The Wrongologist

What’s
Wrong Today:

Congress
is back and working for the American people. Well, not for those people who are
broke and hungry in America. For many of those people, the food stamp program,
known as SNAP, has been the one
thing between them and starvation. House Republicans, with Majority leader Eric
Cantor (R-VA) leading the charge, want to cut food stamps. That effort is described on Cantor’s Blog:

The Nutrition Reform and Work Opportunity Act that Cantor
wants to enact would limit SNAP eligibility to only 3 months in three years,
plus demand the SNAP beneficiaries work or get into a job training program of
at least 80 hours a month. It cuts $40 billion from SNAP over the next 10
years.

The
current plan is to couple this three-year nutrition bill with the House’s
five-year “farm-only” farm bill that passed in July and send them to conference
with the Senate-passed five-year farm bill, which includes $12 billion in SNAP
cuts.

Some data
for you fact hounds: According to the USDA, 46.6 million
Americans are on SNAP assistance, averaging
$133.41 in benefits per month. The total cost of this program is $78
billion/year. Yet, House Republicans along with some Democrats want to deny food stamps to more adults.
What’s worse is the implication that there is work or job training out there for
these people. That is actually a lie. There
is no additional funding for jobs or job training to be provided under this
bill.

In
addition, many people receiving food stamps also are working, but their wages
are so low they still qualify for food stamps.  

Eric
Cantor is pushing this in the House without holding a single
Congressional hearing. The GOP leadership even bypassed the Agriculture Committee, even though food stamps
are under their purview. This
week, the House is expected to vote on legislation to cut SNAP by roughly 5%.

The Center on
Budget and Priorities showed just how much harm to millions of Americans
the Republican attack on food stamps would cause. The people the proposal would
cut off SNAP include:

• 2 – 4 million poor, unemployed,
  childless adults who live in areas of high unemployment — a group that has
  average income of only 22% of the poverty line (about $2,500 a year for a
  single individual) and for whom SNAP is, in most cases, the only
  government assistance they receive;
• 1.8 million people, mostly
  low-income working families and low-income seniors, who have gross incomes
  or assets modestly above the federal SNAP limits but disposable income —
  the income that a family actually has available to spend on food and other
  needs — below the poverty line in most cases, often because of high rent
  or child care costs. Some 210,000 children in these families also would
  lose free school meals;
• Other poor, unemployed parents
  who want to work but cannot find a job or an opening in a training program
  — along with their children, other than infants.

As of September
2013, 46.6 million people are on food stamps. That’s about 15.1% of the US
population, or 1 out of 6.6 people today need food stamps. Additionally, about 20% of Americans, one in five, has trouble affording enough
food. The ranks haven’t swelled because America is a bunch of slackers. The
reason is wages have not grown and there are not enough jobs.

The
average food stamp benefit per person is $133.41 a month, or $4.45 a day. Assuming
most people need three squares, this amounts to $1.48 per meal.  Think
about making a meal for $1.48.

The real
question is why, when America just saw the top 1% get to the point where they earn 19.3% of all income,
a level not seen in a 100 years, why are Republicans in the House so hell bent on attacking the hungry in the United States?

In July, the
Wrongologist wrote
about the Republican motivations passing the farm bill, which contains the SNAP
provisions:  

Food
stamps are actually only about 2% of the overall federal budget. So making sure
a segment of America’s population suffers cannot be simply due to budget cost-cutting
reasons. So where does this desire to screw the poor come from?

It seems
the battle where the hungry are pawns is over proposed cuts to farm subsidies
and the attack on food stamps is in retaliation for efforts to cut subsidies to corporate
farmers. The same conservatives pushing starvation in America happen to
live in districts where farm subsidies pull in $3 billion a year. Additionally,
farm subsidies are a boon to Wall Street. So please quit calling agri-business
corporations “farmers.” These businesses that collect
millions of our tax dollars in corporate welfare are not farmers, they are
welfare queens.

Ferd Hoefner,
policy director of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, said:  

The poor are
always first up for attacks by government. They do not make any campaign
donations, and they don’t have lobbyists. Isn’t any Congressional agenda in the
last 20 years simply a matter of following the money?

