worth thinking about. It could involve far more than higher taxes for our kids—or less Social Security for us. What does happen to a nation whose whole economy goes “under water”?
History offers some rather unpleasant possibilities. “BANKRUPTCY”, as it would apply to you and me, is most unlikely. After all, who is going to send in enough marshals or troops to force us to auction off a few carriers or some island naval bases. I can imagine China being willing to forgive a lot of debt to get its hands on Guam or Okinawa, even Hawaii. Not very likely.
DEFAULT. You just hand them back their paper and say, “Tough break, we can’t pay.” In the Nineteenth Century we did that a few times when our markets turned south. A lot of Europeans went broke holding American paper that was suddenly worthless.
In today’s world that could freeze us out of a lot of credit markets. It might, for instance, make it impossible to purchase oil based products like fuel and plastic at any price in dollars. A dollar devalued to nothing by international fiat would hurt like blazes.
HYPERINFLATION. This is a very real possibility and, in debt ridden future, a possibly attractive one. Think of Germany and Austria in the 1920s. You got paid in billion mark bills, a wheel barrow full. You race to the store while that much can still buy you some food.
It might be appealing because think how easily you can pay back a trillion or two when a loaf of bread costs nearly a billion. The downside is the desperate citizenry who thought they had saved well for their elder years—only to find that the IRAs won’t buy much more than a tube of toothpaste. Kind of wipes out the entire middle class.
As it did in Germany, it can make them so frantic and angry that they vote for someone like Hitler, as the Germans did. Which leads us to the next possibility:
WAR. In 1914, war appealed to some German economists. It can seem like it wipes the slate clean. It can seem as if all the problems in the economic arena are transferred to the military field where—who knows—our luck might be better. So some Germans thought.
The downside is that no one can quite accurately predict who all will be dragged into it, who all will “win” and what will it all call cost? A shooting war is a very dicey proposition. In most cases when a collapsing economy falls into war, the war only makes things worse—much worse.
But it’s a real possibility if an economy really tanks and it drags too many people down with it. In effect what it means is that you are repaying a cash mortgage in blood—a true death pledge.
Or there’s REVOLUTION. France is a wonderful example of that. It spent the entire Eighteenth Century going broke—spending, borrowing, waging wars, and never quite earning enough to repay it. Finally came the year of reckoning when France was no longer able to make any payment.
Despairing of the bankers and the treasury officials, the French government was forced to call into session an angry legislature (they hadn’t been allowed to meet in a century). Actually, everyone was angry. It all wound up in the horrors of the French Revolution followed by a European war that lasted for nearly twenty-five years, costing Europe a generation of males.
One of the things I’ve always told students—before you go to bed tonight, get down on your knees and thank God you’ve never experienced a revolution. You don’t ever want to. Wars have a few rules; revolutions have none. A confusion of blood with everyone fair game.
You don’t want to experience revolution—or war, or hyperinflation, default or national bankruptcy. But put your mind to it. What other likely possibilities –or possibility at all—do you see as a conclusion to this?
No one in Washington or New York—or London, Tokyo or anywhere else—is talking about the risk factor inherent in taking on this kind of potentially unrepayable debt. What plans, if any, do they have for paying off this mortgage—realistic plans that don’t involve positing a rate of growth double what we’ve seen in the past twenty of our best years?
I haven’t even seen a coupon book that tells me how much we’re all going to pay each month, have you? (Call that taxes, if you will.)
I suppose if we manage to avoid the above horrors, there is another option. SLOW, IRREVERSABLE DECLINE—as we pay so much on the mortgage that there is nothing left for upgrading or investing. That is an interesting enough possibility.
From where I sit, it looks like we’ve been given responsibility for a true death pledge. (We put ourselves in this situation, no doubt.) Sometimes there is truly the Devil to pay.
This isn’t a Burden—it’s a Mortgage on the future. That means a “death pledge”. You promise by your life to pay it back. If you don’t … . We may possibly have given our entire nation’s future in a death pledge without even thinking about it.
What happens when a whole nation cannot repay? This is worth thinking about. It could involve far more than higher taxes for our kids—or less Social Security for us. What does happen to a nation whose whole economy goes “under water”?
History offers some rather unpleasant possibilities. “BANKRUPTCY”, as it would apply to you and me, is most unlikely. After all, who is going to send in enough marshals or troops to force us to auction off a few carriers or some island naval bases. I can imagine China being willing to forgive a lot of debt to get its hands on Guam or Okinawa, even Hawaii. Not very likely.
DEFAULT. You just hand them back their paper and say, “Tough break, we can’t pay.” In the Nineteenth Century we did that a few times when our markets turned south. A lot of Europeans went broke holding American paper that was suddenly worthless.
In today’s world that could freeze us out of a lot of credit markets. It might, for instance, make it impossible to purchase oil based products like fuel and plastic at any price in dollars. A dollar devalued to nothing by international fiat would hurt like blazes.
HYPERINFLATION. This is a very real possibility and, in debt ridden future, a possibly attractive one. Think of Germany and Austria in the 1920s. You got paid in billion mark bills, a wheel barrow full. You race to the store while that much can still buy you some food.
It might be appealing because think how easily you can pay back a trillion or two when a loaf of bread costs nearly a billion. The downside is the desperate citizenry who thought they had saved well for their elder years—only to find that the IRAs won’t buy much more than a tube of toothpaste. Kind of wipes out the entire middle class.
As it did in Germany, it can make them so frantic and angry that they vote for someone like Hitler, as the Germans did. Which leads us to the next possibility:
WAR. In 1914, war appealed to some German economists. It can seem like it wipes the slate clean. It can seem as if all the problems in the economic arena are transferred to the military field where—who knows—our luck might be better. So some Germans thought.
The downside is that no one can quite accurately predict who all will be dragged into it, who all will “win” and what will it all call cost? A shooting war is a very dicey proposition. In most cases when a collapsing economy falls into war, the war only makes things worse—much worse.
But it’s a real possibility if an economy really tanks and it drags too many people down with it. In effect what it means is that you are repaying a cash mortgage in blood—a true death pledge.
Or there’s REVOLUTION. France is a wonderful example of that. It spent the entire Eighteenth Century going broke—spending, borrowing, waging wars, and never quite earning enough to repay it. Finally came the year of reckoning when France was no longer able to make any payment.
Despairing of the bankers and the treasury officials, the French government was forced to call into session an angry legislature (they hadn’t been allowed to meet in a century). Actually, everyone was angry. It all wound up in the horrors of the French Revolution followed by a European war that lasted for nearly twenty-five years, costing Europe a generation of males.
