President Bush Vetoes Children’s Health Insurance Legislation

Here’s how you play:  If you have a job that doesn’t have insurance for your children, quit and get on welfare so you can get health insurance.  But you can only stay on welfare for 5 years. Then you’re off.  Decent people work for a living, you know.  And don’t go aborting any babies, either.

It’s pretty easy to see the malicious game plan in the words of Rep. Eric Cantor, as all he could do in defending the president’s veto of the SCHIP program was to repetitiously reiterate that we should “deal with poor kids first” - meaning of course that only they should be covered.  He showed no sympathy for parents who work and are therefore above the poverty line but cannot afford private health insurance.

He gave no definition of poor kid.  But we know that means even poorer than the ones the vetoed bill would cover, which were children of working families who could not afford enough insurance to cover their health care needs.  He gave no reason for aiming so low, but he obviously thinks families need to step down a notch if they really need health insurance.

This discussion with Rep. Rahm Emanuel on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer is worth a listen for those not familiar with the debate, or you can read the transcript.  In contrast to the above emphasis, Rep. Cantor’s main point was… “41 days of the war in Iraq, 10 million kids get health care for a year.”  In other words, the annual cost of this program is only a fraction of the cost of the Iraq war.  Yet it is an investment in our country’s future.

It is difficult to reconcile how the president can veto a bill such as this given his stated promises.

In contrast, the president is now requesting $190 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Seems to me if the Democratic Congress is serious, then their new game plan should now be No SCHIP, No$190B  

“I was against the war, but now I’m against a precipitous withdrawal of American forces.”

Joost Hiltermann

NPR Morning Edition, July 11, 2007

In the NPR interview at the cited link, Joost Hiltermann suggests that the most important benchmarks for progress in Iraq should involve the success of the Iraqi government in delivering essential services to Iraqis in order to gain their support.  Without popular support there will be no government.

Hiltermann is suggesting that our primary goal in Iraq should be the success of the Iraqi government, and that benchmarks of that success should be those markers that indicate such success. 

In previous years President Bush has generally been content to insist that our primary goals are to defeat terrorism and to promote democracy.  But as the war has gone on without apparent success, he has been called into account.

The following are the 18 benchmarks agreed to by the President and Congress for measuring progress in Iraq, as defined in the Iraq Supplemental Appropriations bill and reported on NPR, except that I have grouped them under arbitrary and somewhat debatable topical headings to enhance this discussion, and have highlighted parts for emphasis:

POLITICAL & LEGAL ISSUES

1. Forming a Constitutional Review Committee and then completing the constitutional review.

2. Enacting and implementing legislation on de-Baathification.

4. Enacting and implementing legislation on procedures to form semi-autonomous regions.

5. Enacting and implementing legislation establishing an Independent High Electoral Commission, provincial elections law, provincial council authorities, and a date for provincial elections.

6. Enacting and implementing legislation addressing amnesty.

16. Ensuring that the rights of minority political parties in the Iraqi legislature are protected.

ECONOMIC MATTERS

3. Enacting and implementing legislation to ensure the equitable distribution of hydrocarbon resources of the people of Iraq without regard to the sect or ethnicity of recipients, and enacting and implementing legislation to ensure that the energy resources of Iraq benefit Sunni Arabs, Shia Arabs, Kurds, and other Iraqi citizens in an equitable manner.

17. Allocating and spending $10 billion in Iraqi revenues for reconstruction projects, including delivery of essential services, on an equitable basis.

SECURITY MATTERS

7. Enacting and implementing legislation establishing a strong militia disarmament program to ensure that such security forces are accountable only to the central government and loyal to the Constitution of Iraq.

8. Establishing supporting political, media, economic, and services committees in support of the Baghdad Security Plan.

9. Providing three trained and ready Iraqi brigades to support Baghdad operations.

10. Providing Iraqi commanders with all authorities to execute this plan and to make tactical and operational decisions, in consultation with U.S commanders, without political intervention, to include the authority to pursue all extremists, including Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias.

