Rantle

Eric Anschutz, Walnut Creek, CA, October, 2005

1. Spending on our military should be massively reduced. The zeal of conservatives to ensure our “security” has led to an annual military budget that today (exclusive of the costs of the Iraq war) is greater than the sum of military spending of all other nations combined (this includes China, Russia, Germany, UK, France and all others). When I think about what good might have been done (could still be done) with all that money, our national stupidity seems beyond belief. The loss in lives from military misadventure, and the resultant erosion of America’s moral stature are equally painful. The irony is that all those squandered billions and wasted lives have not given us security – and arguably are at the root of our present insecurity. At a time when our enemies are bearded pajama-clad insurgents, the many billions of dollars spent on deployment of unnecessary and non-functioning missile defense, and on development of such esoterica as new fighter aircraft and nuclear-tipped missiles is demonstrably less important to our security than the same billions spent to improve education or medical care or national infrastructure.

2. Federal spending must once again be brought into balance with tax income. We must return to sharply progressive taxation where the wealthiest among us would pay substantially higher tax rates than ordinary wage-earners. We should restore the estate tax (dubbed death tax by its opponents) for all bequests greater than about $2 million, with higher rates applied to estates above, say, $10 million.

3. First-rate education, from pre-school to post-doctorate, should be available to all. Something like the post-WWII GI Bill that made it possible to provide college training for so many returning soldiers should be enacted. Teaching at all levels should be esteemed as one of our most honored professions, and remunerated accordingly to attract the best of our young people to its ranks. To bring this about, wages for teachers, now averaging about $45,000, should be doubled or tripled. There should be a nationally endowed Education Research Center, modeled after the National Institutes of Health. Just as NIH leads the world in medical research, my proposed ERC would lead the world in development of educational methodology, textbooks, and teacher-training programs, and make best-practices and educational success models from around the world available for local school systems to adopt and adapt as they see appropriate for their communities.

4. Medical care must be available to all, based on a single payer system, designed along the lines of a proven private-sector supplier such as Kaiser Permanente. Medical care should be improved and administrative costs greatly reduced by more aggressive introduction of information technology. Federal funding for and NIH stimulus and direction of stem cell research should be called for, similar to NIH involvement in cancer research and the human genome project. Universal health care makes good economic sense for America for a number of reasons: first, our major corporations (e.g. General Motors, Delphi, all airlines) are threatened with bankruptcy because of the drain of health care costs for their employees (each car built by GM bears a health care burden for GM employees of $1,400); second, those of our citizens who are covered by health care plans are indirectly paying for those not covered; third, universal coverage would encourage earlier attention to emerging health problems, and include preventive care that would lessen the incidence of more serious illness and the higher costs therefrom; fourth, administrative costs would be far less with single-payer coverage than with the myriad of private plans currently available.

5. America needs an infrastructure that is the best in the world, to include roads, railways, air traffic control, bridges, flood control, water supplies, electrical grids, rail and airline service, sewers, waste disposal systems, and environmental controls that would give us clean air, clean water, and rejuvenated forests.

6. Energy independence must be achieved through greatly intensified research into and aggressive deployment of alternative technologies, to include solar, wind, hydrogen, ethanol, clean coal and hydro-power. Energy conservation should be enhanced (and environmental pollution reduced) by more widespread use in automobiles of improved hybrid technologies and/or alternative fuels such as ethanol, propane and hydrogen. Imposition of higher taxes on gasoline would provide further incentives for a shift to hybrid or alternative-fueled engines.

7. We require a vibrant economy, efficiently producing products and services and ideas, superior in both quality and utility, competitive with those produced in any other country and thereby raising our balance of trade (now grossly negative) to levels of surplus. We should be leading the world in development and production of “green” technologies, such as waste management, toxic emission controls, water purification, and desalinization. I view it as a travesty that our car industry has lost primacy in the world market and even in the American market to Japanese and German manufacturers. Can it be true that Ford and General Motors and Chrysler will continue to lag Toyota and other foreign manufacturers in the race to fuel efficiency, reliability and reduced toxic emissions? Surely our engineers could successfully compete in that race. Instead, our vastly overpaid auto executives complain about the burden of mileage standards, high wages and medical costs, when they should be focused on improved productivity and technology. Our steel industry has lost out to Korean steel producers. Our primary “industries” seem to be buying and selling houses to one another, and merchandising foreign-manufactured goods on credit to American consumers – in mega-malls to which we drive in foreign made cars using fuels from OPEC countries to whom we pay ever-higher prices.