After all
is said and done, the move by Cantor and his gang on food stamps doesn’t add
up, except for the farm subsidy lobbyists.  

When it
comes to the Congress doing the right thing, the only moral code House
Republicans seem to know is the pass-code
to their bank accounts.

People
ask philosophers or clergy for answers to questions like: “Why do people gas
innocents?” Or, “What should my personal response be when the rest of the world
casts a blind eye on evil?”

Mr. Obama and the rest of America have had to
wrestle with these questions for the past few weeks.

The
debate over Syria uncovered a shift in US attitude on foreign policy from: “We
don’t care about the consequences to others if we intervene militarily,” to “We
don’t care about the consequences to others if we DON’T intervene militarily.”

The distinction isn’t
subtle. Are there more than collective answers? Use the quote by Gertrude Stein on the church sign below to construct your homily for this week:

I need answers, dammit!

Who had the big idea?

All we are saying:

Playing Politics with Syria:

Exceptional Criticism:

Worldview based on Politics:

What’s
Wrong Today:

The
Wrongologist understands that graphs and numbers do not always make for his most
popular columns. In the glare of the Syrian news, we neglected to talk about America’s
missing jobs. So, today there are a few graphs.

There are
still 3.1 unemployed people per job opening, says the Bureau of Labor Statistics’
(BLS) July Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS
report.

It has
been the same story for the last six months. By comparison, there were only1.8 unemployed persons
per job opening at the start of the recession in December 2007. The
official level of unemployed in July 2013 was 11.5 million people.

The
Wrongologist has written about this before, in February,
March,
April,
June
and now again, in September. 

The JOLTS
report takes a random sampling of 16,000 businesses and derives their numbers
from that. As you can see from the graph below, job openings have grown 69%
from the bottom of the recession in 2009 until 2012, but have been
stagnant since then:  

At
the height of the pre-recession economy in late 2007, we had about 4.6 million
job openings in America. We have the
same number of job openings today as we did 8 years ago in 2004, while
our population has grown by almost 22 million
since then. 

Looking
at specific sectors, retail trade job openings showed a decline of 50,000 from
June to July, a drop of 10.6%. These are jobs working at your big box marts,
clothing stores and so on. Construction dropped by 20,000 job openings, a
monthly decline of 16.7%, while the best hiring rate is for the leisure &
hospitality sectors.

So, the lowest
paying jobs of all have the best hiring rates in America.

This
is simply terrible. Despite the fact that corporate profits are at roaring
highs, it does not look like there will be a full recovery from our jobs crisis
in the next 4 years. The lack of robust demand for labor leads inevitably to
stagnant wages which suppresses economic growth indefinitely. Consumer spending
accounts for 70% of the US economy. If this component stagnates, it is
impossible for the other 30% to fill the hole. 

Faced with
a Republican Party that is by turns, nihilistic and filled with zeal for small
government and fewer taxes, any pragmatism about adding jobs will be met with
rhetoric about unleashing America’s businesses from regulation and how even
lower taxes will spur new jobs and new investment.

And as Paul
Krugman said this week:

The
Wrongologist often asks: What kind of society do we want to be?
It should be intolerable in our society that politicians won’t work
together to return our unemployed to work after 5 years and 8 months.

Had the
great jobs slaughter affected K Street and Wall Street, it would have been
solved in a great bi-partisan rush by our politicians.  

But, it’s
clear that Washington’s position is to let the American worker be damned.

And damned
we are.

The New
Normal endures.

What’s
Wrong Today:

The Daily News Egypt,
Egypt’s only English language newspaper reported on the visit by a delegation from
the US House of Representatives sent to Egypt to gather firsthand information
about the current situation in the country. The group was led by Rep.
Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) and included representatives Donna Edwards (D-MD),
Stephen Stockman (R-TX), Robert Pittenger (R-NC), and Lois Frankel (D-FL) along
with Tea party-backed Republican
Representatives Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and Steve King
(R-IA).

The group met with
several leaders while in Egypt, including interim president Adly Mansour,
Minister of Defense Abdel Fatah El-Sisi (also head of Egypt’s military), Coptic Pope Tawadros II, and President
of the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt, Anis A. Aclimandos. 