11. Ensuring that the Iraqi Security Forces are providing even handed enforcement of the law.

12. Ensuring that, according to President Bush, Prime Minister Maliki said “the Baghdad security plan will not provide a safe haven for any outlaws, regardless of [their] sectarian or political affiliation”.

13. Reducing the level of sectarian violence in Iraq and eliminating militia control of local security.

14. Establishing all of the planned joint security stations in neighborhoods across Baghdad.

15. Increasing the number of Iraqi security forces units capable of operating independently.

18. Ensuring that Iraq’s political authorities are not undermining or making false accusations against members of the Iraqi Security Forces.

The most basic question about these benchmarks is what is their guiding principle?  Are they primarily a yardstick to justify our exit, or are they a means of ensuring that Iraqis have achieved a level of independence? 

Most of the benchmarks simply measure what the Iraqi government will do from a leadership perspective, not what it will accomplish from the Iraqi peoples’ perspective.  They are activities to be performed, not results to be achieved.  #17 requires that they will spend $10 billion on reconstruction projects and essential services. But will they make the greatest possible impact on peoples’ lives, or are they pork barrel projects?  There are no measurable objectives for improving the lives of Iraqi citizens.  It is simply assumed that if money is spent and a successful security plan is put into place, then everything else will fall into its proper place as well.  That’s a faulty assumption.  It makes you think of the faulty assumptions that began with the invasion of Iraq in the first place, that if we just got rid of Saddam, then the Iraqis would welcome us and soon take over governing their own country.

President Bush has reported that some progress has been made on these benchmarks; but most commentators recognize that it is quite limited.

The following excerpts from the President’s full report highlight the limited extent of the achievement of benchmark #17, the only one that directly addresses reconstruction and essential services.

True success lies not only in the percentage of the capital budget actually spent in 2007, but in the effects of spending, as the Iraqi Government seeks to establish its credibility with citizens though improved delivery of public services and tangible economic development. Moreover, adherence to and improved familiarity with the decentralized and accountable fiduciary structures introduced since the fall of Saddam will give Iraqi citizens added confidence in and a reason to support their local, regional, and national governments. The effects of this new emphasis and these new procedures are already being felt, albeit unevenly, across the country. Some ministries have developed and are implementing aggressive spending plans (such as the Ministry of Education), and several provinces (Anbar, in particular) are demonstrating their empowerment through their new spending programs. Should these successes spread across Iraq, this would mark the beginning of a new relationship between citizens and their government.

These changes have nearly tripled the ministries’ rates of allocation when compared to last year at this time, though efforts must continue accelerating to make sufficient progress on this benchmark. Ministerial spending is moving ahead. The Ministry of  Finance has moved more than 21 percent of the overall ministerial capital budget to the individual ministries’ capital investment accounts, which enables them to award contracts and request additional releases based on contract schedules. With respect to provinces, a majority of the 2006 budget funding was released late in December. Provinces continue to apply those funds to improving services and advancing local reconstruction priorities, while at the same time processing their 2007 budgets. Most provinces are making significant progress in capital spending, but those with security challenges are lagging. Importantly, provincial budget allocations were calculated based on population statistics, which supports the constitution’s concerns with equality. [emphasis added]

Joost Hiltermann is the Middle East Project Director of the International Crisis Group.  In the interview that began this post, he suggests that little meaningful progress has been made on most of the U.S. benchmarks, and he highlights what he sees as more important emphases that seem to be missing from these benchmarks.  The interview focuses on what everyday Iraqi citizens would consider progress, that which makes a difference in the daily life of people.

What about electricity production?  Oil production?  Law enforcement?  Jobs?

We might well ask ourselves: should not achievement of prewar levels in each of these areas be benchmarks of adequate progress?  

Hiltermann says…

For Iraqi people these are critical and they were critical from day one… these issues have only been aggravated in the past three years, four years.  And so, if a government wants to show that it is capable of governing Iraq it would start providing these essential services to people and they might actually get some support.

If there is to be a successful government in Iraq, then it must gain the support of its people. To do that it must provide for the essential services of its citizens.  It does not make sense to ignore these matters.

