Rantle

by Eric Anschutz, October 24. 2007

Tom Reid, one-time Tokyo-based correspondent for the “Washington Post,” wrote a book some time ago about his years in Japan. Entitled “Confucius Lives Next Door,” the book is Reid’s loving look at a country that in his view has very little crime, low divorce rates, well-behaved kids, high levels of primary and secondary education, and courteous interaction among its citizens. In seeking to understand how all this tranquility comes about, Reid relates the experience of his two daughters as they entered, at ages 5 and 8, a Japanese elementary school. On their first day, a welcoming ceremony was held, at which the girls were introduced. Their new schoolmates sang a song, “Hello My Friends,” speeches were made, and certain of the Japanese kids were assigned responsibility for seeing to it that the two American newcomers, who at first could speak no Japanese, were properly oriented and made to feel comfortable.

Reid informs us that there are no janitors in Japanese public schools. Kids, even the very young ones, sweep, mop, and empty the trashcans. All students wear spiffy uniforms. Their pride in a gleaming school, and in themselves, and in their accomplishments, follows as a consequence. Every day, in every Japanese elementary school classroom, two youngsters are appointed to prepare the classroom for the teacher. All kids stand as the teacher enters the room.

Reid opines that the seriousness of purpose and of responsibility thereby engendered helps to explain the high level of achievement in Japanese lower education. America, he thinks, is too free. Our emphasis on individual rights, he asserts, rightly, I think, comes sometimes at the expense of the rights of the community. Though Reid glosses over some of Japan’s very real problems with the stresses brought about by academic striving, the high levels of personal responsibility and mutual respect that he describes so well can serve to remind us what we in America have lost in recent decades.

In an earlier time, up until about the 1970′s, older folks in America could expect to be called Mr. or Mrs., or sir or madam. Today, young people, even when wholly unknown to us, generally call us by our first names. I confess to being of two minds about this new informality. On the one hand, I see it as a retreat from civility and common courtesy. On the other, I welcome it as a sign of greater egalitarianism. There is little question that in earlier days we deferred far too much to our institutions, our leaders and our elders. The unbelievable stupidity of our counterproductive war in Vietnam, and the compounded errors of the “best and brightest” who led our country during the sixties, rightly dislodged government leaders from their ill-deserved pedestal. And we have allowed it to happen all over again with the war in Iraq. Thus, the long tradition of law-abiding and tradition-abiding behavior of citizens, that came in part from ingrained deference to leadership and institutions, has decidedly lessened, and in some cases ceased.

Distrust of our leaders, and disenchantment with their performance in office, has grown to new heights in recent years because of manifold failures in the Congress, the media and the Presidency. Our political leaders have failed to deal with America’s problems in energy, environment, infrastructure, health care and education, and have led us into needless, costly and arguably immoral wars. Certain clergy have been exposed in large numbers as pedophiles. Corporate leaders have raped their corporate treasuries, lied about earnings and manipulated share values to their personal advantage. Star athletes have been using steroids and other performance enhancing drugs. Entertainment media, by feeding us a steady diet of aggression and violence, serve to “dumb-down” those who watch it (and interact with it) and emulate it. Our news media make their own contribution to irresponsibility by failing to analyze boldly and thoughtfully public policy as it is being formulated.

December, 2004, some time after each of them had been removed from office for abject failure, and after the 9/11 Commission had condemned our policies in Iraq, President Bush had the temerity to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to three arrogant incompetents who were among the primary architects of those failed policies. In presenting the awards to former CIA Director George Tenet, former Iraq Administrator Paul Bremer and retired General Tommy Franks, Bush said he had chosen the trio because they “played pivotal roles in great events” and had “made our country more secure and advanced the cause of human liberty.” As someone recently said about our failed military leadership in Iraq, regular soldiers are punished severely for losing their rifles, while generals lose wars and get medals. Conservatives (rightly) demand responsibility from the underclass; why not demand the same from our leaders?

by Eric Anschutz, October 17, 2007

Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney smell blood! They daily denounce the universal health care proposals advanced by Democrats. Their prime target, of course, is Hillary, whose plan has been maligned by Romney as “European-style socialized medicine,” ignoring the fact that her plan resembles Romney’s as Governor of Massachusetts. Giuliani has demonized, as socialistic, both Hillary’s health care proposal, and Congressional legislation aimed at enlarging children’s health care.