8. My “model” America would proudly enact legislation to the effect that war could be declared only by a super-majority of both houses of congress and that American military power will never again be used without prior debate in Congress and a declaration of war. Our current policy, where a president can commit our military without congressional consideration and action, places entirely too much power in the hands of one person.

9. America should form a Department of Peace Studies, based on legislation authored by Dennis Kucinich. Wars, we have learned, are often (even mostly) counterproductive. Our wars in Vietnam and Iraq, both now widely regretted, serve to illustrate that it is far easier to get into war than it is to end it on acceptable terms. Ralph White’s Nobody Wanted War discusses how, in times of international tension, certain attitudes can put us on a road to violence by distorting the view of the other side. They include: 1. diabolical enemy-image; 2. moral self-image; 3. virile self-image; 4. selective inattention; 5. absence of empathy; 6. military overconfidence. Former Secretary of Defense McNamara has written (in his post-Vietnam apologia) “McNamara’s Lessons,” two of which are “empathize with your enemy” and “if we can’t persuade nations with comparable values of the merits of our case, we had better reexamine our reasoning.” Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld postulated (on his website, pre-Iraq) “Rumsfeld’s Rules.” Here are three of them: 1. It is easier to get into a war than to get out of it; 2. Don’t divide the world between them and us; 3. Visit your predecessors from previous administrations…try to make original mistakes rather than needlessly repeating theirs. (Rumsfeld’s Rules have been deleted from his website.) Our leaders must cease “axis of evil” rhetoric; while it may bring cheers for a compliant congress during State of the Union addresses, it may also become a self-fulfilling prophecy if it results in pressing adversaries into weapons development and a war footing more aggressive than might otherwise have been the case.

10. Another wish for my America is a greater willingness to debate issues, and a process by which such debate would be encouraged and kept civil. I would thereby hope to move away from the negative and hostile spirit exemplified in this citation from a speech to Republican fund-raisers by Virginia Senator George Allen: asking for donations to his party’s coffers, Allen said he wanted “not just to beat Democrats, but to kick their soft teeth down their whiny throats.” Conservatives have persuaded themselves that God and family values and patriotism are their territory alone. Liberals, in turn, are sure that only they understand and empathize with the needs and aspirations of minorities and the poor. Both sides need to search for common ground.

Note: Items 3, 4, 5 and 6 above (education, medical care, infrastructure and energy research) would of course be costly, especially so if they were done on the grand scale that I would urge. I would, however, point out that expenditures of this kind are investments that would pay for themselves many times over, not only in material ways but in improvement of the lives of our citizens and in enhancement of our stature in the community of nations.

My ten point wish list may be seen as a fairly typical roster of liberal ideas, and I do strongly proclaim myself to be a progressive, a liberal, a lifelong Democrat. Fellow liberals will, however, have noted that my list does not include anything about a tightened social safety net: I have proposed nothing about strengthened welfare programs or other aid to the poor and disadvantaged. This important omission results from my ambivalence, and from doubts about the best way to deal with the problems of poverty.

Republicans have long argued in favor of an “opportunity society” in which personal failure stems not from economic and social inequalities but from “moral failings of thriftless, heedless, lawless, libertine and lazy individuals.” Conservatives go on to charge that these are the people that liberals want to coddle with needless, destructive social spending. Though I find these conservative assertions too sweeping and too cold-hearted, they seem to me to contain enough truth to warrant caution about social programs. There is something to be said for the discipline of tough standards when handing out public money. When welfare or other aid is easy to get, people are less likely to make an effort to find work, and less likely to work hard to succeed. I do find myself generally sympathetic to the welfare reform initiatives advance by Bill Clinton during his presidency.

The more fundamental and longer-term answer to the problems faced by our under-class must include a return to basics: education, higher minimum wage, better and universally available health care, affirmative action, a stronger economy in which steady employment is more readily available, and aggressive enforcement of tough laws aimed at discrimination against minorities.

By Eric Anschutz, Walnut Creek, CA, July, 2006

An important inquiry into the causes of war comes from psychologist Ralph White’s Nobody Wanted War. While White’s book (written some 30 years ago) deals primarily with the Vietnam War, its horizon is broader; he seeks to identify the psychological factors common to World Wars I and II, as well as to the Vietnam War. White’s analysis of psychological and emotional factors has relevance to our current muscular and militant foreign policy, and in particular to today’s “war on terrorism.”

