Obama's decision not to intervene in Syria was a wise one

ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) crossed from Syria into Iraq last week. In short order they seized Mosul, Tikrit, and some other, smaller towns near the Syrian Border. Videos showed Iraqi government soldiers removing their uniforms and fleeing their posts before ISIS arrived. American commentators dismissed their actions as cowardice in the face of the enemy. But it was not cowardice. It was merely an attempt at self-preservation.

Videos released later by ISIS showed in gruesome detail what happened to soldiers who were captured by the invaders. The Iraqi soldiers were rounded up and shot. We need to recognize that the Iraqi soldiers, mostly Shi'ite, who were posted in Mosul and Tikrit were not defending their homeland. They were deep inside enemy territory. Those who could not escape to Baghdad could not be certain of survival, for the people of the region oppose the Iraqi government installed by the American army. The Shi'ite soldiers had no place to hide and no one to aid them.

ISIS had been fighting against Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator. These were the same fighters that neocons and John McCain had been urging Obama to support. ISIS is aligned with former supporters of Saddam Hussein. They are Sunni Muslims who have a much stronger allegiance to their religious faith than to any government. They are also one of the main forces that have been opposing the Americans in Iraq. Supporting these people would have been a major blunder, akin to the mistake made by the CIA in Operation Cyclone, which led to the empowerment of Osama bin Laden.

We should understand the alignment of forces in the Middle East.

Iran is the leading Shi'ite state. Other Shi'ite leaders are Syria's Bashar al-Assad and Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki.

Saudi Arabia is the leading Sunni State. Saddam Hussein was Sunni. So was Osama bin Laden. There are powerful Sunni forces in Iraq and Syria, where they oppose the current governments.

The wars in the Middle East between Muslim states since WWII can be viewed as proxy wars between Iran and Saudi Arabia for control of the region. The United States has sided with Saudi Arabia consistently during this entire period, despite the fact that the two countries have little in common aside from an interest in oil.

Sanity seems at last to have reached into the American government. Our intelligence agencies have failed to provide accurate information to our decision makers. Even Jimmy Carter was not immune to the belief that Afghanistan's war against the Soviet Union was somehow a danger to the US.

We don't know what intelligence reports led Obama to decide against intervention in Syria. Perhaps he knew more about the makeup of the rebel force opposing Assad than the rest of us. Or perhaps he was wary about any intelligence he received from the CIA, since they had failed so utterly in this region in the past. Whatever his reasons, Obama made the right choice. The US now enjoys the enviable position of watching chaos from the outside rather than having it falling on our heads.

McCain redefines defeat to equal victory

Senator John McCain recently criticized Obama for withdrawing American troops from Iraq. He asserted that the US won the war in Iraq but now, because of the withdrawal, we have lost. This is a strange opinion. The stated goal of staying in Iraq as long as we did was to give the Iraqis time to train their army to defend the country against threats to their security.

The surge worked, says McCain. But the surge was an offensive by 100,000 American troops that quelled an uprising in the Sunni part of the country. The injection of 100,000 well-armed troops certainly pacified that region for as long as the troops were there. McCain argues that we should have left sufficient forces in Iraq to pacify the whole country.

No doubt McCain believes, as did Bush 43, that armies can be held in the field indefinitely without accounting for them in the budget. The neocon instigators of the Iraq war assured the American people that the war would not cost $100 million--as others maintained--because the Iraqis had enough oil revenue to repay us when the war was over.

The same people who refused to levy taxes on the American people to pay for the Iraq war were proposing to levy taxes on the Iraqi people to pay for it. These people should understand that taxation without representation is tyranny, as colonial patriot James Otis declared back in the years prior to the American Revolution. They should understand it because they continually refuse to raise taxes on any Americans for any reason as a badge of honor.

The stated goal of remaining in Iraq after the defeat of Saddam Hussein was to give the Iraqis the ability to defend their own country. Since it is now clear that the hyper-partisan, Shi'ite regime that the Americans set up in Baghdad cannot defend itself from Sunni attacks, it must also be clear that the US won the war but Iraq is losing the peace.

The US vision of a united Iraq ignored the history of the region, where Iraq was never united as a country until Britain and France drew its borders after WWI. So there never was and never will be an Iraq in the same way there is a France, Britain, or US. A much more reasonable policy would have been to partition the country along partisan lines, with three smaller countries, Kurdistan in the north, a Sunni state in the west and a Shi'ite state in the east. Such a division could have stabilized the region with less bloodshed and less loss of treasure than the current failed solution.