Fiction: Republicans say we have the best health care system in the world. Fact: a few years ago, the World Health Organization rated ours 38th in the world. Another fiction: Canadians in droves use our health care system. Fact: a Harris poll showed US citizens liked theirs the least, Canadians liked theirs best.

The central question is whether government-operated health care can compete with private systems. We must understand that government health care insurance programs are not the same as government run health care. Though no one is proposing government run health care for all citizens, among our country’s proudest health care systems are those that provide medical care for veterans and active military personnel; they are owned, staffed and operated by the US government. Testament to the superior quality of these institutions is that our presidents and cabinet officers have for decades received all their medical care from the National Naval Medical center in Bethesda, Maryland.

Medicare is a hybrid program: while Medicare recipients go to private physicians and hospitals of their choice, the government is a “single payer” that sets reimbursement rates and pays for the care. When Medicare was written into law, in 1965, it was condemned by conservatives as socialized medicine. Historian Arthur Schlesinger tells us that in May of 1962, JFK commented thusly on an Eisenhower press conference: “The thing I liked best was the picture of Eisenhower attacking medical care for the old under social security as ‘socialized medicine”, and then getting into his government limousine and heading out to Walter Reed.” Today, 43 million senior-citizen recipients depend on it, and no politician would dare call it socialism.

The Democrats plans are not socialistic. None is single-payer (ala France and Canada and England). All three plans (Hillary, Obama and Edwards) are multi-payer plans (such as Germany has) and each makes it possible for those who like their current insurance coverage to opt to stay with what they have. Those with no coverage, and those wishing to change from their current coverage, can choose to subscribe to the plan currently available to all government employees (including Senators) which offers a menu of policies, including, among many others, Blue Cross and Kaiser, from which one can select. Hillary’s plan would offer that same set of options, but would add a Medicare-like option available to compete with private policies. That plan would lead to a universal single-payer system only if everyone were to choose that option, an unlikely outcome.

The proposals by Hillary and Edwards mandate that every citizen enroll in one plan (just as all drivers must have accident insurance) and that all employers participate (except those with very few employees). Obama offers a choice, not a mandate. For all three plans, those below the poverty line would receive government assistance to pay for their coverage.

I would hope that a single payer plan (proposed so far only by Dennis Kucinich) gets a closer look. Overhead consumes less than 4% of funds in the fee-for-service Medicare program, and less than 1% in Canada’s program. By contrast, private insurers take 13% of premium dollars for overhead and profit. In managed care plans, like US Healthcare, it’s about 30%.

Blue Cross in Massachusetts employs more people to administer coverage for about 2.5 million New Englanders than are employed in all of Canada to administer single payer coverage for 27 million Canadians. In Massachusetts, hospitals spend 25.5% of their revenues on administration. Canadian hospitals spend less than half as much because they don’t need to determine patient eligibility, obtain prior approval, attribute costs and charges to individual patients, and battle with insurers over care and payment.

US physicians face massive bureaucratic costs. The average office-based doctor employs 1.5 clerical and managerial staff, spends 44% of gross income on overhead, and devotes 134 hours of his/her own time annually to billing. Canadian physicians employ 0.7 administrative staff, spend 34% of their gross income for overhead, and trivial amounts of time on billing.