Dr. White describes certain factors that can distort one’s view of an “enemy,” and how such unintended distortions can lead to justification of violence:

• A diabolical enemy-image. The enemy is bad and must be destroyed. The enemy is perceived as externally aggressive and internally suppressive. His institutions and ideology are a cancer that must at any cost be stopped from spreading. The diabolical enemy-image was exemplified by the slogan popular in the fifties: “Better dead than red.” Today’s version is that “they” comprise an “axis of evil,” are “enemies of freedom,” and “seek to destroy our way of life.”

• The moral self-image. Our way is good and honorable and must be preserved. Our part of the world is the “Free World.” Good and God are on our side. By implication, countries not aligned with us reject freedom and godliness. The moral self-image was exemplified by the German World War I slogan: “Gott Mit Uns” (God is with Us or May God be with Us), and by implication, “may God be against our foe.” Bin Laden is convinced that God is on his side; but, then again, so is President Bush.

• The virile self-image. In 1914, each of the Great Powers feared “losing our position as a Great Power.” Analogous cases exist today. Nations are reluctant to retreat lest they be deemed weak or irresolute. This reluctance prevails even when they decide the situation at hand is not worth a fight, or that indeed they have been in the wrong. The image of virility must be pre¬served at any cost. The essential thing is to seem con¬sistent, strong and firm. We must “stay the course,” Bush tells us. We can’t allow a gang of terrorist thugs to deflect us from our goal of bringing freedom to the Iraqi people. “National decision-makers,” White wrote, “judge themselves and expect to be judged by others not only as good vs. bad, or right vs. wrong, but strong vs. weak.”

• Selective inattention and absence of empathy. This phenomenon is the tendency to focus attention only on information that reinforces the black-or-white images described above. White or gray elements on the enemy side are glossed over; there is interest only in the black.

• Military Overconfidence. Nations generally enter wars with full confidence that they can win. There is a tendency also to not appreciate fully how long the war might last, and what it will cost in resources and casualties. Japan and Germany certainly regret having started World War II; the US regrets having entered into the Vietnam War; and most Americans regret our war in Iraq.

What lessons, if any, can we take from Dr. White’s insights?

• Give diplomacy a chance. Before taking or even threatening military action, we must ask ourselves what motivates the enemy or adversary, and through diplomacy seek arrangements that can avoid war. In the case of Iraq, we now know that Saddam feared UN inspectors not because they might find WMD’s, but because they would find that he had none, thereby exposing his military weakness.

• Take the time to let peace happen. Had we given the UN inspectors enough time, the world would have learned the truth about WMD’s. That finding would have removed the reason for a rush into war: it would have been clear that Iraq was not an imminent threat.

• Enemy bluster may result from fear, rather than from aggressive intent. Iran and North Korea engage in development of weapons, and in belligerent behavior. We see their actions as aggressive; they, on the other hand, almost certainly fear the prospect of military action by us against them, aimed at “regime change,” and see their weapons development as deterrence, not as aggression. Through one-on-one diplomatic interaction, we might offer non-aggression guarantees in exchange for cessation of their military development programs.

• Trade trumps confrontation. Several years ago, South and North Korea established a Special Economic Zone inside North Korea, in which South Korea provides technology, investments and management, and North Korean provides the laborer force. To date, this Zone has grown to include some 500 South Korean managers and 7,000 North Korean workers. The goal, which has widespread support from the South Korean people, is to grow the enterprise to 2,000 companies, employing 700,000 North Korean workers, by 2012, and thereby to move inexorably toward de facto unification. This effort is opposed by the US; our policy is to isolate North Korea rather than co-opt it.

• Perception, or more accurately, misperception, plays a central role in the causes of war. What to one side is an alliance in support of freedom is to the other military encircle¬ment. What to one side is an act of liberation is to the other aggression. What to one side is firm resolution of internal disputes is to the other suppression of human rights. And so it goes in all confrontations. Every army is defending, no army considers itself aggressive. Even Hitler began by defending the “rights” of the German people to seek restoration of territories that by a string of trumped-up logic he perceived as belonging to the Third-Reich.

• Establishment of a cabinet-level Department of Peace should be seriously considered. Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D, Ohio) has been pressing the case for such a new department. If deemed credible, and if the President and Congress were receptive to advice based on the kind of ideas presented here, such a new organization could provide an important balance for those in the Department of Defense who argue the case for a militant foreign policy, and press for preemptive war.

We know that adoption of such ideas would face stiff opposition from the existing national mindset. When fighting wars, people have a way of convincing themselves that they are thereby serving the cause of peace. Nations are becoming increasingly interdependent, but it is not yet clear that their governments will give more than lip service to the increased cooperation this demands. To be interdependent means to be partially dependent. To be dependent means to be not wholly sovereign. And to surrender sovereignty to the United Nations is seen by some as a kind of self-emasculation.