Hiltermann adds…

I was against the war, but now I’m against a precipitous withdrawal of American forces.  This may sound contradictory; but I think it is utterly consistent with the fact that the arrival of American forces created a huge security vacuum, and you have to fill it lest the country and the region descend into chaos.

The stated U.S. benchmarks seem to assume that if security can be attained then peace will be attained; but that is a false assumption because the “security vacuum” is not resolved simply by defeating some “enemy” - it is filled by providing essential services that meet peoples’ needs so they will stand together against threats to those services.

But religious and ethnic hostilities will continue since local group solidarity will be seen as the best source of security and will prevent a democratic government from developing if nothing more successful in meeting their needs is forthcoming.  As an NPR interview with a warrant officer recently returning from Iraq so vividly illustrates, the military so often are serving as a buffer between these groups and are helping to keep the peace that the Iraqis are not able to maintain for themselves.  Those in the military know they are needed; but their role is at the ground level because that is where they were placed.

Leaders have set up these situations and are accountable for the overall plans and strategies.  American leaders never have made Iraqi welfare their top priority.  Instead, they have made assumptions that have generally gone against the welfare of Iraqis.  From invading without enough support of the world community; to not sending in enough troops to secure Iraq’s resources; to summarily dismissing Iraq’s most well organized and well trained military leaders without capitalizing on what they could get out of them; and so on through the years.   

Now it looks like America’s leaders are preparing for a major drawdown without much more than legal paperwork to show for all this effort.  Goals have become pipedreams and benchmarks seem mainly intended to help us mark time. The only thing we can be sure of is that the Middle East will be changing more rapidly in the future than it did in the past.

Pre-war reports warned of pitfalls

Intelligence agencies told President Bush that attack could spur sectarian strife, al-Qaida risks

Saturday, May 26, 2007

By Jonathan S. Landay, McClatchy Newspapers

The Senate Intelligence Committee has just released declassified prewar intelligence reports which cautioned the Bush administration about the risks and consequences of an attack on Iraq.

These likely consequences included the following:

1. ousting Saddam Hussein would create a “significant risk” of sectarian strife
2. it would encourage al-Qaida attacks
3. it  would open the way for Iranian interference
4. establishing democracy in Iraq would be “long, difficult and probably turbulent”

Naturally these predictions raise questions about the administration’s decision-making ability.  President Bush defended his administration in the following way, as reported in this article –

President Bush said at a news conference Thursday that his administration was “warned about a lot of things, some of which happened, some of which didn’t happen.” But, he added, “The world’s better off without Saddam Hussein in power. I know the Iraqis are better off without Saddam Hussein in power. I think America is safer without Saddam Hussein in power. As to al-Qaida in Iraq, al-Qaida’s going to fight us wherever we are.”  [emphasis added]

Framing the problem this way, as if it was simply a matter of sorting out a complicated problem and unfortunately coming up with a few miscues but still arriving at a justifiable solution, fails to seriously face up to the social dynamic that more and more people are recognizing in the Bush administration, that personal beliefs must be sacrificed out of loyalty to the administration, and that the administration does not fully consider all points of view.  Since the administration has strong biases, the range of input acceptable for serious consideration in decision making is narrowed considerably.  John Dean identified this pattern quite early, though coming at the same broad issue from a different perspective.

As Michiko Kakutani put it  in his review of Bob Woodward’s book, STATE OF DENIAL –

As depicted by Mr. Woodward, this is an administration in which virtually no one will speak truth to power, an administration in which the traditional policy-making process involving methodical analysis and debate is routinely subverted. He notes that experts - who recommended higher troop levels in Iraq, warned about the consequences of disbanding the Iraqi Army or worried about the lack of postwar planning - were continually ignored by the White House and Pentagon leadership, or themselves failed, out of cowardice or blind loyalty, to press insistently their case for an altered course in the war. [emphasis added]

Several books  have been published by former White House insiders who support this impression.  George Tenet’s recent book, AT THE CENTER OF THE STORM: MY YEARS AT THE CIA, seems to do nothing to dispel this conclusion, as witnessed in an expert analysis by Bob Woodward.  Although Tenet believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, he also believed that attacking Iraq was a bad idea, but failed to communicate this to the president.  In other words, Tenet takes over 500 pages to describe how he was a “yes man” to the president, giving him only the part of the picture that he wanted to hear.