One of the things I’ve always told students—before you go to bed tonight, get down on your knees and thank God you’ve never experienced a revolution. You don’t ever want to. Wars have a few rules; revolutions have none. A confusion of blood with everyone fair game.
You don’t want to experience revolution—or war, or hyperinflation, default or national bankruptcy. But put your mind to it. What other likely possibilities –or possibility at all—do you see as a conclusion to this?
No one in Washington or New York—or London, Tokyo or anywhere else—is talking about the risk factor inherent in taking on this kind of potentially unrepayable debt. What plans, if any, do they have for paying off this mortgage—realistic plans that don’t involve positing a rate of growth double what we’ve seen in the past twenty of our best years?
I haven’t even seen a coupon book that tells me how much we’re all going to pay each month, have you? (Call that taxes, if you will.)
I suppose if we manage to avoid the above horrors, there is another option. SLOW, IRREVERSABLE DECLINE—as we pay so much on the mortgage that there is nothing left for upgrading or investing. That is an interesting enough possibility.
From where I sit, it looks like we’ve been given responsibility for a true death pledge. (We put ourselves in this situation, no doubt.) Sometimes there is truly the Devil to pay.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
More This and That
An Italian cruise ship plying the Somali coastal area recently rented an Israeli security force and repelled pirate boarders with armed force. If I had to borrow somebody’s security force, the Israelis certainly would be high on my list.
All they had was pistols and fire hoses. The pirates came in firing automatic weapons wildly, threw ladders up to the deck and started to climb. The passengers were ordered below decks; the deck lights were doused. The Israeli team opened up and the pirates ran for it.
Many voices were raised in worry that this would mean an escalation of violence. Others claimed that arming ordinary freighters would be much too expensive. Safer, they say, to let the pirates do their thing without resisting.
How would that argument go over with the banking business? Wouldn’t it be safer for everyone if we just pulled all the security out and let the bank robbers take whatever they wanted without the risk of escalation? There really isn’t a genteel way to answer that question.
SMOKING AND ECONOMIC HEALTH
There’s an interesting article in this week’s “Business Week” called ‘Philip Morris Unbound’. It talks about how Philip Morris has split itself in two—one half to worry about smoking/cancer liabilities in the United States—the other half to create vast new smoking markets abroad.
Yes, they concede, five million people will die—painfully—from cigarette-caused cancer this year. But, business is business. In places like Indonesia where there are eighty-million kids under fifteen, Philip Morris is aiming its advertising right for the young market.
Buy their stock. They are doing well. Sales jumped 13% last year to 26 billion. Profits shot up 14% to 7 billion dollars. All in the teeth of a major international recession. “Business Week” quotes analyst Christian Eddelman, as saying that in any other business, their tactics “would be pointed to as the way to execute a long term strategy.”
Of course, says the article, Philip Morris is in a race against the number of nations that are beginning to limit cigarette advertising and launch campaigns against smoking. Philip Morris knows it must move fast to establish new markets for what it admits is “a very harmful product.”
The president of Philip Morris, Louis Camilleri cheerfully admits that he told his own kids not to smoke. He also admits he has to pay a premium to hire top talent due to the opprobrium attached to selling cigarettes, and that, for safety, they fly private company owned planes.
What does all this say? How about: Modern business, like modern science, is essentially an amoral affair. Whatever you can do, it is all right to do. (I didn’t say immoral; I said amoral—there’s a huge difference.) Which means that your obligation to your shareholders supersedes any and all questions of humanity, decency or right and wrong.
After all, American owned companies in Nazi Germany used slave labor—where the workers were literally worked to death—without undo questions or complaint. Asbestos and coal mining industries, to say nothing of regular factories, have long worked without too much concern about safety and health.
Fixes have been caused by law suits—fought against viciously by the affected industries—or by Congressional reaction to constituent outrage at a major casualty count like the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in 1911 or the coal mining disasters of a few years ago.
Companies have rarely if ever fixed health or safety problems on their own. It’s just not good business.
Why? Because they are mean? No more so than a scientific researcher. It’s simply that morality has no recognized place in our business or professional lives. (Something called “ethics” does, but no one seems able to define it.)
So, ask yourself, in a world full of companies just like Philip Morris, what do you think about the need to regulate those companies? Think we can trust them with our lives, portfolios and mortgages without some serious oversight? I didn’t write this to say Philip Morris was evil. It’s not. It’s simply a modern corporation doing what comes naturally—and doing it well.
BYE BYE CHRYSLER?
Inventor of the mini-van, of the Hemi and the humongous Dodge Truck—platform for Lee Iacocca to stand on while he defied Henry Ford II. Subject of two major bailouts (1955, 1980), and now it looks like the end of the line for the name plate.
The suggestion is that Dodge will survive, as will Jeep. But, Chrysler, the mother ship, will go the way of Plymouth and De Soto. Do you remember the names of all the auto manufacturers that have fallen by the wayside since World War II?
Kaiser and Frazer. Willies Overland. Studebaker, Packard, Hudson, Nash, De Soto, Oldsmobile and Plymouth. Chrysler will make it eleven—that I can think of. Whatever happened to the Geo? GM is suggesting that the wide-track Pontiac is on its way out, too.
The American auto market has been contracting for decades now. It’s just that for most of the time, the Big Three were doing the squeezing against smaller brands. (Eventually the Big Two squeezed Chrysler hard enough to make it kill the De Soto around 1958.)
Now the market, overrun with better built and sexier cars from Japan and Europe, is beginning to crush the too-long complacent (and just plain arrogant “Big Three”).
Who’s going to explain to the legions of auto workers that nobody is doing this to them on purpose; it’s just normal, survival of the fittest, business? (Maybe they could apply to Philip Morris.)
All they had was pistols and fire hoses. The pirates came in firing automatic weapons wildly, threw ladders up to the deck and started to climb. The passengers were ordered below decks; the deck lights were doused. The Israeli team opened up and the pirates ran for it.
Many voices were raised in worry that this would mean an escalation of violence. Others claimed that arming ordinary freighters would be much too expensive. Safer, they say, to let the pirates do their thing without resisting.
How would that argument go over with the banking business? Wouldn’t it be safer for everyone if we just pulled all the security out and let the bank robbers take whatever they wanted without the risk of escalation? There really isn’t a genteel way to answer that question.
SMOKING AND ECONOMIC HEALTH
There’s an interesting article in this week’s “Business Week” called ‘Philip Morris Unbound’. It talks about how Philip Morris has split itself in two—one half to worry about smoking/cancer liabilities in the United States—the other half to create vast new smoking markets abroad.
Yes, they concede, five million people will die—painfully—from cigarette-caused cancer this year. But, business is business. In places like Indonesia where there are eighty-million kids under fifteen, Philip Morris is aiming its advertising right for the young market.