Some uniquely American form of Universal Health Care will almost certainly emerge during the next few years. That some 46 million Americans are without health care insurance, including 8.3 million children, is now unacceptable to most citizens. They realize that universal coverage would reduce administrative costs, improve preventive care, achieve earlier diagnosis, and provide improved care for the poor and uninsured. Most Americans now see that universal coverage will actually save money, increase productivity, and raise the quality of life for us all. It is an idea whose time has come.

by Eric Anschutz, October 10, 2007

I know that we live in a complex world, and that consistency and logic are not always readily achievable. But it seems to me that some of the glaring moral and logical inconsistencies of this hapless Bush administration are especially worthy of note.

Moral Inconsistency #1: In vetoing government support for embryonic stem cell research, President Bush reminded us that “all human life is sacred.” Right, we all agree with that, but Bush ignores the fact that many equally sacred lives could be saved by stem cell research

Moral Inconsistency #2: The President opposes the use of federal funds for stem cell research because some taxpayers are morally opposed. He forgets that many more of us pay taxes that support a war we morally oppose.

What strikes me as the epitome of nonsense is the claim that the use of human embryos “destroys life,” when in fact these embryos (two to three days old at the time they were cryogenically frozen, and tinier than the dot at the end of this sentence) are leftovers from attempts at in-vitro fertilization, and are destined for disposal as waste. What could possibly be unethical about using some of these tiny frozen embryos for medical research when they are otherwise headed for a garbage can? As I see it, employing a small fraction of these many leftover embryos in stem cell research would actually give honor to these embryonic “lives.” Scientists are certain that stem cell research is at the edge of major breakthroughs, and that the use of embryonic stem cells in laboratory experiments will soon lead to near term cures for diseases that afflict so many. The availability of federal funds to widen and accelerate research would be a boon to every field of medicine.

In-vitro fertilization involves surgically removing mature eggs from a woman, then joining the eggs with sperm in a laboratory. Because in-vitro success rate is low, women often undergo several implants before the procedure works; therefore, before their eggs are harvested, many women are given drugs that create multiple eggs, all of which are then fertilized. Some of the fertilized eggs (often two or more because of a high failure rate) are implanted in the woman’s uterus, where if all goes well, a healthy baby will develop. When in-vitro success is achieved, any left-over fertilized eggs remain in cryogenic storage. Over the years, the number of stored frozen embryos has become large; it is estimated that they number in the hundreds of thousands. Those not used for embryonic stem cell research are destined for destruction.

When used for stem cell research, embryos are separated into individual cells, thereby destroying them. The individual cell is then put into a dish and provided with nutrients and growth factors that will both encourage it to divide and create the differentiated cells. Scientists hope that the ability to create specific types of cells will enable researchers to understand a variety of diseases and eventually treat illnesses that entail lost or damaged cells, such as diabetes, some cancers, Alzheimer’s disease, and spinal cord injury.

The President’s veto did not ban embryonic stem cell research; it only made it illegal to use federal funds for that purpose, but that action has had a major negative impact on stem cell research around the country. England, South Korea and China, have continued to push ahead. And in the United States, individual states have begun to try to fill the void left by our national government. In 2004, California passed a referendum establishing a state agency that could provide $3 billion over the next 10 years for embryonic stem cell research. Other states, including New Jersey and New York and Connecticut also have moved to provide money for stem cell research.

I can understand a reluctance to employ embryonic life for experimental purposes, but there are times when common sense wins out over emotion and ideology. Here’s the logic: in laboratories across America, there are some hundreds of thousands of embryos left over from in-vitro fertilization. Those not used for research are destined for destruction. Those used for research would be serving an important purpose in the saving of lives; as I see it, the “life” of these infinitesimally tiny frozen embryos would be made meaningful by the rendering of this service to humanity. In my thinking, it is the “life” of those destined for destruction that would be wasted.

