History is Happening Now

Our next president has come under some fire on this blog for apparently breaking a campaign promise to raise taxes on the wealthiest 5% of Americans. Lee — the other regular blogger on this site — has suggested that this is an important issue:

Let’s get this straight: Obama campaigned on the promise of raising taxes on a certain segment of “high-income” Americans. He won. He might be said to have received a mandate from the American people to do so. Does anyone think it’ll be easier to return to this promise in 2011?

Lee also reiterated his belief that the left needs to put pressure on Obama to steer this country in keeping with the views of the left-wingers who made it possible for him to win:

Obama’s weakness, his dependency on large numbers of enthusiastic (mostly progressive, but somewhat cynical and alienated) voters, is our strength. Politicians should ideally fear their supporters. They should be terrified of betraying their supporters because doing so, theoretically, ought to destroy their credibility and careers in the long term.

So here’s to the so-called “netroots.” Keep twisting the screws. Keep putting on the pressure. Make Obama sweat.

I don’t have a problem in principle with the idea of making Obama sweat – if Obama is doing things that are bad for the country, we need to speak truth to power. There’s plenty of evidence that pressure from online activists prevented Obama from appointing John Brennan to head the CIA.

But I do have a problem with the idea of trying to “make Obama sweat” for abandoning his plan to immediately push for a tax increase on the top 5% of the population, income-wise.

I don’t think it’s a good idea, politically or economically, for Obama to push for a tax increase on anybody right now. Eventually, the wealthiest 5% of the population should be paying a lot more in taxes — but I don’t think such an increase would help the economy in the short-term, and I think pushing for this increase could sabotage everything else Obama must strive to accomplish over the next six months.

That said, I wanted to point out that if Lee and like-minded activists want to try to “make Obama sweat” over the tax hike issue, they’ll have to do it with no help whatsoever from the most prestigious left-wing economic pundit in America — Nobel Laureate and New York Times Columnist Paul Krugman.

I’m not a huge fan of Krugman because I feel he was disrespectful of Obama supporters during the Democratic primary earlier this year, and because I thought he was somewhat misleading in explaining his opposition to the $700 billion bailout plan originally proposed a few months back by Treasury Secretary Paul Krugman.

But I have to acknowledge Krugman’s prestige and credibility right now — and it’s hard to imagine how the netroots could “make Obama sweat” over tax increases while Krugman has Obama’s back.

Here’s an excerpt from a recent interview Krugman gave on NPR to Tom Ashbrook:

ASHBROOK: Question for you from our website, www.onpointradio.org: ”Mr. Krugman, please discuss how the tax structure should be changed in order to help bring the new gilded age to an end,” by which I guess our correspondent here is looking at income inequality.

KRUGMAN: Yeah, uh, there’s a fair bit you can do. Although most of the surge in inequality has been in pre-tax income. But it’s been exaccerbated by a real reduction in the progressivity of taxes. So we’ve gone from — well, if you go back to the days when that Socialist Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House, the top tax rate was actually 91% and now it’s 35%. Now, most economists, myself included, don’t actually think that a 90% tax rate is actually a good idea. But, we certainly have sharply reduced taxes at the top end of the scale, which has made things worse. I’m not sure that you — Yeah, let me say that reforming the tax code is not in itself going to be enough to bring us back to a middle class society, but it sure is a step in the right direction and we have to get over this notion that if you tax rich people even a dime more, that somehow they’ll all go away and refuse to invest or be entrepreneurial. If you require some CEO to pay 38% of his income instead of 35% of his income in taxes, he’ll quit his job and go home. We have a lot of scope for being more progressive again in taxes.

ASHBROOK: Obama has indicated he may put off those higher taxes for upper-income groups while we’re in this ditch. Are you with him on that?

KRUGMAN: Yeah. I actually never thought it was going to happen anyway until 2010. I mean, the, uh — Legislatively, it’s quite hard to change the tax code. The Democrats, unless Al Franken pulls it off and there’s an upset in Georgia, are not going to have 60 seats in the Senate, so the great hope for rolling back the Bush tax cuts actually was the fact that Bush tried to hide the true cost of it, wrote it so the tax cuts turn into a pumpkin at the end of 2010.

So I never thought it was actually going to happen before 2011, anwway. And look, raising taxes in the face of a recession is not great policy even if the tax cuts were very ill-advised when they took place. Ideally, we’d be able to completely restructure the tax code right now, instantly, and also, in the process, avoid having too great a tax increase. But you know, that’s too hard to do, legislatively. So, you know, I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t think that’s a major concession on Obama’s part.

So here’s the deal for those of you hoping to “make Obama sweat” for abandoning his campaign plan to push for a tax increase — a rolling back of the Bush tax cuts — as soon as he took office: If you try to pressure Obama to keep his promise, your opponents (if they feel the need to even argue the point at all) will point out that even Krugman, the most left-wing progressive economist with a national audience and a Nobel prize, says “raising taxes in the face of a recession is not great policy even if the tax cuts were very ill-advised when they took place.”

Now why would Krugman say a thing like that if it weren’t true? 