N.J. boost for gay couples buoys GOP

By Alexandra Marks

The Christian Science Monitor, October 27, 2006

Wednesday’s ruling in favor of full legal rights for gay couples may galvanize certain voters.

“Opponents of gay marriage say the ruling will put the issue back on the front pages - and energize the most conservative voters….  Republicans haven’t dropped off the map, but their interest in voting is lower than it usually is…. This is the kind of issue that can give them a reason to vote.”

“Some analysts, though, disagree. Gay marriage has lost some of its salience as a galvanizing issue, they say, in part because Americans are so focused on the war in Iraq.”  Some rationalize by saying, “The court did not take the constitutional promise the entire way. And since we’re in abeyance now and have to wait for the Legislature to act, it’s hard to see what kind of impact it will have outside of New Jersey, at least on elections.”

So reports The Christian Science Monitor.

Seems like just another test to see which positions generate the strongest feelings.  For better or for worse, America placed its stamp of approval on the Iraq war when it re-elected George W. Bush and the Republican Party after the invasion of Iraq.  In doing so, America gave its stamp of approval to pay the cost for that invasion, whatever it may be.  As Jesus said  -

Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it?  For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, saying, `This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’   (Luke 14:28-30)

Of course, now we are in a state of disarray because we do not like what it is costing us; but it was easy to predict that the cost would be unbearable on the basis of the slim international support for the invasion.  The measure of international support is the degree to which the costs are distributed among the supporting nations.  So look who is left holding the bill!

The only really significant “Iraq issue” facing voters now is whether to allow the party that led us into this fiasco to remain in control. It is more about the total control of the government by one party than about any one representative or senator.  Is the vision of our role in the world which justified the invasion of Iraq adequate enough for dealing realistically with the future of Iraq and the Middle East?  That is the “Iraq issue” as I see it; but of course, it is not the only issue driving voters.

Do you remember what you actually thought about the Iraq war before it happened?  Hindsight is much easier than foresight, but also tends to distort how we remember what we think we thought.  Hindsight can be much more valuable than foresight (since the future is in a very real sense unknowable), because hindsight can provide principles to guide the present, if we are willing to live by principle rather than by feelings.

In my case, I have a benchmark in a letter I wrote in February 2003 to a junior high school student I never met.  His class had written letters to a veterans group I was associated with to obtain our opinions about social issues, and I was assigned his letter to respond to within two days after receiving it.  My response is shown below and is simply based on the knowledge I had at the time based on reading the newspapers and listening to radio news on NPR — resources which are available to any American.  I think the principles it discusses are still largely relevant today.

The student’s letter to me contained more than just questions about the Iraq war. You will have to read between the lines if you want to discern how I was responding to particular questions he raised.  I tried to give him general principles for critical thinking rather than to provide simple answers.

What would you say to a young person about such controversial issues when you do not know what is going to happen, and you know you do not know what the decision-makers know?  How do you encourage respect, responsibility, and critical thinking at the same time? 

Given the very public nature of my information sources, I now have a great deal of difficulty understanding why leaders of our country often now claim it was so difficult to really understand what was going on back then, since they are now concluding essentially the same kinds of things I concluded from the newspapers back then - not that I understood everything in a precisely correct manner.  And remember that what is written below was a simplified account since it was written on the spur of the moment for a young teenager, so it does not go into much detail.  More could have been written to support the points being made.

What is especially interesting about this letter is that it revives some of the concerns about biological warfare at that time, which I think we have now mostly forgotten.  These widespread fears apparently helped stir up the emotional support for the invasion of Iraq.  This serves as a reminder that emotional events really do create irrational social consequences.  Maybe that decision of the New Jersey Supreme Court really will help the GOP.  The religious right salivates every time an alarm bell rings; but they never get the carrot dangled in front of them by their political leaders.  One of these days they are going to figure out they are pursuing an elusive goal and realize that Muslim radicals are not the only ones who need to come to terms with what it means to live with freedom!