Buy their stock. They are doing well. Sales jumped 13% last year to 26 billion. Profits shot up 14% to 7 billion dollars. All in the teeth of a major international recession. “Business Week” quotes analyst Christian Eddelman, as saying that in any other business, their tactics “would be pointed to as the way to execute a long term strategy.”
Of course, says the article, Philip Morris is in a race against the number of nations that are beginning to limit cigarette advertising and launch campaigns against smoking. Philip Morris knows it must move fast to establish new markets for what it admits is “a very harmful product.”
The president of Philip Morris, Louis Camilleri cheerfully admits that he told his own kids not to smoke. He also admits he has to pay a premium to hire top talent due to the opprobrium attached to selling cigarettes, and that, for safety, they fly private company owned planes.
What does all this say? How about: Modern business, like modern science, is essentially an amoral affair. Whatever you can do, it is all right to do. (I didn’t say immoral; I said amoral—there’s a huge difference.) Which means that your obligation to your shareholders supersedes any and all questions of humanity, decency or right and wrong.
After all, American owned companies in Nazi Germany used slave labor—where the workers were literally worked to death—without undo questions or complaint. Asbestos and coal mining industries, to say nothing of regular factories, have long worked without too much concern about safety and health.
Fixes have been caused by law suits—fought against viciously by the affected industries—or by Congressional reaction to constituent outrage at a major casualty count like the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in 1911 or the coal mining disasters of a few years ago.
Companies have rarely if ever fixed health or safety problems on their own. It’s just not good business.
Why? Because they are mean? No more so than a scientific researcher. It’s simply that morality has no recognized place in our business or professional lives. (Something called “ethics” does, but no one seems able to define it.)
So, ask yourself, in a world full of companies just like Philip Morris, what do you think about the need to regulate those companies? Think we can trust them with our lives, portfolios and mortgages without some serious oversight? I didn’t write this to say Philip Morris was evil. It’s not. It’s simply a modern corporation doing what comes naturally—and doing it well.
BYE BYE CHRYSLER?
Inventor of the mini-van, of the Hemi and the humongous Dodge Truck—platform for Lee Iacocca to stand on while he defied Henry Ford II. Subject of two major bailouts (1955, 1980), and now it looks like the end of the line for the name plate.
The suggestion is that Dodge will survive, as will Jeep. But, Chrysler, the mother ship, will go the way of Plymouth and De Soto. Do you remember the names of all the auto manufacturers that have fallen by the wayside since World War II?
Kaiser and Frazer. Willies Overland. Studebaker, Packard, Hudson, Nash, De Soto, Oldsmobile and Plymouth. Chrysler will make it eleven—that I can think of. Whatever happened to the Geo? GM is suggesting that the wide-track Pontiac is on its way out, too.
The American auto market has been contracting for decades now. It’s just that for most of the time, the Big Three were doing the squeezing against smaller brands. (Eventually the Big Two squeezed Chrysler hard enough to make it kill the De Soto around 1958.)
Now the market, overrun with better built and sexier cars from Japan and Europe, is beginning to crush the too-long complacent (and just plain arrogant “Big Three”).
Who’s going to explain to the legions of auto workers that nobody is doing this to them on purpose; it’s just normal, survival of the fittest, business? (Maybe they could apply to Philip Morris.)
Thursday, April 23, 2009
This and That
You gotta respect Michelle Obama. I voted for McCain; I’d vote for him again—but I will certainly throw a salute to a savvy politician when I see one. What did she do now? She brilliantly defanged an issue that has bedeviled every active First Lady since Jimmy Carter’s “Steel Magnolia”.
Remember the complaints? “We didn’t elect her!” “Who does she think she is?” They faced Rosalind Carter, Nancy Reagan and Hillary Clinton particularly. Active women who did a lot more than stand next to their husbands with a big smile and blank eyes.
We didn’t want them giving advice to the Commander-in-Chief, even if that was how the marriage worked. She was expected to tend to the silverware at State Dinners and occasionally throw a nice garden party outside. We permitted Jackie to redecorate the White House. I don’t think that’s Michelle’s style.
But she is unlikely to face the sort of static the other three ladies did. Today was, “Bring your kid to work” day. The White House staff did. Mrs. Obama came in to greet them. She gave a nice little speech, apologizing for keeping their dad’s at work so late, then she asked for questions.
One boy asked what she would do if a crisis occurred in the middle of the night. She smiled, didn’t miss a beat, and said, “I’d wake my husband.”
“He’s President. I’d tell him to get down to the Oval Office and handle it. Then I’d go back to sleep and ask him how it turned out in the morning.”
You can bet she’ll do a lot more than that. But her image will be of the pretty lady and mommy who wouldn’t dabble in state affairs—but would “wake my husband”. A well played hand, a very well played hand!
COMING OUT OF THE RECESSION
Tulips, crocuses, and the first shoots of renewed economic life seem to be popping up here and there. As I pointed out to one happy optimist today, that’s not surprising considering that billions and even trillions of federal dollars are being stirred into the mix.
I asked her how good her historical memory of the Great Depression was (1930s). She admitted to a blank. I pointed out the Franklin Roosevelt, after defeating Herbert Hoover with a campaign pledge to cut federal spending, dumped the equivalent kind of money into the economy in the first four years of his presidency.
By 1936, the economy was well on its way back. The tulips, the azaleas and the forsythia were rioting. FDR won by the second biggest landslide in history (1964 topped it). Then, being the true fiscal conservative he actually was, he turned off the tap.
We discovered it wasn’t a real recovery. It wouldn’t go on its own. All the recovery flowers drooped and died. Without a steady infusion of large amounts of federal dollars, there simply was no recovery. By 1938, we were back to 13 million unemployed out of a total population of around 120 million men, women and children (Women often were not allowed to work then.)
The present bubble bust is the worst we’ve seen since the 30s. Honestly, we cannot be sure it’s over until the tap is turned off and the newly recovered economy takes its first steps on its own. With all the governmental fertilizer and water, I would expect to see signs of life now!
We’d better! Or we are wasting a whole lot of tax dollars. Is the recession actually coming to an end? Wait a year or two after the federal money dries up. Then we’ll know.
TO PROSECUTE OR NOT TO PROSECUTE
People are beginning to fuss because O’bama won’t start the parade to bring the torturers of the Bush administration up on legal charges. As it happened after Watergate, they want blood. Now.
I think the President, himself, is looking at reality. What should they have done with the World Trade Center still smoldering, big tarps hanging over the Pentagon? Is there another attack on the way? You want answers and you want them fast. American lives are at stake.