You’ll need an answer to that question, liberal netroots, if you intend to convince Obama that he’ll face the wrath of the lefties if he doesn’t follow through on the tax hike.

Of course, it’s ridiculous to assume that a tax increase on the rich would be bad right now just because Krugman says so. Obviously, Krugman could be wrong. But Krugman’s opinion is a lot to overcome if you want to rally an anti-Obama revolt.

Who is “Matthew Alexander”? He’s a former interrogator of Iraqi detainees, and he just wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post. Here’s how he describes himself:

I’m not some ivory-tower type; I served for 14 years in the U.S. Air Force, began my career as a Special Operations pilot flying helicopters, saw combat in Bosnia and Kosovo, became an Air Force counterintelligence agent, then volunteered to go to Iraq to work as a senior interrogator. What I saw in Iraq still rattles me — both because it betrays our traditions and because it just doesn’t work.

What he saw was torture:

Amid the chaos, four other Air Force criminal investigators and I joined an elite team of interrogators attempting to locate Zarqawi. What I soon discovered about our methods astonished me. The Army was still conducting interrogations according to the Guantanamo Bay model: Interrogators were nominally using the methods outlined in the U.S. Army Field Manual, the interrogators’ bible, but they were pushing in every way possible to bend the rules — and often break them. I don’t have to belabor the point; dozens of newspaper articles and books have been written about the misconduct that resulted. These interrogations were based on fear and control; they often resulted in torture and abuse.

“Alexander” didn’t participate in the torture:

I personally conducted more than 300 interrogations, and I supervised more than 1,000. The methods my team used are not classified (they’re listed in the unclassified Field Manual), but the way we used them was, I like to think, unique. We got to know our enemies, we learned to negotiate with them, and we adapted criminal investigative techniques to our work (something that the Field Manual permits, under the concept of “ruses and trickery”). It worked. Our efforts started a chain of successes that ultimately led to Zarqawi.

Here’s what he has to say about the argument that torture is necessary to fight terrorism:

I know the counter-argument well — that we need the rough stuff for the truly hard cases, such as battle-hardened core leaders of al-Qaeda, not just run-of-the-mill Iraqi insurgents. But that’s not always true: We turned several hard cases, including some foreign fighters, by using our new techniques. A few of them never abandoned the jihadist cause but still gave up critical information. One actually told me, “I thought you would torture me, and when you didn’t, I decided that everything I was told about Americans was wrong. That’s why I decided to cooperate.”

Torture and abuse are against my moral fabric. The cliche still bears repeating: Such outrages are inconsistent with American principles. And then there’s the pragmatic side: Torture and abuse cost American lives.

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It’s no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me — unless you don’t count American soldiers as Americans.

When he returned from Iraq, “Alexander” wrote a book about his experiences — a book the Pentagon did everything it could to suppress when he brought it to them for review:

I sued, first to get the review completed and later to appeal the redactions. Apparently, some members of the military command are not only unconvinced by the arguments against torture; they don’t even want the public to hear them.

This is what he has to say about our torture and about our next president, Barack Obama:

I’m actually quite optimistic these days, in no small measure because President-elect Barack Obama has promised to outlaw the practice of torture throughout our government. But until we renounce the sorts of abuses that have stained our national honor, al-Qaeda will be winning. Zarqawi is dead, but he has still forced us to show the world that we do not adhere to the principles we say we cherish. We’re better than that. We’re smarter, too.

I know I’m not alone in my hope that “Alexander’s” optimism is well-placed.

Stopping torture saves American lives.

General David McKiernan — the guy Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin mistakenly referred to as “General McClellan” during her one debate this fall with vice president-elect Joe Biden — has recently said some interesting things about what “success” means in terms of the ongoing war in Afghanistan. In an address to the Atlantic Council, McKiernan framed his definition of success in terms of what he thought the Afghani people want: (Note: when he says “next slide,” it’s because he’s moving through a PowerPoint presentation.)

As I go around to different provinces and different localities in Afghanistan, I always try to gauge if I were an Afghan, what would I say winning means in Afghanistan?  I mean, I could say it is COM ISAF is the future of NATO, or regional stability, or affects homeland defense.  None of those would mean much to an Afghan.  But when I ask Afghans, what does winning mean to you?  What’s success in the future, it generally runs along those three lines there.  A sense of security, where they can move about their own country, whether it’s their own valley, or drive from Kandahar to Kabul, or see family across the border or across the Duran line, whichever you’d like to refer it to, in the tribal areas.  They want a government that they can trust that will meet their expectations, and they are willing to defend and die for it.  And they want some progress and some hope for their families.  Not a lot, not as much as we would want, but they want to sense some progress for the future.

Democracy is not about voting just because they want to elect their own government.  It’s about voting because there’s something in it for their future.  Next slide.

So I always like to say that this campaign is not going to be decided militarily, and that’s difficult sometimes for a guy in uniform to say.  It’s not going to be decided militarily.  We’re not going to run out of bad people in Afghanistan that have bad intentions, and we’re not going to kill and capture so many of these bad people that it’s going to break the will of all the insurgent groups that operate in Afghanistan.  Ultimately it’s going to be people that decide that they wanted a different outcome in Afghanistan.  It’s going to be a political outcome.