The major thing to
emerge from the visit was a bizarre press conference held by Bachmann, Gohmert
and King last Saturday on Egypt’s private satellite TV station ONTV.

WaPo’s Max Fisher reports that the trio thanked the country’s military for
overthrowing the Morsi government and at one point even seemed to suggest that
the Muslim Brotherhood had been behind the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United
States.

Here
is a link to the video of their press conference. 

Here is an extended
quote of Bachmann’s remarks from the video:

“Together, we’ve gone through
suffering. Together, the United States and Egypt, have dealt with the same
enemy…It’s a common enemy, and it’s an enemy called terrorism.”

 

\snip\


“We want to make sure that you have the Apache helicopters, the F-16s, [Wrongologist: The US has delayed F-16 sales due to the um, coup] the equipment that you have so bravely used to
capture terrorists and to take care of this menace that’s on your border…Many
of you have asked, do we understand who the enemy is? We can speak for
ourselves. We do.”

 

\snip\


“We have seen the threat that the Muslim Brotherhood has posed here for the
people in Egypt. We have seen the threat that the Muslim Brotherhood has posed
around the world. We stand against this great evil. We are not for them. We
remember who caused 9/11 in America. We remember who it was that killed 3,000
brave Americans. We have not forgotten.”

King and Gohmert
offered praise as well. King congratulated anti-Morsi Egyptians on “standing up
for liberty, standing up for freedom” in supporting the July 3 coup. He added,
“We stand against the Muslim Brotherhood. The American people do not support
the Muslim Brotherhood; we oppose all forms of terror and terrorism.”

Gohmert
compared El-Sissi to George Washington and said the “bloodthirsty Muslim
Brothers” want to “destabilize things” and seek “that large caliphate.” (He
also said that Egyptian Jews participated in the anti-Morsi movements). On the
other hand, Rep. Gohmert has
stated in the past that the Muslim Brotherhood had infiltrated American
politics. He also said that Huma Abedin, an American citizen and colleague of
Hillary Clinton (as well as wife of Anthony Weiner) was a member of the Muslim
Brotherhood.

The Wrongologist
wishes all of this was a joke but sadly, it seems that they announced their plan
to undermine US foreign policy on Egyptian TV.

To recap, this trio
of clowns:

• Went
  to a foreign capital with a very unstable political situation and a lot riding on our strategy, and undermined our policies

• Promised
  the Egyptian military an increase in military aid, the exact
  opposite of stated US policy

• Called
  Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood terrorists (which
  our government explicitly has not)

• Blames
  the Brotherhood for 9/11

This is all
breathtakingly wrong, it should be illegal. It’s sad when actual, sitting
Congress critters look more spectacularly stupid than Dennis Rodman does when
he visits Lil’ Kim in North Korea. It should get all three of these jackasses
tossed from the House. But hey, they’re Republicans attacking the President, so
who cares?

This is more than just
a random stunt from simpleton politicians. The official position of the United
States was that the post-overthrow violence was needlessly brutal and shocking,
so much so that aid to Egypt may well be suspended. And yet, Bachmann, Gohmert,
and King traveled to Cairo to deliver a conflicting message — because they
are Tea Party.

Don’t
you wonder who authorized this trip (John Boehner)? You do know who paid for
this trip that undermines our government’s positions, right? You paid for it,
and it seems that you will continue to pay for it for quite a while.

Why
is it that we don’t
hear how much this Bachmann, Gohmert clown show costs the taxpayers,
but we know they will be among the first to whine about how much it costs when
President Obama travels to visit world leaders? They make Sen. Johnny Volcano’s (R-AZ) outbursts in Syria look almost statesmanlike. 

It’s
embarrassing enough the Michele Bachmann is a four-term Congresswoman of the
United States of America. But please, can’t she just embarrass us in the USA?

Can’t
we just keep the crazy here at home?

What’s
Wrong Today:

The New York Times has no mention of
9/11 on page one today. The first article appears on page 27.

The Wrongologist has
9/11 on the front page. On the 12th
anniversary of 9/11 it’s time to talk about Osama bin Laden.