The following letter excerpt was written on 2/26/03: 

You asked what I think about the possible war with Iraq.  I’ll try to make it as simple as possible, but unfortunately it’s not simple.   I’ve placed my thoughts into three groups to make them easier to follow.

(A) STANDING FIRM IN SPITE OF OUR FEARS

In a sense we face the “spin” issue with Iraq.  Is it about weapons?  Oil?  Al Queda?  If it is about any of these issues, I’d agree with you.  There’s no rush.  We have good enough military intelligence and good enough military power to defend ourselves if we should be attacked. And maintaining contracts and agreements and good ethical relationships is what we should be doing. It’s important that most other nations agree that Iraq is being treated fairly.  If we attack Iraq without being attacked first, the most likely consequence is that it will stir up more hatred of the USA by militant Islamic fundamentalists.  These groups follow leaders like Bin Laden and they are even against the leaders of most of the Islamic countries, because they think they are too secular, just like the USA.  Most Muslims do not support these extremists, but it only takes a few violent people to cause a lot of problems.  However, to attack without being attacked first is to begin the cycle that led to the saying, “If you live by the sword, you will die by the sword.”

My uncertainty in responding to this argument is that the threat from Iraq’s weapons is the MAIN government reason for pursuing action against Iraq, and as an individual I do not have access to all the information the government has.  I can say, however, that I am not impressed by what information they have released, and the logic they have used to suggest a threat does not give me confidence in their ability to analyze the danger.  All that being said, however, there is still the reality that Iraq has not accounted for what it did with the known biological weapons it held after the Gulf War in the early 1990’s.  It claims it destroyed them, but has no records to back this up.  I do not find this very believable, and I do not think we should trust Iraq.  I also wonder if our government knows something they are not telling us.  The current smallpox vaccinations they are giving to all military personnel and promoting for stateside healthcare workers have a degree of risk and have costs connected with them.  It is just a little too much for me to believe that promoting these vaccinations is just a trick on the public to get support for the war.  However, the government lied to my generation about Vietnam, and it could happen again.

Assuming they are not lying about the real threat of biological warfare, the question then comes down to whether we attack first given this potential threat, or whether we wait and see what happens.  I have to admit that I am just talking principle right now, but I still believe we should not attack unless we are attacked first.  See part C below for my main reasons.

(B)  HELPING A “NATION” THAT IS PARALYZED

BY FEAR

The one reason I could agree with for attacking Iraq would be to free people who are oppressed by their own government.  I understand the majority of families there have had some relative or relatives killed or tortured by the government to keep them under control.  There is so little freedom it is unbelievable; and it seems to be to the point that the people there would not be able to revolt even if they wanted to. You have to be able to “read between the lines” to realize it, though.  For example, here is what an Iraqi university professor (educated in Great Britain) told a New York Times reporter  (published 1/19/03) — “We love Saddam Hussein, not only love him, we adore him, he is the symbol of our unity. Without Saddam Hussein we will die, believe me….  I want you to convey my feelings to President Bush, my feelings as an educated man. Please, Mr. Bush, leave us alone because we love Saddam Hussein.”  Does this sound like an “educated” person to you? Or does it sound like a person who is afraid for his life that he might be accused of saying the wrong thing to a foreigner?  Taking him at his word, that he is an educated man, I think he is saying “help us!” 

The problem is that although President Bush wants to free the Iraqi people from Saddam, he has said he does not want to be involved in “nation building,” but that is exactly what would be needed.   We can’t expect people who have been living in fear for so many years to just suddenly form a nation.  Once you get to study more history you will learn how the Ottoman Empire ruled the Middle East for more than four hundred years, until just after World War I. (And most of that time there were no printing presses allowed, so just think how limited people were in what they could learn, or how they could learn, or what they were exposed to.)  They were just one big empire with a lot of local tribes and without any real “nations” in the modern sense.  Most of today’s Middle East nations were created in the 20^th century and didn’t become truly independent until after World War II, so they haven’t learned that much about how to do it yet.  Their tribes and ethnic groups are still very dominant, and of course, they haven’t yet figured out how to relate “church and state” (an issue that took over a thousand years to sort out in European history, and was one of the main motivations for why the North American colonies were founded in the first place - and still took hundreds of years to develop into something reasonably workable in the US Constitution). 