Actions were taken. We wanted information—fast. Mature judgment, with lots of time to reflect, probably wouldn’t have taken the kinds of actions that were taken then. The biggest indictment against the Bush people seems to be: “See? There wasn’t another attack. So everything you did back then was obviously unnecessary and excessive.”
That reasoning probably sounds as flawed to a Harvard lawyer as it does to me. O’bama may have another thought on his mind. (I would.) “What if something dreadful happens on my watch and my administration, caught in the chaos and fear of the immediate, does something that can later be deemed unnecessary and excessive? Where will I be?
“Do I want the administration elected in 2012 or 2016 coming after me with threats of prosecution and legal penalties?” Do we want a president in crisis hamstringed with that kind of concern for his own future?
Hey guys, they had smoldering ruins and thousands of dead. A plane had barely been stopped from ramming the White House. Back off a little—and be very thankful there wasn’t another attack.
Remember the complaints? “We didn’t elect her!” “Who does she think she is?” They faced Rosalind Carter, Nancy Reagan and Hillary Clinton particularly. Active women who did a lot more than stand next to their husbands with a big smile and blank eyes.
We didn’t want them giving advice to the Commander-in-Chief, even if that was how the marriage worked. She was expected to tend to the silverware at State Dinners and occasionally throw a nice garden party outside. We permitted Jackie to redecorate the White House. I don’t think that’s Michelle’s style.
But she is unlikely to face the sort of static the other three ladies did. Today was, “Bring your kid to work” day. The White House staff did. Mrs. Obama came in to greet them. She gave a nice little speech, apologizing for keeping their dad’s at work so late, then she asked for questions.
One boy asked what she would do if a crisis occurred in the middle of the night. She smiled, didn’t miss a beat, and said, “I’d wake my husband.”
“He’s President. I’d tell him to get down to the Oval Office and handle it. Then I’d go back to sleep and ask him how it turned out in the morning.”
You can bet she’ll do a lot more than that. But her image will be of the pretty lady and mommy who wouldn’t dabble in state affairs—but would “wake my husband”. A well played hand, a very well played hand!
COMING OUT OF THE RECESSION
Tulips, crocuses, and the first shoots of renewed economic life seem to be popping up here and there. As I pointed out to one happy optimist today, that’s not surprising considering that billions and even trillions of federal dollars are being stirred into the mix.
I asked her how good her historical memory of the Great Depression was (1930s). She admitted to a blank. I pointed out the Franklin Roosevelt, after defeating Herbert Hoover with a campaign pledge to cut federal spending, dumped the equivalent kind of money into the economy in the first four years of his presidency.
By 1936, the economy was well on its way back. The tulips, the azaleas and the forsythia were rioting. FDR won by the second biggest landslide in history (1964 topped it). Then, being the true fiscal conservative he actually was, he turned off the tap.
We discovered it wasn’t a real recovery. It wouldn’t go on its own. All the recovery flowers drooped and died. Without a steady infusion of large amounts of federal dollars, there simply was no recovery. By 1938, we were back to 13 million unemployed out of a total population of around 120 million men, women and children (Women often were not allowed to work then.)
The present bubble bust is the worst we’ve seen since the 30s. Honestly, we cannot be sure it’s over until the tap is turned off and the newly recovered economy takes its first steps on its own. With all the governmental fertilizer and water, I would expect to see signs of life now!
We’d better! Or we are wasting a whole lot of tax dollars. Is the recession actually coming to an end? Wait a year or two after the federal money dries up. Then we’ll know.
TO PROSECUTE OR NOT TO PROSECUTE
People are beginning to fuss because O’bama won’t start the parade to bring the torturers of the Bush administration up on legal charges. As it happened after Watergate, they want blood. Now.
I think the President, himself, is looking at reality. What should they have done with the World Trade Center still smoldering, big tarps hanging over the Pentagon? Is there another attack on the way? You want answers and you want them fast. American lives are at stake.
Actions were taken. We wanted information—fast. Mature judgment, with lots of time to reflect, probably wouldn’t have taken the kinds of actions that were taken then. The biggest indictment against the Bush people seems to be: “See? There wasn’t another attack. So everything you did back then was obviously unnecessary and excessive.”
That reasoning probably sounds as flawed to a Harvard lawyer as it does to me. O’bama may have another thought on his mind. (I would.) “What if something dreadful happens on my watch and my administration, caught in the chaos and fear of the immediate, does something that can later be deemed unnecessary and excessive? Where will I be?
“Do I want the administration elected in 2012 or 2016 coming after me with threats of prosecution and legal penalties?” Do we want a president in crisis hamstringed with that kind of concern for his own future?
Hey guys, they had smoldering ruins and thousands of dead. A plane had barely been stopped from ramming the White House. Back off a little—and be very thankful there wasn’t another attack.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Pakistan: Alexander Wedderburn's Heirs
While the nation fusses over whether or not the president should have worn a bathing suit while vacationing in Hawaii—and did “The Washingtonian” bronze up his color a bit—and, oh, should his wife have worn that sleeveless gown she looked so smashing in (I’ll bet the last was jealousy—Michelle looked stunning in a color white reviewers cannot wear well), we’re missing a real story.
I keep thinking of the band of top level US officials who recently flew to Pakistan and publicly humiliated one of the few governments in that area that is not, out and out, our active enemy. Our beef was that they had taken our $11 billion in anti-terrorist cash and hadn’t then gone out and committed political suicide by declaring open war on Muslim fundamentalists in a region no one has ever controlled.
An appalled Pakistani official described the visit as a total “disaster”. He strongly implied that no previous American delegation had ever treated his government with such contempt.
That’s not really a good way to maintain even a tenuous friendship—with an ally that finds itself caught between a rock and a very hard place. It’s not as if we are in a position to help them—or secure their survival as a secular government with ties to the West.
Contempt and arrogance, such a good basis on which to formulate a policy. I’m sure that the Americans in question don’t see themselves as arrogant—any more than the British did in their dealings with the colonies in the 1770s. Both could only see that they were being gypped.
Both went after the nickel without keeping the dollar in view. The British cost themselves an entire empire; who knows what the Americans may ultimately cost themselves in the Mideast if they keep up the hectoring. Yes, the British had spent huge amounts protecting Americans who, London felt, weren’t doing their fair share to pay for that protection.
Yes, the Pakistani’s have received billions in aid to fight terrorism. They have cooperated—as much as circumstances will allow them, or as much as they dare. But we insist they do MORE and risk everything, including the life of their nation and their persons.
But if they haven’t WON the war against terrorism for us, neither have we. Think how much more we have spent to keep troops in Afghanistan and Iraq—and how little the $11 billion we’ve spent to keep Pakistan on our side looks in comparison.