There is a sort of plaintive irony in the continued emphasis on national sovereignty during this nuclear era. The chief responsibility of sovereign states has been to provide for the common defense of their citizens. But today, fail-proof defense against nuclear-armed adversaries is not possible (Star Wars missile defense systems not withstanding).

In any event, our biggest security concern these days is not missiles or bomber aircraft, but weapons of mass destruction (nuclear or chemical or biological) delivered in a truck, left in a train station locker, stowed under the seat of a commuter train, contained in a cargo of bananas in the hold of a ship in New York harbor, or dumped into the water-supply of a major city. The list of possible means of delivery is endless, and almost impossible to guard against with any high degree of assurance.

Our strategic nuclear defense doctrine against nations was (and remains) Mutual Assured Destruction (if you hit us, we will annihilate you). But, for several reasons, deterrence is less certain against sub-national terrorist groups. First, we may not learn with certainty who delivered the weapon. Second, the terrorists can strike and then rapidly melt back into their community. And third, terrorists are in most cases quite willing to risk their lives in pursuit of their objectives; candidates for suicidal acts of terror abound.

Are these not reasons enough to examine our purposes and actions in Iraq, and to change what is demonstrably a failed policy? Are they also not reasons enough to warrant a “regime change” in the United States? While most Democrats would agree, we need to be certain that our own candidates understand that military action is, in the long term, no answer to the threats we now face to our national security, and is in fact generally counterproductive.

By Eric Anschutz, Walnut Creek, CA, July, 2006

The United States seeks to convince North Korea and Iran that their best interests would be served by forgoing, respectively, missile tests and uranium enrichment. In both cases, we refuse to engage in one-on-one talks that, we assert, would “reward bad behavior.” Moreover, we frequently remind these two countries and the world that “the military option remains on the table.” One-time Clinton Secretary of Defense, William Perry, openly advocates bombing the North Korean missile launch site, and it is alleged (by Seymour Hersch, in the New Yorker) that the Pentagon has plans for nuclear attack on Iran’s enrichment site. To put it mildly, either of these military actions would do more harm than good, and either could lead to apocalyptic consequences.

The positive act of diplomacy that we have to date refused to employ is one-on-one discussions, despite the fact that both North Korea and Iran have asked for exactly that. We cannot be certain what Korea plans to do with a long-range missile, or what Iran might do with a nuclear weapon (Note: Iran steadfastly denies that it plans to build nuclear weapons, claiming that their enrichment program is solely to create fuel for their planned power reactor). Whatever the case, logic should tell us that neither North Korea nor Iran plans an attack on the United States or its allies. They would be deterred from any use of weapons of mass destruction, just as the Soviet Union, with its thousands of nukes was, by the threat of massive retaliation.

If these two countries do seek missiles and bombs, they do so not to enable military action, but to deter us and neighboring nuclear-armed countries (Pakistan, India, Israel), and of course they would hope that nukes would enhance their geopolitical stature. I would argue that, in both cases, direct talks, one on one, between us and them, in which we might seek mutual promises of non-aggression, would offer the best hope of resolving the current impasse.

Ayatollah Khamenei, while asserting Iran’s “undeniable right of using nuclear technology,” added, “We are willing to negotiate over controls, inspections and international guarantees.” This could mean that while Iran is determined to continue with uranium enrichment to provide fuel for its power reactor, their enrichment levels will not be raised to those needed for bomb-building. If so, Khamenei’s statement is an important basis for one-on-one discussions between us and them.

The importance of stopping the Korean missile program and Iranian enrichment cannot be overstated, not because either is a direct military threat, but because each of these programs would stimulate neighboring countries to follow suit. Nuclear arms races in Northeast Asia and in the Middle East would be a serious danger to world peace and stability. If direct talks between the United States and these two countries, leading to non-aggression pacts, and even possible mutual defense arrangements, can help avert regional arms races, I for one think it would be worthwhile.

While we’re on the subject of “talking,” we now know that Saddam was seeking to keep inspectors out of Iraq not to hide WMD’s, but to hide from other Arab leaders the fact that he had no WMD’s. What if the Bush team had talked to Saddam? Might they have learned this important fact – thereby averting a war costing more than a trillion dollars and the lives of 2500 of our soldiers and some 50,000 Iraqis? Similarly, the leaders of Iran and North Korea may be acting out of bluster and insecurity, and a desire to look stronger than they are.