It is astonishing how quickly the news services have labeled the Sunni partisans as al-Qaida or al-Qaida inspired, just as they once labeled Saddam as a supporter of al-Qaida and the instigator of the 9-11 attacks. The Sunni insurrection may be inspired by al-Qaida, but it may also be supplied by Saudi Arabians, who have the oil wealth to finance such a rebellion. A Sunni caliphate, such as the one envisioned by insurgents, would have a natural ally in Riyadh. Neocons are not going to admit that their pals, the Saudi royal family, may be behind the latest violence in Iraq.

US soldiers are naturally disheartened by the present turn of events. They have a right to be. But the neocons who started the war and lied about its possibility of success have no business blaming President Obama for the failure of their grand design, launched by President Bush in 2003. The neocons must accept the blame themselves for what they persuaded the rest of us to do. They should begin by apologizing to the Americans who fought in Iraq and the families of those who died there, because the Republicans are responsible for the idiotic plan that sent American armed forces to Iraq in the first place.

Senator McCain, against all the evidence, urges us to continue the plan we started. It worked, he says.

No, it didn't work. The plan will cost the American taxpayers more than $2 trillion, making it one of the most expensive failures in history.

President Obama, please pardon Bowe Bergdahl

Republican politicians and pundits are suffering from President Obama's refusal to promote any more legislation in the US Congress. For months, Republicans have made political hay by opposing any proposal made or only mentioned by the Obama administration. Finally, however, Obama gave up. This left a big hole in the Republican propaganda machine.

Republicans have tried to fill this gaping hole by having several committees investigate the assassination of a US Ambassador in Benghazi, Libya. These investigations reek from the stench of desperation. Obama is not playing the congressional game. He's giving them nothing to rant about because he's just ignoring.

Worse yet, the things Republicans do rant about are going south. Republicans are still attacking the Affordable Care Act, but their failure in the states to accept free Medicaid is leading to increasing state medical costs, avoidable deaths, and funding of medicaid in blue states by taxpayers in red states. Even if the Affordable Care Act is terrible--and a lot of things about it are terrible--there is no alternative. It's all we've got.

So it was fairly predictable that Republicans would attack Obama over the release of Bowe Bergdahl. They need to appear on TV with something to say instead of just staring into the cameras. Now they can say that (1) the president should not have negotiated for Bergdahl's release, (2) the president should not have simultaneously released 5 Taliban soldiers, and (3) the president should have informed Congress 30 days before releasing Guantanamo prisoners into foreign countries.

The trouble with those arguments is that they are awkward to defend. The US has always exchanged prisoners of war, especially after the war is over. The armed forces have a long standing policy never to leave a US soldier behind in enemy hands. After the Vietnam War was over, Republicans and unscrupulous profiteers made political hay for decades because there were still POWs in Vietnam. "Bring back our boys!" was their rallying cry. It resonated with every ex-gi and every wife and mother of a soldier.  Now the shoe is on the other foot. Conservatives are saying, "You should have left him there!" It doesn't have the same heroic appeal. Patriots will not fight under that flag.

Republicans object that the 5 prisoners we released from Guantanamo are dangerous Taliban operatives. This is actually the best argument they have. Those prisoners may in fact be deadly killers. On the other hand, it's extremely unlikely the Taliban could not find replacements in Afghanistan. These guys are not nuclear scientists or Rambo. They're just ordinary fighters from a low-tech army. If we wanted to harm the Taliban recruiting program, we should not have gone to Afghanistan in the first place. Since Osama Bin Laden was found and executed in Pakistan, the original premise for invading Afghanistan has vanished. Just like the original premise for invading Iraq.

Conservatives also say that President Obama broke the law by failing to inform Congress of his plans. This is an extremely weak argument for the party that advocated torturing captives and sending captives to foreign countries so they could quietly be tortured or even killed. We're not talking torture here, nor are we talking about trading arms for hostages, as Right-wing poster boy Ollie North did back in 1973. We're talking about bringing an American POW home after the war is over. If it is ever right for the President to break the law, this would be a good place to start because you would be hard-pressed to find someone who disagrees with him.