Bin Laden
was a bad man, but he was smart, he understood America. 

Along with
his great enemy, George W. Bush, Bin Laden was one of the first truly important
men of the 21st century. Important people in history do not need to be good
people. Hitler and Churchill and Gandhi were all very important 20th
century men; they weren’t all good men.

In Islam,
there is an idea that you should deal with your local problems first, and not
worry about the far enemy. Bin Laden believed that in his world, you could
not do that. Revolution at home was almost impossible because of the far
enemy, the United States. As long as the US was the superpower, revolutionary
success would be limited because the US could cripple your economy via
sanctions, and it had the military might to attack you with overwhelming
force. 

Bin
Laden’s argument was that the US had to be defeated. That the evils being
done by local regimes (such as Iraq’s Hussein, or Egypt’s Mubarak) could not be
ended by simply fighting the local regime, but that the far regime, the US,
must also be defeated.

Whatever
you think of bin Laden, his most powerful ethical point to those in the Middle
East was that the US was responsible both for the suffering it caused directly
through sanctions, and the suffering it caused indirectly, by keeping Middle
Eastern dictators in power.

To that, bin
Laden added a decisive idea: Attack the US.

Bin Laden
saw America as similar to the USSR post-Afghanistan, a country that, with a
push, might collapse. The USSR was worn down in Afghanistan. Its military
power was bled out in that “Grave of Empires”. And soon enough, the USSR
collapsed. Bin Laden saw it happen, and he participated as a fighter.

He believed
that the US was ripe for something similar.

Bin Laden believed
that if America could be drawn to Afghanistan, they could be defeated. The 9/11
attack was mostly about getting the US to invade Afghanistan. It
succeeded in doing just that. But when G.W. Bush used 9/11 primarily as a
pretext to invade Iraq, much of what bin Laden wanted to have happen in
Afghanistan happened there, with the added bonus that Saddam Hussein (who bin
Laden saw as an enemy) was dethroned. A win/win. 

Since the
US is still around, still powerful and hasn’t collapsed, and bin Laden is dead, one can say that bin Laden lost.

But it
isn’t over yet. The cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and 9/11 was huge,
both in financial terms (deficits) and in the changes wrought to the American
psyche and by our loss of constitutional protections. Those lost years should
have been used to transition the US economy. Instead the money that could have
done that was used to fund the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

It is 12
years since 9/11 and 5 years, 8 months since the start of the Great Recession. Yet,
we have fewer people employed than at the start of the recession. Income and
wealth inequality is worse. Political sclerosis is worse; our economic plan remains trickle down, while we frack our way to energy independence (which won’t succeed in the long run).

Since
9/11, we have doubled down on the surveillance state and we continue to erode our
constitutional freedoms. This has larger economic effects than most people realize,
and seriously weakens America’s ideological and moral position in the world.

Since
9/11, one tile of fear has fallen against the next and as the dominoes fall, our politicians jockey for position, selling us the latest, greatest fear:

We
are afraid of China. We distrust Russia. We fear the spread of the Syrian civil war. We fear that our budget deficits will spiral out of
control, bankrupting the most powerful and largest economy on the planet. We
fear for our kids’ safety if they walk to school alone. We fear the mob at the gates. We fear the immigrants already inside the gates. 

You could say
that the dead guy won, but the Wrongologist doesn’t believe that. We have all
the resources we need to remain the exceptional country we believe we are.

Except today,
we seem to lack the will to work through our fears.

We need to
re-learn how to exist in an uncomfortable and anxious state, in an ambiguous world without
shutting down or being ineffectual. Lately when things get tough, we strut, shorten our attention spans, prefer form over substance and pray to god
that it all works out…OMG; we are all George W. Bush. 

Remember
9/11. Let us never forget the heroes and the victims. But we must stop
sacrificing our freedoms or our common sense, to fear.

What’s
Wrong Today:

Yesterday
was a wild afternoon. Mr. Obama overruled John Kerry, Susan Rice, and Samantha
Powers who, earlier in the day had opposed Russia’s proposal to take
control of Syria’s CW. That proposal, which would place Syria’s CW under
international control and subsequently destroy them, had been accepted by Syria
and was endorsed by the Ban Ki-Moon and David
Cameron.