So helping them get out from the terrible dictatorship they are under would be an extremely expensive, time-consuming, and long-range project.  No wonder “nation-building” is not such a popular idea - can outsiders really do it for them?  But what if they can’t do it for themselves?

In spite of the difficulties, I would support attacking Iraq to free its people, but only with UN support, or with wide support from many other nations who would help in the nation rebuilding process.  It would take help from many nations to help Iraq rebuild itself into a healthy, independent nation.  Most of the Middle East countries are not democracies because they have not yet learned to do it.  Usually the US has just supported whatever leader will support the US.  This time the US needs to stick around until a democracy is established. And if we are not willing to pay that price, then we should not attack.  But the more help we have, the more the cost can be shared.

(C)  MAINTAINING PERSPECTIVE ON WHAT

THE WORLD NEEDS AND WANTS

You asked whether the US works hard enough to avoid wars.  Because we are a fairly young country that has never experienced foreign warfare in our homeland, we tend to be optimistic and tend to assume that everyone’s main goal is the establishment of peace in the world.  However, for many people who have painful memories of major losses and injustices in their national histories and personal memories, the establishment of justice is equally important, and the one cannot be had without the other.  What this means is that we cannot just look forward to the future; but we have to look backwards and agree how to right previous wrongs.  This makes for an impossibly complicated world.  Think what the USA would be like if the most important issues right now were repaying blacks for slavery, native Americans for broken treaties, Japanese Americans for imprisonment and loss of property during World War II, etc. etc. 

The USA was unique in world history because it was made up of a nation of immigrants escaping from places with long histories of injustice.  Now there is no more unclaimed land available where that can happen again. We created a nation based on principles of law that allowed us to escape from the past, look to the future and develop a problem-solving mentality.  Unfortunately, we have also become part of the world’s problem as we have gone back into the international community and often been perceived as oppressive.  We tend to think everybody is like us, or that they should be; but they are not.  And sometimes we have been rather pushy, which is what we are being accused of doing right now - doing what we want regardless of what any other country wants.

My personal opinion is that it is time to back off a bit.  We do have a leadership role to take, and we should take it.  But the test of leadership is followers. If you don’t have followers, you are not leading.  This is part of what is behind my earlier suggestion that we should not attack first, even if we are concerned about an unconventional biological attack.  If such an attack should happen, we will lose lives here at home.  But we will also then earn the moral right in every reasonable mind to respond with aggressive action to prevent all such attacks in the future, just like we earned the right to attack Afghanistan after 9/11.  Right now we do not have that right in Iraq, and we have not yet earned that right. If we are attacked biologically, we will probably have earned that right, assuming Iraq was the source.

It is so much easier saying all this as a back seat driver, which is what all of us are.  Yet calling it the way we see it is our responsibility.  When citizens are not informed and do not speak out, leaders can get away with doing anything and can end up with too much power.  Promoting peace in the world begins with individuals keeping informed and making their voices heard.   At the same time, we respect the position of privileged information our leaders hold, and sometimes all we have left to do is pray for them.   I’m sure it is very hard making these decisions when you know with certainty that the consequence will be that thousands of people are going to die no matter what choice you make.  That seems to be the kind of choice here, and I suspect that part of the final decision is trying to choose the option with the least amount of bloodshed.

Postscript 10/30/06: 

Much of the above cultural background on Iraq was obtained from many sources during research preparing for an adult education course I helped lead in my church in December 2001.  Although I have not yet seen this book which was discussed recently on NPR, the information appears to be consistent with the report given by Rory Stewart in his recent book, THE PRINCE OF THE MARSHES.