Never mind! We are going to force the hapless Pakistani’s to “do the right thing”! Whether it is possible is immaterial. This was precisely the attitude in London that sent the colonies rushing into the arms of France to wage war for independence.
Imagine if our arrogance in Pakistan led to a similar response. It will, for one thing, make it much harder to supply and/or extricate our forces in Afghanistan if the whole Pakistani border turns hostile, from top officials in Karachi to the lowliest Taliban runner.
We’ve already talked about the speculation that if the London government had just showed Mr. Washington an ounce more respect, he might not have been available to keep the Continental Army in the field. He did this single handedly, by the force of his own character and the liberal use of his own money. Without him, there’d be no United States as we know it today.
We owe his presence to British contempt and arrogance. We owe the presence of at least another American without whom we absolutely would not exist today to British arrogance.
He was a proud man. He started with literally nothing and made himself a rich “gentlemen” by the time he was forty-two. (Only men who were so wealthy they didn’t need to work merited the title, Gentleman.) He was the only American in the Eighteenth Century to be world famous.
While he may not stand quite in the first tier of great scientists, he certainly is at the fore of the second tier—with memberships in the Royal Academies of both France and England, and honorary doctorates from all over America and Great Britain—despite having only two years of formal schooling.
He adored the British Empire. A man of little religion himself, his “kingdom of heaven” was the world wide empire ruled by Parliament from London. He moved to London in the 1760s with the very real intention of spending the rest of his life there. He held a Royal position in the colonies and, for a time, there was talk or at least rumor of bringing him into the British cabinet.
During the Stamp Act Crisis and the Townsend Acts, he worked mightily, using all of his contacts and his fame to bring about peace between the colonies and Great Britain. He made himself deeply distrusted back home in the colonies as a result of his efforts. Many patriots were absolutely sure he was a complete Tory, with only British interests at heart.
He became a fashion plate in London, almost out Britishing the British. He even betrayed an old friend in a misguided attempt to create mutual understanding between mother and colonies. It was this very act of betrayal that made the British decide he was too treacherous to be trusted.
On January 29, 1774, they summoned Doctor Benjamin Franklin—the best American friend they had—to a hearing before the King’s Council and the judges. Alexander Wedderburn, Solicitor General for the Realm, spent an hour indicting Franklin, pouring out all the frustration with America on him.
Wedderburn had the foulest tongue in an age of vituperative prosecutors. As Franklin stood mute in his finest, newest and most fashionable suit and wig, Wedderburn slashed at him with language so hurtful and vile that the London papers refused to print what he said.
Franklin did not say a word. Why not? He was asked by friends. “If I had said so much as a word, they would have hanged me.” London fired Franklin from his government post. He tried to mediate for another year but when the last attempt to mediate was shouted down with contempt in the House of Lords, Franklin, almost crushed with disillusionment, set sail for America two months before Lexington and Concord.
Whatever the Continental Congress may have thought of Franklin’s efforts in London, they knew he was the only man with the stature to go to France and keep the munitions coming. On the day when a treaty was finally signed between France and the United Colonies—promising to send French troops, cannon and ships to America to serve under Washington—a British spy reported back to London.
As he signed the treaty, it was noted that Franklin (who had made a fetish in Paris of pretending to be a plain spun, wigless frontiersman—to great French delight) had on that one day worn the same elegant English suit he had worn on the day he had stood silent before Wedderburn’s assault.
As Mario Puzo’s character, Michael Corleone finally snarled—giving the lie to the family mantra—“The Hell it’s not personal!”
If the perhaps the most fervent Anglophile in America could be turned into one of its two most effective and vituperative patriots by a taste of contempt and arrogance, think how far a little of this might go in an insecure nation like Pakistan.
That’s a lot more worrisome than whether the First Lady wore sleeves.
I keep thinking of the band of top level US officials who recently flew to Pakistan and publicly humiliated one of the few governments in that area that is not, out and out, our active enemy. Our beef was that they had taken our $11 billion in anti-terrorist cash and hadn’t then gone out and committed political suicide by declaring open war on Muslim fundamentalists in a region no one has ever controlled.
An appalled Pakistani official described the visit as a total “disaster”. He strongly implied that no previous American delegation had ever treated his government with such contempt.
That’s not really a good way to maintain even a tenuous friendship—with an ally that finds itself caught between a rock and a very hard place. It’s not as if we are in a position to help them—or secure their survival as a secular government with ties to the West.
Contempt and arrogance, such a good basis on which to formulate a policy. I’m sure that the Americans in question don’t see themselves as arrogant—any more than the British did in their dealings with the colonies in the 1770s. Both could only see that they were being gypped.
Both went after the nickel without keeping the dollar in view. The British cost themselves an entire empire; who knows what the Americans may ultimately cost themselves in the Mideast if they keep up the hectoring. Yes, the British had spent huge amounts protecting Americans who, London felt, weren’t doing their fair share to pay for that protection.
Yes, the Pakistani’s have received billions in aid to fight terrorism. They have cooperated—as much as circumstances will allow them, or as much as they dare. But we insist they do MORE and risk everything, including the life of their nation and their persons.
But if they haven’t WON the war against terrorism for us, neither have we. Think how much more we have spent to keep troops in Afghanistan and Iraq—and how little the $11 billion we’ve spent to keep Pakistan on our side looks in comparison.
Never mind! We are going to force the hapless Pakistani’s to “do the right thing”! Whether it is possible is immaterial. This was precisely the attitude in London that sent the colonies rushing into the arms of France to wage war for independence.
Imagine if our arrogance in Pakistan led to a similar response. It will, for one thing, make it much harder to supply and/or extricate our forces in Afghanistan if the whole Pakistani border turns hostile, from top officials in Karachi to the lowliest Taliban runner.
We’ve already talked about the speculation that if the London government had just showed Mr. Washington an ounce more respect, he might not have been available to keep the Continental Army in the field. He did this single handedly, by the force of his own character and the liberal use of his own money. Without him, there’d be no United States as we know it today.
We owe his presence to British contempt and arrogance. We owe the presence of at least another American without whom we absolutely would not exist today to British arrogance.
He was a proud man. He started with literally nothing and made himself a rich “gentlemen” by the time he was forty-two. (Only men who were so wealthy they didn’t need to work merited the title, Gentleman.) He was the only American in the Eighteenth Century to be world famous.
While he may not stand quite in the first tier of great scientists, he certainly is at the fore of the second tier—with memberships in the Royal Academies of both France and England, and honorary doctorates from all over America and Great Britain—despite having only two years of formal schooling.