The State
Department then walked
back Kerry’s remarks that Syria needed to give up its CW, and Susan Rice
said that only
regime change would do.

But later,
Mr. Obama told all the networks said that he was willing to pursue the Russian
plan. From
Politico:

The President
said his team will engage in talks with Russia and Syria. More from Politico:

Kerry? He
initiated the proposal before he was against Putin’s acceptance of his proposal
before he was in favor of his own proposal.
What a putz!

Politico
also talks about
Kerry’s actions, which it tries to frame charitably as:

With Obama
as his foil, Putin is now dominating global diplomacy; the Bismarck of our era,
dancing around Obama like a toreador contemplating a mound of steaks. He’s got game.

If Putin
gets Syria to agree and the US to stand down from attacking Syria, Obama has to
give his Nobel Peace Prize to Putin. That would give Putin a Super Bowl Ring
and a Nobel Peace Prize, and rock star status, since he would have twice
defeated the world’s only (and widely resented) superpower. He has been pitch-perfect
on the Snowden business and on Syria. Neither affair has cost him anything and
he has come out of them with greater stature as a statesman.

It is way too early to say this idea will work, but if it does, let’s look at some winners, beyond
your returning champion, Vladimir Putin:

• War-weary
  Americans: both military personnel and citizens

• Bashar
  al-Assad: The possible deal confirms his role as a ruling head of state

• Syrian
  civilians: Who would be collateral damage in the cruise missile strike

And if the
negotiated settlement works, who are the losers?

• Mr. Obama’s foreign policy team of John Kerry, Susan Rice and
  Samantha Powers: The President may need to get rid of one or more of them to
  preserve his own credibility.

• AIPAC:
   The Israel lobby has worked very hard to
  get the missile strike launched politically. Israel has a demographics problem
  in the US since younger Jews do not seem to have much affinity for Israel in
  polling, and many are firmly opposed to its policies in Palestine. It may be
  that Israel’s drive to move against Iran is driven as much by demographic
  change in the US as by Iran’s projected timetable for nuclear development,
  since demographic change in the US means Israel’s days of being able to rely on
  the US as a staunch ally may be numbered.

• The Syrian opposition: Where are their
  spokespeople?

• Al Qaeda: Less chaos and
  killing makes their job more difficult.

• Mr. Obama: While the apologists will say that he
  was playing three-dimensional chess, he looks ineffectual.

Mr. Obama, 2009:

Can America have THAT Obama back again?

The Russians game has been to copy Britain’s 19th Century
strategy in Europe which was to keep a balance of power among states. Russia’s
goal is to blunt US power where possible or to insure that the US is occupied elsewhere
so that we can’t meddle in their areas of influence. Putin, although the
American media makes fun of him, is the most intelligent leader Russia has had
since Khrushchev and unlike K, he controls both the military and security
apparatus and therefore, he has power to take his ideas to action.

On the
other hand, the strategic incoherence at the top of the American government and
the global power vacuum that has been created are frightening. And we’re not
just talking about Obama and the Democrats. The Republican Party also has no
coherent global strategy or outlook. In the Syrian matter, the Obama
Administration will come out ahead by not launching missiles, dropping bombs or
landing black helicopters full of Seals.

Russia
looks particularly good, despite the
fact that it has spent most of the past 4 decades arming Syria to the teeth.
Their strategy was to create a military parity with Israel, but once the Soviet
Union fell apart, Syria couldn’t match the Israel Defense Force.

It’s clear
that Mr. Obama (or Kerry, Powers, and Rice) could blow this tentative deal,
either by design or ineptitude. Mr. Obama is laying the groundwork for pinning
any failure of the Russian deal on Mr. Assad’s bad faith, even if the reasons
are different.

And if
Syria’s CW are brought under the control of the UN or another entity, expect to
hear the word appeasement thrown around in Congress, along with rants about a coming
jihadist storm.

Despite
whether the deal happens or not, you will hear from Congressman Darrell Issa
(R-CA), who will certainly conduct Syriagate hearings to go along with his
Benghazigate hearings.