The most important idea I take away from the quote above is that McKeirnan believes — or at least claims to believe — that this war is in the best interests of the people of Afghanistan, that we are fighting for them in a meaningful way. In McKeirnan’s mind, there’s a way of looking at this war in terms of what’s at stake for the Afghani people: their freedom to live free from fear and violence, their ability to shape their own destiny. By the way of thinking, our purpose in Iraq is to help them get what they want.

Of course, Americans want the Afghani people to achieve these goals. We want the Afghani people to be able to visit their relatives without being shot. We want the Afghani people to have a government they can support. In fact, we want the Afghani people to thrive. In part, we want these things because a free, safe, stable, prosperous Afghanistan won’t harbor terrorists — but we also want these things because our commitment to the same values — “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” — is what unites us as Americans.

The next question is: Is our military presence in Afghanistan helping them achieve these goals, or is it actually a hindrance? In order to answer this question, we must ask two others. First, do the Afghani people want us there, “helping” them, or do they want us to leave? In Iraq, for example, most Iraqis seem to want us gone — and this means our presence is more agitating then pacifying. The second question is, are we at all effective in our efforts to help them?

McKeirnan argues that the Afghani people want our help:

The people in Afghanistan do not feel secure in many areas in the south and the east.  They don’t feel like they have freedom of movement.  They are dissatisfied with their government.  But on the other hand, the vast majority of the people in Afghanistan do not support the Taliban, they do not wish the Taliban to re-emerge in power in Afghanistan.  And they accept the presence of foreign forces on their soil to help fight for their security.  Now that’s not just me saying that.  That’s polling data that’s been taken from across Afghanistan.  So the glass is half-full.

McKeirnan also suggests that progress is being made, in spite of the recent surges in violence. But far more work it needed:

I don’t have to tell you that the estimates are over 6 million Afghans go to school today.  That number was in the couple hundred thousand back in 2001.  It is still, and will remain, a largely agricultural society, but the glass is half-full.  There is progress in many areas of Afghanistan. There are places where security allows freedom of movement, where there is some governance at the local and district and provincial level that is in the right direction and it’s positive for the future.

There are areas where socio-economic programs are taking place, where reconstruction and development are occurring.  Now there are a few places where all three of those come together, and there are still many areas of Afghanistan, as I said before, where people do not feel like they have freedom of movement and they don’t see a better future for their children, and they don’t get to go to school because the schools are intimidated, burned, teachers are not allowed to teach, or curriculum is changed to be what the Taliban would like it to be. 

Finally, this is McKeirnan’s assessment:

So this is a very uneven campaign, but at the end of the day the glass is half-full.  The reason first and foremost I say it’s half-full is the people of Afghanistan are absolutely worth fighting for, and they want a better future.  They want basic security and a better life for their children.  They do not want any of these syndicated insurgent groups in power in Afghanistan.

I’m sure my readers agree that the people of Afghanistan are worth fighting for. Indeed, most left-wing critics of the war in Afghanistan believe the people there have value as human beings. In fact, they subscribe to the U.S. Declaration of Independence, which states that all human beings are “created equal.”

I found a link to this speech in the middle of an article in The New York Times that began this way:

WASHINGTON — One of the most difficult challenges President-elect Barack Obama’s national security team faces is Mr. Obama’s vow to send thousands of American troops to help defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Military experts agree that more troops are required to carry out an effective counterinsurgency campaign, but they also caution that the reinforcements are unlikely to lead to the sort of rapid turnaround that the so-called troop surge in Iraq produced after its start in 2007.

After seven years of war, Afghanistan presents a unique set of problems: a rural-based insurgency, an enemy sanctuary in neighboring Pakistan, the chronic weakness of the Afghan government, a thriving narcotics trade, poorly developed infrastructure, and forbidding terrain.

American intelligence reports underscore the seriousness of the threat. From August through October, the average number of daily attacks by insurgents exceeded those in Iraq, the first time the violence in Afghanistan had outpaced the fighting in Iraq since the start of the American occupation in May 2003. Almost half of the insurgents’ attacks were directed against American and other foreign forces, while the remainder were focused on Afghan security forces and civilians.

I’m assuming that McKeirnan, the General in charge of our war in Afghanistan, believes “an effective counterinsurgency campaign” is neccessary to acheive “success” in Afghanistan. And most military analysts believe more troops are required to mount a successful counterinsurgency campaign.

So here’s what I’m saying: I want freedom, stability and prosperity for the people of Afghanistan, and that’s why I support sending more troops there, as Barack Obama proposes.

I ask this of the many bloggers and commentators who have suggested we should pull our troops out of Afghanistan: If we abandon the Afghani people, won’t we be responsible for what happens to them when we’re gone? The violence? The poverty and crime? Isn’t this one of those rare situations where our selfish interests in killing terrorists is in sync with our larger commitment to promote peace, freedom and democracy in the world?

Shouldn’t we help them win this war, for our own sake and for theirs?