He adored the British Empire. A man of little religion himself, his “kingdom of heaven” was the world wide empire ruled by Parliament from London. He moved to London in the 1760s with the very real intention of spending the rest of his life there. He held a Royal position in the colonies and, for a time, there was talk or at least rumor of bringing him into the British cabinet.
During the Stamp Act Crisis and the Townsend Acts, he worked mightily, using all of his contacts and his fame to bring about peace between the colonies and Great Britain. He made himself deeply distrusted back home in the colonies as a result of his efforts. Many patriots were absolutely sure he was a complete Tory, with only British interests at heart.
He became a fashion plate in London, almost out Britishing the British. He even betrayed an old friend in a misguided attempt to create mutual understanding between mother and colonies. It was this very act of betrayal that made the British decide he was too treacherous to be trusted.
On January 29, 1774, they summoned Doctor Benjamin Franklin—the best American friend they had—to a hearing before the King’s Council and the judges. Alexander Wedderburn, Solicitor General for the Realm, spent an hour indicting Franklin, pouring out all the frustration with America on him.
Wedderburn had the foulest tongue in an age of vituperative prosecutors. As Franklin stood mute in his finest, newest and most fashionable suit and wig, Wedderburn slashed at him with language so hurtful and vile that the London papers refused to print what he said.
Franklin did not say a word. Why not? He was asked by friends. “If I had said so much as a word, they would have hanged me.” London fired Franklin from his government post. He tried to mediate for another year but when the last attempt to mediate was shouted down with contempt in the House of Lords, Franklin, almost crushed with disillusionment, set sail for America two months before Lexington and Concord.
Whatever the Continental Congress may have thought of Franklin’s efforts in London, they knew he was the only man with the stature to go to France and keep the munitions coming. On the day when a treaty was finally signed between France and the United Colonies—promising to send French troops, cannon and ships to America to serve under Washington—a British spy reported back to London.
As he signed the treaty, it was noted that Franklin (who had made a fetish in Paris of pretending to be a plain spun, wigless frontiersman—to great French delight) had on that one day worn the same elegant English suit he had worn on the day he had stood silent before Wedderburn’s assault.
As Mario Puzo’s character, Michael Corleone finally snarled—giving the lie to the family mantra—“The Hell it’s not personal!”
If the perhaps the most fervent Anglophile in America could be turned into one of its two most effective and vituperative patriots by a taste of contempt and arrogance, think how far a little of this might go in an insecure nation like Pakistan.
That’s a lot more worrisome than whether the First Lady wore sleeves.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Pakistan--Take What You Can Get
Senator Kerry, among others, suggests we have no real policy in dealing with Pakistan. It would be hard for me to resist answering him, if I were an American official, “Who ever has had?”
Pakistan—especially its wild and wooly border area next to Afghanistan—isn’t the sort of place you have what people like Senator Kerry like to call a policy for. You just do what a friend of mine who had the good fortune to survive a hurricane in a 30 foot boat. You lash the wheel, batten everything down—and ride the swells.
Ask the British. They were supposedly in charge of that area for over a century. Every so often they would send in troops to deal with “terrorists” coming across the border from Afghanistan (this sort of traffic has always gone both ways between the two areas).
Then they’d pray and hope this army didn’t get wiped out like the last one did. Kabul still has bullet pockmarks from the time a British force was besieged and destroyed around the year we were having a gold rush in California. That’s a long time ago—but not much has changed over there.
Or they’d just send “Gunga Din” and a detachment of cavalry to try to hold down their own side of the border. It was never a peaceful, quiet or law abiding area. The wilderness along the Khyber Pass has always been a dangerous place.
Alexander the Great—who used to complain about not having enough worlds to conquer—decided this wasn’t one he wanted. Thus, we can safely say, the United States isn’t the first power not to have any comprehensive policy in Pakistan—it likely won’t be the last.
It’s safe to say the Pakistani’s don’t have a policy for Pakistan—let alone that mountainous border area where Osama Bin Laden is said to be holed up.
We complain about Pakistani intelligence officials having close ties with the Taliban. That’s as wise as a small town American sheriff reaching an accommodation with a well armed and ruthless group of outlaws. It’s called a survival necessity.
It’s also the only way you can get intelligence in the region and, you can hope, if you accommodate the Taliban here, they may not strike in some more vital area. From a Pakistani point of view, talking with the Taliban makes imminently good sense.
From an American point of view, if we can get partial or even occasional cooperation from Pakistani authorities that’s probably as well as we’re going to do. Honestly, the only real alternative we would have to accepting that reality is a full scale invasion.
Anyone who would contemplate that for even a second HAS to be labeled a “security risk”—to himself and everyone anywhere around him! Take what we can get; accept that this is all we can get—that’s probably not just our best policy, it’s our only one.
The British would keep sending up cavalry incursions, sometimes infantry, to knock them back. They’d try to bribe this or that tribal chief, support one against another, and this “catch as catch can” affair became a kind of adjustable “policy” for that quarter of the empire.
It really didn’t do us a lot of good to have a gaggle of high ranking American officials go over to Pakistan the other week and publicly make demands and put pressure on the distracted and relatively feeble Karachi government.
We’re objecting that we gave Pakistan $11 billion over the past ten years to fight terrorism and we haven’t seen many results. Hey! If all that $11 billion did was to keep Pakistan from JOINING the Taliban, that’s a lot cheaper than sending our own people in—check the cost of Iraq.
For thousands of years, Great Powers have chosen to bribe dangerous border tribes rather than spend the money and troops to fight them. It cuts the casualty rate way, way down. Compared to the cost of Iraq, $11 billion was cheap.
The Pakistani army probably isn’t up to fighting its way through The Northwest Frontier Province that borders Afghanistan. Send in American troops? I don’t think you want to count the number of divisions that would take—to do more than merely annoy the locals.
As we’ve learned in Iraq and Afghanistan, annoyed locals can blow up and kill a lot of GIs. No—shut your mouth, keep handing over the money, and take what you can get in the way of intelligence, military support and limited cooperation.
Don’t weaken the professedly pro-western Karachi government by publicly humiliating them. We might not like what succeeds it. Then there might be no cooperation at all.
Americans have tried never to admit to themselves that we have an empire. Very much for that reason we don’t really know how to handle one. Bribes in the form of “foreign aid” (we did it all through the Cold War!), maintaining a smiling fiction that the Pakistani’s are really doing a bang-up job, all the while sending in as few of your own troops as you possibly can—that sort of POLICY maintained the Roman and British Empires for centuries.
Learn from the Old Masters. To start with, when you’re unwilling to send in millions of your own soldiers, take what you can get. Smile. Hand them the check.
That’s a workable policy, Mr. Kerry. It’s the sort you adopt when all you CAN do is ride the swells.