 

What’s
Wrong Today:

We
can no longer deny that we need a new jobs equation. The August BLS
unemployment report shows that the increase in total nonfarm payroll jobs was
169,000, with private payrolls adding 152,000 jobs of the total while government
jobs increased by 17,000.  

The
bad news in this report was that June and July were revised downward by 16,000
and 58,000 jobs respectively, or about 21% of the jobs we thought we had
created across the two months. Additionally, most of the jobs gained were low
paying.

To
continue an oft-repeated refrain at the Wrongologist, the US is now down 1,909 million jobs from December 2007, the start of the
last recession.  Folks, that was five years, eight months ago!

Here it is
graphically:

 

Yes,
that trend line is encouraging, but we need to add at least 100,000 jobs each month just to match
population growth. So, since we added 445,000 in the past 3 months, that
equates to just 145,000 net jobs added above the population growth rate.

Private
Sector jobs (jobs not in government) gained 152,000 in August. The US is still down 1,366 million private sector jobs since
January 2008.  Goods producing jobs, which are usually higher paying, grew
by only 18,000 (the goods sector includes manufacturing and construction jobs).
 Service jobs, which include our fast food and big box stores workers,
increased by 134,000.  The graph below shows private sector jobs lost
since January 2008:

On
the other hand, there were no federal government jobs created last month, maybe
due to the sequester, while local governments added 20,100 education jobs:

The spike
above in 2010 was due to temporary US Census jobs.

Looking at the graph below, Leisure
& Hospitality jobs have been a
growth sector of the economy, but it has the lowest paying jobs. This
sector gained 27,000 jobs, with 80% of those jobs being in food services and
drinking places.  Food service often pays below
minimum wage, and since January 2008, this sub-sector has gained
691,200 jobs.  For 2013, the US has created 252,300 jobs in
restaurants and bars.  This is 17.5% of all the 1.442 million jobs gained so far in 2013.
 These low paying jobs account for 7.6% of all of the private sector jobs
in this country.  Since January 2010, food service jobs represent 16.6% of
the 6.76 million jobs gained:  

These do you want fries with that? jobs will not support a family. Very low paying retail jobs and restaurant jobs as well as the
lower paying jobs in the health care sector are behind most of our job growth, and
this is not what America really needs for our middle class to recover.  

Those employed
as a ratio to the total Civilian non institutional population stands at 58.6%, a
decline of -0.1%. This ratio has been near its 1983 record low for years, and
in 1983 there were way more families with a stay at home mom. The low ratio implies
there are many people who could be part of the labor force who are not anymore.
See the graph below:

Finally,
there are millions of people who need full-time jobs with benefits who can’t get decent
career oriented positions. The number of people who could only get part-time
work increased 54,000 to 2,719,000.  We’re seeing a dramatic increase of
people who could only get part-time when they want full-time and this has not
happened since the early 1980’s as shown in the graph below:

So,
it’s clear that we need a new jobs equation and it isn’t anywhere on the horizon.
The Austerians (people who support the “Austrian” school of economic thought of Friedrich Hayek or Ludwig von Mises and desire to slash government spending
and cut deficits during a time of economic weakness or recession), may argue
that we shouldn’t create government jobs just to solve an economic problem, but
it is despicable that our government allows
millions of Americans to slide towards poverty because they cannot get a decent
job. And it continues year after year, for nearly 6 years now.

Congress is more
likely to
express outrage at chemical weapons killing children in Syria than outrage at
hungry kids in America.

Congress is more
likely to agree
to authorize spending money to bomb Syria than to increase the minimum wage.

Congress is more
likely to
debate the debt ceiling than to develop a jobs program.

And
despite their wrong-headed priorities, incumbents in Congress are most likely to be re-elected
in 2014 without a struggle.

Another
week in which Mr. Obama tries hard to throw gas on the fire that is Syria. On
the other hand, the NFL season commences and Diana
Nyad shows that 64 is the new 34. The quote below is from E.B. White about being
conflicted when you are trying to change the world. Use his thought when you
construct today’s homily.