We saw that movie. It was called Saving Private Ryan. After Tom Hanks and 6 members of his rescue team died to rescue a single US soldier, everyone cried. I cried. Republicans really don't want to go down that road.

It wasn't until several years after the Vietnam War was over that President Carter pardoned draft resisters so that they could lead normal lives. Bergdahl may be guilty of going AWOL or desertion. Going AWOL is a minor offense, usually punishable by less than 30 days confinement. Most cases of desertion carry a penalty of 5 years confinement or less. There is no indication that Bergdahl deserted. In any case, it is impossible to know whether Bergdahl would have returned to base (as he had done twice before) because the Taliban captured him and held him for 6 years.

Bergdahl has already served 6 years in confinement. President Obama should follow up his courageous decision to exchange Bergdahl by pardoning him of any and all crimes he may have committed. That would be a real act of heroism.

Obama shows his hand; Clinton will run for president and Obama will support her

President Obama spoke at a Walmart Store in Mountain View, California, on Thursday. I was shocked, as was Chris Hayes, who wondered why Obama chose to embrace Walmart for its environmental leadership, even though Walmart is not among the leaders in this field. Why should Barack Obama choose to give a speech at a Walmart, whose owners are charter members of the one percent.

I forgot my Obama rule: If you don't understand why Obama has made a political move, it's only because Obama understands politics better than you do. If Obama chose to give a speech at a Walmart store in Silicon Valley in California, rest assured he has a reason for so doing. He is one of the most subtle and perceptive politicians of our time.

My suggestion is that Obama has tipped his hand. He is looking forward to the presidential race of 2016, when he will support Hillary Clinton. If Clinton has a challenger from the left, such as Elizabeth Warren or Ed Markey, she will need to win the California primary. So Obama went to California to give her campaign a boost. If Clinton runs in California, she will have to face charges that she was once on the board of Walmart, and thus is a stooge for the one percent. No one is more a member of the one percent than a member of the Walton family, billionaires all.

So Obama has struck a blow against any challengers in 2016. Walmart, apparently, is a leader in the environmental movement. Obama has said it, so it must be so, no matter what Chris Hayes or I might argue against it. He said it in California, too, so California voters will recall his verdict well.

Hayes and other pundits have wondered why Obama would take such a step. After all, they say, he is not going to run for another office. He doesn't need to take controversial positions. But Obama is also concerned about the Democratic Party, more than his own candidacy or lack of it. He is concerned that everything he has worked for in the environmental field, in health care, or in the area of equal rights for all, may be reversed by the President that succeeds him, if that president is a Republican.

Obama is right to be concerned. The Republicans and the one per centers who back them would love to reverse the achievements of the Obama presidency. They can't do it, though, as long as a Democrat occupies the White House. Obama cares about that, as should we all.

The one per centers--yes, David Koch and Sheldon Adelson, you know who you are--wish to impose their will on the 99 percent (the rest of us) by spending their millions to lie to us and persuade us that the worse argument is the better. These are perilous times. We must not let them win.

Obama speaks at Walmart store, says nothing about unions, benefits, or wages

President Obama spoke at a Walmart store in Mountain View, CA, today.Obama spoke at this store because it uses advanced technology like solar panels and LEDs to supply 15% of its electrical needs. The company would have to pay its employees a lot more to let the employees afford solar panels and LEDs. The one percent can afford to use solar electricity. The rest of us have to use what we can get.

Nor can a Walmart employee afford a family home within 20 miles of the Mountain View Walmart. Families may supplement their meager incomes with food stamps but they won't come anywhere near the going rate for a 2-bedroom apartment in Mountain View, which is somewhere around $3 thousand a month.

According to Walmart, half of its employees earn less than $25,000 a year. A 2-bedroom apartment in Silicon Valley costs about $36,000 a year. The employees do not live in Silicon Valley, of course. They commute from far away. This long commute by car further adds to the absurdity of Obama's message. Obama doesn't address how much energy these low-wage workers waste while driving to work, or how this affects the savings in energy (15%) claimed by the company for its energy-efficient store. The average commute in Silicon Valley is about 20 miles.

The place boasts the second-worst commute in the nation, over 40 minutes each way. Many of my fellow workers took much longer than that. Even using ethanol-laced gasoline and a car that gets 40 mpg, each 40-mile-a-day commuter would put around 10,000 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere during the course of a year. Walmart must count all the energy required by its business model, not just the amount used in a store.