Pakistan—especially its wild and wooly border area next to Afghanistan—isn’t the sort of place you have what people like Senator Kerry like to call a policy for. You just do what a friend of mine who had the good fortune to survive a hurricane in a 30 foot boat. You lash the wheel, batten everything down—and ride the swells.
Ask the British. They were supposedly in charge of that area for over a century. Every so often they would send in troops to deal with “terrorists” coming across the border from Afghanistan (this sort of traffic has always gone both ways between the two areas).
Then they’d pray and hope this army didn’t get wiped out like the last one did. Kabul still has bullet pockmarks from the time a British force was besieged and destroyed around the year we were having a gold rush in California. That’s a long time ago—but not much has changed over there.
Or they’d just send “Gunga Din” and a detachment of cavalry to try to hold down their own side of the border. It was never a peaceful, quiet or law abiding area. The wilderness along the Khyber Pass has always been a dangerous place.
Alexander the Great—who used to complain about not having enough worlds to conquer—decided this wasn’t one he wanted. Thus, we can safely say, the United States isn’t the first power not to have any comprehensive policy in Pakistan—it likely won’t be the last.
It’s safe to say the Pakistani’s don’t have a policy for Pakistan—let alone that mountainous border area where Osama Bin Laden is said to be holed up.
We complain about Pakistani intelligence officials having close ties with the Taliban. That’s as wise as a small town American sheriff reaching an accommodation with a well armed and ruthless group of outlaws. It’s called a survival necessity.
It’s also the only way you can get intelligence in the region and, you can hope, if you accommodate the Taliban here, they may not strike in some more vital area. From a Pakistani point of view, talking with the Taliban makes imminently good sense.
From an American point of view, if we can get partial or even occasional cooperation from Pakistani authorities that’s probably as well as we’re going to do. Honestly, the only real alternative we would have to accepting that reality is a full scale invasion.
Anyone who would contemplate that for even a second HAS to be labeled a “security risk”—to himself and everyone anywhere around him! Take what we can get; accept that this is all we can get—that’s probably not just our best policy, it’s our only one.
The British would keep sending up cavalry incursions, sometimes infantry, to knock them back. They’d try to bribe this or that tribal chief, support one against another, and this “catch as catch can” affair became a kind of adjustable “policy” for that quarter of the empire.
It really didn’t do us a lot of good to have a gaggle of high ranking American officials go over to Pakistan the other week and publicly make demands and put pressure on the distracted and relatively feeble Karachi government.
We’re objecting that we gave Pakistan $11 billion over the past ten years to fight terrorism and we haven’t seen many results. Hey! If all that $11 billion did was to keep Pakistan from JOINING the Taliban, that’s a lot cheaper than sending our own people in—check the cost of Iraq.
For thousands of years, Great Powers have chosen to bribe dangerous border tribes rather than spend the money and troops to fight them. It cuts the casualty rate way, way down. Compared to the cost of Iraq, $11 billion was cheap.
The Pakistani army probably isn’t up to fighting its way through The Northwest Frontier Province that borders Afghanistan. Send in American troops? I don’t think you want to count the number of divisions that would take—to do more than merely annoy the locals.
As we’ve learned in Iraq and Afghanistan, annoyed locals can blow up and kill a lot of GIs. No—shut your mouth, keep handing over the money, and take what you can get in the way of intelligence, military support and limited cooperation.
Don’t weaken the professedly pro-western Karachi government by publicly humiliating them. We might not like what succeeds it. Then there might be no cooperation at all.
Americans have tried never to admit to themselves that we have an empire. Very much for that reason we don’t really know how to handle one. Bribes in the form of “foreign aid” (we did it all through the Cold War!), maintaining a smiling fiction that the Pakistani’s are really doing a bang-up job, all the while sending in as few of your own troops as you possibly can—that sort of POLICY maintained the Roman and British Empires for centuries.
Learn from the Old Masters. To start with, when you’re unwilling to send in millions of your own soldiers, take what you can get. Smile. Hand them the check.
That’s a workable policy, Mr. Kerry. It’s the sort you adopt when all you CAN do is ride the swells.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Extra! Extra! Obama Caught Being Curteous!
There seems to be a great hue and cry by my fellow Republicans—President Obama was seen shaking hands with President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela at a summit in Trinadad! Oh! The horror! Oh! Pish Tosh, The handshake didn’t hurt us. We still have our shorts on.
What on earth do American legislators and officials imagine we are going to gain by pretending someone isn’t there? Or by keeping our hands germ free by refusing to shake?
Phooey. When my boys played soccer, sometimes they played against some nasty teams. I would advise them to be the first to offer a fallen opponent a hand up. “You’ll look like decent fellows, and you may even fool the referee into thinking you would never kick or trip.”
Obama looked gracious. That hurt us? Did he give away Manhattan Island or one of our aircraft carriers? As Obama pointed out, Venezuela’s tiny military is no threat and it has lots and lots of oil that has traditionally come to us.
It’s not a strategic (or public relations) disaster to be seen being nice to a man who could help effect our gas prices. (We do it to Saudi’s and Kuwait’s all the time.) You lose nothing, and you just might gain something valuable.
What in the name of sanity is the point of pushing Chavez into the arms of a renascent Russian military? They’re already visiting Venezuela with their warships. Do we really want them signing formal treaties and gaining permanent bases there? We tried icing Castro and nearly got ourselves blown up trying to get Russian nukes back out of Cuba. That should be a lesson.
I’m not a Jefferson fan, but I liked one aspect of his foreign policy. He felt that if a foreign government had effective control over its territory and was not actively attacking us—we should recognize it, talk to it and be done with pointless political moralizing.
Anybody who worked the South Side of Chicago (and survived) is smart enough to know that actions ultimately matter more than friendly words. Obama seems also to be bright enough to recognize that sometimes the symbolism of a friendly gesture matters a great deal. (Oil, remember? The possibility of Russian naval and air bases?)
Obama made the accurate point that our Cuban policy hasn’t worked all that well over the past 50 years. In fact, I’ll challenge anyone to show me one large scale embargo has benefited the people who staged the embargo—against anybody, anywhere.
Let’s review the successes embargoes have enjoyed over the past century. First, the British navel embargo against Germany during the months after Germany quit in 1918. Got the Germans to sign a brutal treaty—which they repudiated as soon as they dared, and it left them hungry and desperate enough to vote for Hitler. That was a winner.
The US refused to recognize or sell to the Soviet Union from 1918 to 1933. Certainly stopped Communism, didn’t it? Made the Russians so paranoid of the West that they chose to make a treaty with Hitler. The French, British and Poles certainly did well without Russian help early in the war.