Seth Godin has thoughts about the same
subject:

Let’s
hope that Mr. Obama fails marketing in his effort to change the world. Now,
cartoons:

Sunday TV has same old comments:

Obama tries same old strategy with Congress:

Mr. Obama channels General Patton:

McCain shows his cards on Syria:

A
Succinct Summary of our Syrian Policy:

To recapitulate:

• Syria
  is not a threat to the US; its chemical weapons are not a threat either

• The
  idea of firing missiles to “send a message” is appalling; our message
  will be heard in the same language as the people who used sarin: Dead Syrians

• Secretary
  Kerry justifies a unilateral attack on Syria by referring to the Chemical
  Weapons Convention that bans chemical weapons (see more below). Supporters of
  Kerry’s policy are willing to violate the “rule of law” offshore, something they
  would never propose at home

• If
  the US claims to be enforcing international law, we ought to have an
  international consensus that something needs to be done, plus a consensus on
  what should be done, and some allies participating with us, all wrapped up in a
  UN resolution

• Without
  these things, an attack on Syria would be just an example of America
  unilaterally beating up on a small country because we can

• We
  need to differentiate between having “credibility” with the
  nations of the world and being viewed as the world’s bully

Regarding CW, the
chemical weapons ban is one of the few weapons restrictions for which there is almost
complete global compliance, only 6 nations have not signed or ratified the
treaty. Somalia just ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention while Angola,
South Sudan, Egypt, and Syria haven’t signed, and Israel and Myanmar haven’t
ratified it.

Although Syria is one of the last holdouts to the treaty,
it does not represent a risk of proliferation of chemical weapons. Few nations
have stocks of chemical weapons at all. The US and Russia are slowly
destroying the last of their stockpile. China will have the old Japanese
stockpile that is still in Chinese territory dismantled by 2022.

So, there is no truth
to the idea that chemical weapons are proliferating.

It is time for America’s
friends, Israel, Egypt and Myanmar to sign or ratify the Chemical Weapons
Convention.  It is important for the Egyptian government to
move quickly to declare and dismantle any chemical weapons it might be holding.
It is probably at least as important as in Syria.  

The fact that we are not
hearing any discussion about any of these actions by the Very Serious People of DC belies the
argument that what we are considering in Syria is only about chemical weapons.

If Assad’s regime is
to survive, he must reconstitute his government with domestic as well as global
political alliances. The claim that Assad used chemical weapons on his own
people is now credible, even among people who believed he was ruthless, but did
not think that he would use chemical weapons inside his own borders. This means
his patrons Iran and Russia, must think twice about their support for
Assad. Under any political agreement that allows Assad to remain in power, the
patrons will not let him maintain his current stock of chemical weapons or
control them in the same manner as today. It impacts their global credibility.

The real CW danger in
the world is the Do-It-Yourself creation of “good enough” chemical
weapons by militant groups, but the US and other supporters of intervention are
discounting that as a possibility in Syria. The possible proliferation of
just-good-enough chemicals by non-state actors is a much more plausible risk, one for which cruise missiles offer no
mitigation.

Pom-pom waving about
Syria by Sen. McCain and others in Congress is an appalling failure to exercise
real due diligence with their power to declare war. We have apparently learned
nothing from our experiences in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

This idea is being
fueled by Congress’ preferred stab-in-the-back rationalization, “Obama won’t
let us win”, rather than taking the time to look at the facts:

Meddling in other
countries unites their people against you–even if you think you are a force
for good, and they hate their dictators.

 

What’s Wrong Today:

The Very Serious People (VSP) say that that US credibility is on the
line in Syria. Now the question is, to bomb or not to bomb. The VSP also say that
the credibility issue is caused by Mr. Obama’s vacillation over what to do about Syria.

Two years ago, he said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must go.
Last year, he drew the now-infamous “red line” on chemical weapons use.

Then, after chemical weapons were used on civilians, most likely by the
Assad regime, Obama called for military action. Then he punted the decision to
the Congress, which the VSP say, hurt Mr. Obama’s credibility.

Merriam-Webster defines credibility as “the quality or power of
inspiring belief.” Applied here, it means that when you draw a line in the
sand, you have to be willing to fight when that line is crossed.