Obama used this speaking opportunity to criticize congress for failing to move on global climate change legislation. This is a fair charge, though Obama himself has been lukewarm on environmental issues, despite the latest report from the GlobalChange.gov. Obama has yet to block building of the Keystone Pipeline XL. The EPA has yet to release its standards for CO2 emissions on coal burning electricity plants, which will only apply to future coal burning plants, not to those currently in operation.

It is all very well for the EPA to release regulations that will limit new coal-burning plants or close existing ones, but these plants will only be replaced by gas-burning plants that will be just as dirty as the ones being closed. The difference between coal-burning and gas-burning plants is that the CO2 from burning natural gas is released when the gas is extracted from the ground.

Obama calls this move from coal to natural gas part of an "all-of-the-above" strategy to fight global climate change. Since this move may actually increase the amount of CO2 that the US injects into the atmosphere, the whole concept of "all-of-the-above" is a fraud.

Why the Keystone XL Pipeline is (still) a bad idea

The main talking points of Keystone advocates are that it's a big project, ready to go, and it will create jobs.

The main replies by Keystone opponents are that being a big project has nothing to do with being a good project; it may be ready, but we, as a country, are not ready for its consequences; it may create jobs, but they are not permanent jobs or green, sustainable jobs.

Keystone XL will produce more greenhouse gases because tar-sands gas consumes more energy than it delivers, tar-sands gas has byproducts so dirty that they must be shipped to China to burn, and much of the profit will go to Koch Industries, a company that has consistently tried to undermine our democratic institutions. We may not be able to stop the Koch brothers from spending vast sums of money to influence public opinion, but we should be able to stop allowing their egoistic schemes.

President Obama should look Keystone advocates in the eye and say, "You have opposed every single project I proposed to create jobs. You have given me nothing in return for this project. I can't stop the federal government from giving you tax breaks and subsidies, but I can sure stop you from building this pipeline."

Take a stand, President Obama. You speak for all of us.

Obama's All-in Compromise Strategy: Does it work?

We all thought we knew how to compromise. You make an offer. Your opponent makes an offer. Your first offer never reveals everything you are prepared to yield. You save that for your final offer.

This style of compromise is based on the idea that there is a middle ground somewhere that will satisfy both parties. This style works well when both sides are evenly matched and the compromise will not harm either party too much. This is the piecemeal style of compromise.

The piecemeal style does not work well at all when one side is much stronger than the other, as when a prosecutor is negotiating with a defendant in a criminal trial. The prosecutor has little to lose in this negotiation. True, a series of lost judgments can harm a prosecutor's career, but he or she must be willing to take that risk because a series of non-decisions can be just as harmful. Besides, a single case ordinarily will not make or break a career.

A defendant in a criminal case frequently has his whole life on the line. Criminal sentences are cruelly harsh these days. Even a first offense can lead to years spent in prison. A second or third conviction can lead to a life behind bars. In one recent case, a defendant was involved in a robbery with two accomplices. The two accomplices pleaded guilty but the defendant, a young man who believed that his two older friends had influenced him to commit a crime, decided to plead not guilty and go to trial. This defendant lost his gamble and the judge sentence him to spend much of his life in prison. Admittedly the judge was extreme in his sentencing, but what's the point of being a judge if you can't throw the book at scofflaws? 

So a criminal defendant is likely to seize at any offer of compromise to avoid a dire outcome. Any offer is likely to be better than what he can expect from a skeptical jury and a mean judge. So our prisons fill up with petty criminals. 

 

The piecemeal style of negotiation is not the only style, however. As an American, I became annoyed with the Turkish bazaar in Istanbul, where the salesman typically starts out with a price three or four times the value of a piece. Once when a tradesman used this approach on me, I simply turned and walked away. He followed me, cutting his price in half several times in succession. But I didn't want to deal with someone like that and I kept on walking.

It turned out that someone else was watching the incident, one of the seller's competitors, or even--who knows?--his boss. This man came an offered to show me better merchandise at his factory, located outside the bazaar. I went with him and bought two items. No bargaining involved, I simply accepted the price offered. I later discovered from my Turkish friend that the price I had gotten was a good one. Maybe not the best possible price, but still a good one.