France and Britain embargoed Italy in the 1930s after Mussolini invaded Ethiopia. Mussolini stayed there until a British army drove him out—and he almost immediately signed an alliance with Hitler after opposing him at the side of France and England for years.
We embargoed the living daylights out of Japan from the mid-thirties until war broke out. This one was effective; unlike most other embargoes, there were almost no leaks. The Japanese could obtain no iron, no steel, no copper—or a list of industrially necessary commodities that is a small-print, two column page long. I was stunned when it was declassified in the 1960s.
You cannot maintain a modern society without the materials we blocked Japan from buying. To be certain that they would strangle to death we froze all their money in US banks. Nor could they get their hands on a drop of oil or gasoline. We had them down to an eighteen month’s supply of fuel before going dark and cold.
We expected them to capitulate. They fooled us. First they bombed the fleet that was enforcing the embargo from Pearl Harbor—then they went for oil and other necessaries. In the end, that embargo didn’t really work all that well either.
We refused to acknowledge the existence of China (only a third of the world’s population) from 1949 until 1972. Effect? It kept China snuggled up to the Soviet Union throughout the embargo. That changed immediately upon Nixon’s trip to China—and they even allowed us to bring in electronic listening posts along the Soviet frontier.
We’ve embargoed Curba since 1959. Somehow they’ve still got those 1958 Fords and Pontiacs running. Everybody gets educated, has decent (free) medical care and the Castro’s are with us yet—athwart one of our most strategic sea lanes, ninety miles from Florida.
Maybe, with Chavez—and even Raul Castro—we should try a different policy. One would hope that our experiences over the last hundred years might have taught us something. (If we don’t like it coming from Obama, maybe we can hear it from Jefferson.)
A handshake is cheap. If it opens a door to needed resources and prevents us from having another really hostile enemy nearby, it is certainly worth the effort.
The wounded pride we display isn’t making us a bit more secure or obtaining an ounce of extra oil. Yes, it IS pride. Both Cuba and Venezuela were once nearly colonies of ours, and we lost them. They chose INDEPENDENCE over American tutelage in democracy. We get angry when people do that.
Quite time for us to get over our hurt feelings. (The British seem to have forgiven us for 1776.) Kudus on this one, Mr. Obama.
What on earth do American legislators and officials imagine we are going to gain by pretending someone isn’t there? Or by keeping our hands germ free by refusing to shake?
Phooey. When my boys played soccer, sometimes they played against some nasty teams. I would advise them to be the first to offer a fallen opponent a hand up. “You’ll look like decent fellows, and you may even fool the referee into thinking you would never kick or trip.”
Obama looked gracious. That hurt us? Did he give away Manhattan Island or one of our aircraft carriers? As Obama pointed out, Venezuela’s tiny military is no threat and it has lots and lots of oil that has traditionally come to us.
It’s not a strategic (or public relations) disaster to be seen being nice to a man who could help effect our gas prices. (We do it to Saudi’s and Kuwait’s all the time.) You lose nothing, and you just might gain something valuable.
What in the name of sanity is the point of pushing Chavez into the arms of a renascent Russian military? They’re already visiting Venezuela with their warships. Do we really want them signing formal treaties and gaining permanent bases there? We tried icing Castro and nearly got ourselves blown up trying to get Russian nukes back out of Cuba. That should be a lesson.
I’m not a Jefferson fan, but I liked one aspect of his foreign policy. He felt that if a foreign government had effective control over its territory and was not actively attacking us—we should recognize it, talk to it and be done with pointless political moralizing.
Anybody who worked the South Side of Chicago (and survived) is smart enough to know that actions ultimately matter more than friendly words. Obama seems also to be bright enough to recognize that sometimes the symbolism of a friendly gesture matters a great deal. (Oil, remember? The possibility of Russian naval and air bases?)
Obama made the accurate point that our Cuban policy hasn’t worked all that well over the past 50 years. In fact, I’ll challenge anyone to show me one large scale embargo has benefited the people who staged the embargo—against anybody, anywhere.
Let’s review the successes embargoes have enjoyed over the past century. First, the British navel embargo against Germany during the months after Germany quit in 1918. Got the Germans to sign a brutal treaty—which they repudiated as soon as they dared, and it left them hungry and desperate enough to vote for Hitler. That was a winner.
The US refused to recognize or sell to the Soviet Union from 1918 to 1933. Certainly stopped Communism, didn’t it? Made the Russians so paranoid of the West that they chose to make a treaty with Hitler. The French, British and Poles certainly did well without Russian help early in the war.
France and Britain embargoed Italy in the 1930s after Mussolini invaded Ethiopia. Mussolini stayed there until a British army drove him out—and he almost immediately signed an alliance with Hitler after opposing him at the side of France and England for years.
We embargoed the living daylights out of Japan from the mid-thirties until war broke out. This one was effective; unlike most other embargoes, there were almost no leaks. The Japanese could obtain no iron, no steel, no copper—or a list of industrially necessary commodities that is a small-print, two column page long. I was stunned when it was declassified in the 1960s.
You cannot maintain a modern society without the materials we blocked Japan from buying. To be certain that they would strangle to death we froze all their money in US banks. Nor could they get their hands on a drop of oil or gasoline. We had them down to an eighteen month’s supply of fuel before going dark and cold.
We expected them to capitulate. They fooled us. First they bombed the fleet that was enforcing the embargo from Pearl Harbor—then they went for oil and other necessaries. In the end, that embargo didn’t really work all that well either.
We refused to acknowledge the existence of China (only a third of the world’s population) from 1949 until 1972. Effect? It kept China snuggled up to the Soviet Union throughout the embargo. That changed immediately upon Nixon’s trip to China—and they even allowed us to bring in electronic listening posts along the Soviet frontier.
We’ve embargoed Curba since 1959. Somehow they’ve still got those 1958 Fords and Pontiacs running. Everybody gets educated, has decent (free) medical care and the Castro’s are with us yet—athwart one of our most strategic sea lanes, ninety miles from Florida.
Maybe, with Chavez—and even Raul Castro—we should try a different policy. One would hope that our experiences over the last hundred years might have taught us something. (If we don’t like it coming from Obama, maybe we can hear it from Jefferson.)
A handshake is cheap. If it opens a door to needed resources and prevents us from having another really hostile enemy nearby, it is certainly worth the effort.
The wounded pride we display isn’t making us a bit more secure or obtaining an ounce of extra oil. Yes, it IS pride. Both Cuba and Venezuela were once nearly colonies of ours, and we lost them. They chose INDEPENDENCE over American tutelage in democracy. We get angry when people do that.
Quite time for us to get over our hurt feelings. (The British seem to have forgiven us for 1776.) Kudus on this one, Mr. Obama.
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