by Eric Anschutz, October 3, 2007

General Petraeus is by any standard a formidable man. West Point, four stars, a splendid uniform bedecked with battle ribbons and badges, author of the army’s manual on counter-insurgency, and holder of a PhD from Princeton. Petraeus seems to me to be an academic in military uniform (my kind of a guy!). But, as I watched much of his testimony before Congress, I saw not an academician willing to think about and debate ideas, but, instead, an uptight military bureaucrat: steadfast, unflinching, relentlessly on-message, almost robotic as he parried and deflected the onslaught of doubts and challenges and concerns presented to him by the Democratic (and some Republican) legislators, What I saw was an obviously fine and intelligent man who was unwilling to consider or even discuss the possibility that maybe, just maybe, the anti-war crowd (comprising now some 70% of Americans) might have a point.

The problem with the General’s two days before Congress was not the questions asked, nor was it the answers given. The problem was the irrelevancy of the whole charade. Petraeus is, after all, not the nation’s policy maker. He is charged with implementing the surge, fighting insurgents, and training Iraqi soldiers and police. When policy-level questions were asked, such as whether the surge made sense in the first place, whether this war was making America more secure, or whether Iran should be attacked for aiding the Shia militia, the General retreated into his limited role, refusing to engage in discussion of policy issues. Rightly so, I guess, but that refusal made his testimony stale and hardly worth bothering with. It should have been The Decider Himself, the Commander In Chief engaged in discussion with Congress. But this President just does not engage in dialog with those who question or challenge his policies. Nor, we now know, do his surrogates.

Ambassador Crocker, advertised as the best of our diplomats, seemed to me to be entirely the wrong man to represent us in Iraq. Soft-spoken, mild-mannered, shy, and deferential, the Ambassador seemed hardly the man to understand or operate confidently in the mosaic of Iraqi cultures and religions and tribal fiefdoms. Crocker is surely highly educated and sophisticated in the ways of the American genteel upper class; I would, however, never expect him to be able to deal with tough guys, even in our culture. There is no way this man can be expected to personally win over or cajole or otherwise influence such people as Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki or Shiite War Lord Muqtada al-Sadr or the religious leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Crocker’s testimony was hesitant and weak, reporting only that the Iraqi parliament was making little progress toward establishing a viable government, and that more time was needed. Even worse, he added fuel to the administration’s drumbeat of concern about Iran by stating that Iran is a “malign influence,” and that “the Iranian president has already announced that Iran will fill any vacuum in Iraq.” Is the administration moving us inexorably toward war with Iran? What a mess.

This nation is in anguish about the continuing slaughter in Iraq, both of our troops and of Iraqi civilians. And we are all worried that Bush and his militant administration will take us into yet another war, in Iran or Pakistan, or both. We need to stop all this carnage, and find a better way to deal with Islam-inspired terrorism.

The United States must move away from our militarily unwinnable “war”, where we stand alone and vulnerable against invisible yet deadly suicidal opponents, to an entirely open and honorable and winnable campaign of propaganda and diplomacy and economic interaction, in which we would be joined by a world hungry for peace. The fact that we have deposed a tyrant (the one good outcome of this otherwise misbegotten war) has been obscured by the daily violence and collateral damage that has engulfed all sides in the hopeless and confused mess that Iraq has become. If the random killings continue after our troops leave Iraq, it will become clear to Arab communities that it is the thugs and the crazies among them, not American soldiers, who are their enemies. It will then be up to peace-loving Moslems, surely in the majority, to take action against the Islamist criminals who hold the Middle East in turmoil. It is their job, not ours; they can do it, we cannot. Only our complete departure can bring about that result.

by Eric Anschutz, September 19, 2007

Our nation has become obsessed with fear. And, amazingly, the object of our fear is a religious zealot holed up for the last few years in a cave carved into the mountainsides of Pakistan. We need to pause and ask ourselves how this huge and amazing country has allowed itself to get caught up in fear of a group of crazies armed with box cutters and Uzi’s and roadside bombs.