I would call this the "all-in" style of negotiation. The name comes from tournament poker, where a player cannot wait for a good hand while his pile of chips dwindles. At some point, he will not have enough money to compete with the other bettors. He therefore pushes all his chips into the pot and calls "all in".

Until Barack Obama became president, all negotiations between presidents and the congress were piecemeal negotiations. One party made an offer to compromise, then the other made one, and so on. The result of this style of negotiation was not satisfactory for Obama, however. Frequently, one party may delay a bill by offering one compromise after another in a piecemeal fashion. In the end, the party withdraws its support and the session ends with no action on the bill that seemed so popular at the outset.

Obama saw that the piecemeal style had one big flaw--bills could not be continued on to the next session of Congress. So he tried the all-in strategy. In the health care bill, he offered the same bill that the Republicans had offered the last time the issue had been brought before the congress. He may have believed that the Republicans would simply cave in and accept their own proposal. But he probably realized that the Republicans never intended to pass that proposal and merely used it as a delaying tactic in their piecemeal strategy.

Obama's all-in strategy worked. The Republicans tried to make counteroffers, but they really had nothing else to give. Obama and his congressional allies passed the bill by buying off the few votes he needed to get the bill through the Senate. The all-in strategy essentially stops the clock ticking, preventing delaying tactics, especially if, as on the debt-limit bill, the all-in player refuses to offer any further compromise.

After the 2010 elections, Obama faced an obdurate congress that refused to be intimidated by the all-in strategy. Obama continued this tactic, however, and gained a political advantage by making his Republican opponents appear petty, self-interested, and even stupid. The Republicans countered by passing one meaningless bill after another, hoping the electorate would blame the president for the failure of these bills. After numerous meaningless bills failed to pass the Senate, however, even disinterested voters began to get the idea that the Republicans were not serious about solving problems and governing. 

It remains to be seen whether the all-in style wins in the long run.

NSA gets a leash

President Obama has been slow to move in countering the excesses of his predecessors. Part of his reluctance derives from the institutional nature of government. Presidents come and go, but the bureaucracy stays forever.

Whistleblower William Binney revealed in 2007 that the National Security Agency (NSA) was spying on every single data transmission in the US as well as all foreign transmissions that reached the US. No one cared. Binney was neither arrested nor charged with leaking classified information.

Obama took office in 2009. He didn't care to oppose NSA, either. The new president had plenty of reasons for his reluctance. NSA is a huge organization. The Sunday Times reports that NSA's HQ in Maryland

contains almost 70 miles of roads, 1,300 buildings, each identified by a number, and 18,000 parking spaces as well as a shopping centre, golf courses, chain restaurants and every other accoutrement of Anywhere, USA.

NSA has other facilities around the world, including the Utah Data Center where it stores all data collected from US electronic signal monitoring. NSA spent $1.5-$2 billion to construct this facility.

Reforming an agency that large would meet strong resistance both from within the organization and from its supporters, like Orrin Hatch, Senator from Utah at that time. Conservative politicians and media would have accused Obama of being soft on terrorism, although none of them know much about what NSA does or whether it is effective. William Binney claimed that the multi-billion-dollar Utah Data Center was useless because NSA lacked the ability to interpret its data in a timely manner.

But last week NSA lost its mojo. Politicians from countries around the world began complaining about being bugged by NSA. Among those complaining loudest was Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany and one of our most important allies. Spokesmen for the Obama administration, including the president himself, fell all over each other claiming that they never eavesdropped on anyone and that they would never do it again. They thus began making the reforms that NSA has needed all along.

The incident and its aftermath reveal a great deal about Obama and his administration. Republicans have been right to fear the president and oppose his every move. Obama plans to do nothing that Republicans can legitimately oppose--until the moment that they can't oppose it any longer.

This is known in the martial arts as the No-Fight style. You refuse to fight your opponent and let him exhaust himself by attacking you. When an opening appears, you attack. By this time, your opponent has not got the strength to resist you.

Obama's strategy goes beyond temporary measures, however. He is clearly planning to leave an administration that will not embarrass a Democratic candidate for President. George W. Bush left so much broken crockery around the world--in Afghanistan, Iraq, and on Wall Street--that his party had little chance of retaining the presidency. Obama, by contrast, is quietly cleaning up messes and refusing to become embroiled in bureaucratic struggles which he cannot win.

The next president will be a Democrat and will be able to continue the progressive agenda modestly begun by Obama.