Perhaps we
should take a broader view.

It is clear that our
credibility has been in free fall since George W. Bush was president. We, along
with the rest of the world will be paying for his willfully destructive
behavior for generations. Our credibility is not necessarily going to improve
regardless of the decision in this instance; the world thinks that we simply
aren’t trustworthy anymore, given past and expected future body counts. It won’t change,
regardless of whatever the obvious, or not-so-obvious facts are in the case of
CW use in Syria.

So the questions are:

1. What
are the likely consequences of going it alone?

2. What
are the likely consequences of working with the UN?

At the heart of
the current debate in DC is whether a limited missile strike would make any
difference. No one is arguing that we should work within the framework of the
UN. The near-unanimous opinion is America needs to intervene. Yet, from the
porches of America’s heartland to the marbled floors of the Capitol, the
consensus is that a limited missile strike is more likely to aggravate matters rather
than solve anything.

How
will going into Syria alone improve our credibility? We have yet to see a coherent answer that looks better for our
credibility than a coherent answer to #2.

One way we could
improve our global credibility is by leaving
this decision to the UN. Let them build the evidence, make the case, condemn
the current regime, and along the way, embarrass the Russians and Chinese who support Assad. Even
if the UN fails to build the case, if the evidence isn’t there, the ideal outcome is that an
international norm is upheld. And
you keep your leverage with the global community and against North Korea and
Iran on the subject of WMD.

Either way, let the
war run its course. Work to get a Sunni from within the regime or the military
to replace Assad explicitly because he killed his own people. This would remove much of the rationale
for many opposition groups to keep fighting and it might permanently tilt the
conflict to the one political entity that can maintain control over the CW
stockpiles.

If we go it alone,
the worst outcome is that the Syrian regime loses control of some of their CW stockpiles.
They might then get distributed around the Middle East by trans-national
anti-American (maybe anti-everyone) entities, precipitating a race between
Russia, Iranian proxies and the West to control the CW stockpiles on the ground.
Along the way, there could be gassing of both civilians and military personnel in
Syria and/or abroad and possibly, a direct conflict between the nuclear states.

Secretary Kerry says,
blowing up some of Assad’s toys will certainly make him very sorry (kind of like giving your kid a time-out) and give
others pause while at the same time holding us above the civil war. But it’s still unclear how a strike that
doesn’t alter the dynamic of the war (or give aid to people we really don’t
like) is somehow better than a strongly worded letter or a UN resolution when
it comes to sending the world a message about using chemical weapons.

Despite
the thinking of the VSP’s, seeking Congressional approval for a limited act of
war (which is what lobbing missiles into another country is called) is laudable,
and may actually boost our global credibility.

It is
useful to remember that there was a vigorous debate, in both Congress and the
public, during the buildup to Operation Desert Shield and the Gulf
War in 1991. Despite widespread opposition, both operations went ahead. Eleven
years later there was a vigorous debate both in Congress and in public, during
the buildup to the invasion of Iraq. A month before the invasion, Feb. 15, 2003, was the largest single day
of peace protests in the history of both the US and of the planet.
Despite that widespread opposition, the operation went ahead.

Now, once again, 11
years after the 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), there
is vigorous debate, in both Congress and in the public and there is widespread opposition.

There were all the
“little” wars such as Kosovo, Afghanistan, Grenada, and Panama where
the debate was skipped and war also came.  

None of
these events, whether debated or not, did anything for our “credibility”.

As responsible
citizens, we learned the difference between Sunni and Shia Islam, we then
learned about Wahabism and Salafism and about Copts and Kurds while the “deciders”
learned more about how to line up with this year’s “friends” and
“foes.” Oh, and how to play
video poker on the iPhone during hearings.

And all of us who
made an effort to become as informed as possible and who engaged in those
debates in opposition to the mad rush to war were chumps.

Chumps in denial
about what keeps the US economy running.

We have not left the
hubris of being “the world’s sole superpower” behind, even though W. ended
our ability to be that country.

We were the people
with no credibility: Chumps.

Chumps who, at a tender age listened to Gandhi and MLK,
Jr. Two people walked their talk.

People with real credibility.