America, we need to remember, is a mighty nation, with the world’s most powerful army, with bombers and missiles and submarines and battleships and aircraft carriers. We have a population of over 300 million, a 200+ year history as the most successful democracy of all time, an industrial and technological base that provides our country with a gross national product and a standard of living that attracts people to our shores. We are a diverse society, with people of all ethnic and political and religious colorations, living in peace and harmony with one another. We are big, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. We have a temperate climate and millions of acres of the world’s most arable farmland.

How can this vast and strong country allow itself to be swept up in fear of a gang of thugs. Al Qaeda, as I have written before, is not a country. No army, no air force, no navy, and, most importantly, no program, no doctrine, no post-conflict plan of action; offering only hatred for the USA and suicide missions against Islamic infidels. This group needs to be fought by police forces, using police methods, not by the blunderbuss methods of the mighty American army where we alienate ordinary people as we crash into their neighborhoods seeking suspected terrorists.

Talk radio and TV, almost entirely voices of the right wing, beat the drums of fear relentlessly. They remind us every day of 9/11 (though it had nothing to do with Iraq), and insist that our troops stay in Iraq until we win (though all credible analysts agree that there is no military solution to the mess we have created there). They demand that we bomb Iran before that country acquires nuclear weapons, and lately there is talk (first surfaced by Barak Obama, of all people) of sending our troops into Pakistan to “get bin Laden” if we collect “actionable intelligence” as to his location. Are we going entirely berserk? Do those who advocate wider military action really want to take on yet another set of enemies, when our entire military force is already hopelessly stuck in the quagmire of Iraq?

Military action against Iran and Pakistan, if we undertake it, cannot be surgical; there would be consequences, and almost certainly many of those consequences would be both negative and unexpected. One thing is certain: many will die, on both sides, and our moral stature will decline to new lows, both in the Middle East, and worldwide. Even if we do succeed in killing or capturing bin Laden, one of his deputies would immediately take over leadership of Al Qaeda. The threat of terrorism would not thereby be reduced; indeed, violence would increase because Al Qaeda members would seek to exact revenge. And even if we do destroy Iran’s uranium-enrichment facilities, that country will remain the strongest nation in the Middle East; they don’t need nukes for that. If, on the other hand, the proposed military strikes against Pakistan and Iran fail to produce any positive results (failure is entirely possible; our “actionable intelligence” has historically been more often wrong than right), America will be saddled with another foreign policy fiasco. More money will be wasted, more Americans (and countless others) will needlessly die, our standing in the world will further decline, and the tensions in our country will rise.

Fear and bombast and hatred in America have displaced hope and leadership and grace. We fear Al Qaeda. We fear Sunni insurgents. We fear Shia Militias. We fear Iran, and Syria, and Hamas and Hezbollah. We don’t really know these people, or anything much about them or their culture. We could make an effort to learn, but we won’t negotiate or even hold meaningful talks with them. We cannot even trust Iraqi police; those we train and arm often owe their primary allegiance to local militias or insurgent groups hostile to Americans. Our troops are prodded by a hopeless quest for victory into kicking down doors, terrifying women and children and old men as they seek to find and kill terrorists. The problem is, and always has been, that we cannot tell the terrorists from the people who might support us. We don’t know their language, their culture is a mystery to us, and we cannot distinguish friends from enemies. So in the process of looking for the bad guys, we often offend and alienate those who might wish us well.

Again: as I have written earlier, we must get out of Iraq and into America. We must replace unending unilateral and ineffective warfare with an international policing effort. We must assemble an international coalition to find a way to win the hearts and minds of Middle-Eastern populations. We have so far lost the PR war to bin Laden, a crazy criminal with no program that makes sense. We need to join with the many others in this peace-hungry world in a relentless campaign to show that we offer peace, security, economic support and secularism; and we need to offer that message in stark contrast to the bleak and harsh future offered by Al Qaeda. Will it work? I’m of course not sure. But I do think it offers more hope for a good outcome than the policies of decades-long war proposed by President Bush.