When it Comes to Iran: Question Authority

The press has spent endless streams of ink overt these past weeks dissecting the deteriorating relationship between Israel and the United States. The Obama Administration has become reflexive in response. Last week a conference call between the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, an Iran Hawk, was trumpeted a day before it took place, Phone calls between leaders of state are seldom reported on with such breathless anticipation.

There are a couple of aspects to this story, however, that get scant reporting.

Israeli Public Opinion

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported polling among Palestinians and the Israeli public showed that 80% believe a military confrontation with Iran could lead to a major regional conflict. 77% of Israelis drew that conclusion and 82% of Palestinians did. 65% of Israelis do not want the Israelis to strike unless the US joins in the action.

Netanyahu polls very well among the Israeli public. This would seem to indicate the Israelis don’t particularly mind him nudging the US so long as he doesn’t go off and do something crazy or impulsive as the Israeli’s did disastrously under conservative leadership in in 1982 and 2006 in Lebanon. As in America one sure way to drive your poll numbers is do saber rattle in the face of perceived threats. Bush and Rove did this brilliantly in 2004. A cynic might conclude that Netanyahu’s UN presentation of the “Willie Coyote” (as John Stewart called it) bomb was for Israeli consumption as much or more than for American audiences.  

Haaretz also reports that Netanyahu and Romney, both hawks on the Iran issue,  draw substantial campaign contributions form Shelley Adelson and his fellow travelers. “A Haaretz investigation found that 19 of Netanyahu's wealthiest American donors have also given to Romney, the Republican Party, and/or other Republican candidates.” According to Haaretz though Netanyahu’ s donation list for his recent party leadership shows 37 American donors, not one of them is Democratic”.

“Meir Dagan, Former Mossad Chief, Says Attack On Iran 'Stupidest Idea' He's Ever Heard”—60 Minutes

Well, you can’t really say that the views of the former Mossad chief haven’t been well publicized—they were on 60 Minutes—but with all all the recent hysteria about the Iranian crisis the interview should get more attention.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi6YDTC0Rb4

According to an article printed in the NY Times Speaking at Tel Aviv University in 2011 Dagan said that attacking Iran “would mean regional war, and in that case you would have given Iran the best possible reason to continue the nuclear program. The regional challenge that Israel would face would be impossible.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/04/world/middleeast/04mossad.html?_r=0

What Would War with Iran Look Like

Americans now calling for red lines and preparing for war have ridiculously short memories. We forget the promises of a smooth and easy transition in Iraq. America unleashed a chaos in Iraq, which some in retrospect called inevitable. 500,000 Iraqi civilians died from hunger, disease and civil conflict. Today we hear Republicans talking about the “chaotic” events in the Middle East. With every breath Romney advisor Dan Senor and other architects of the disastrous invasion and post war management or Iraq try to erase American memory of what happened after the statue was toppled in Bagdad. They suggest, without quite mentioning the rejected policies of the previous administration that the terrorist attack in Libya or the Egyptian Embassy confrontation some can be equated to the absolute destruction for which the US is directly responsible in Iraq. They are wrong, politically, and morally.  

The Right in Israel and the US calls for red lines, which may not lead to war, but certainly are designed to lock the US into military confrontation in the event the Iranians do not capitulate on a schedule and under circumstances of their choosing. Has America already forgotten the looting in Bagdad, Rumsfeld’s famous utterance that “Democracy is messy”, Moktada Al Sadr? Did we already forget Tikrit, Samara and other cities which became death traps for Americans supposedly bringing democracy to Iraq, long after the WMD turned out to be non-existent and the Bush administration had to scramble to rationalize the death and destruction they had visited on Iraq? What about Abu Ghraib, Americans charged with killing Iraqi civilians indiscriminately in Haditha, and American contractors being desecrated on a bridge in Fallujah? Does any of this ring a bell? The fog of war? Nothing?

Iran comprises an area four times the size of Iraq, and the population is about 2-1/2 times that of Iraq. The army, mostly poorly trained conscripts has about 350,000 personnel. There are also more than 125,000 Revolutionary Guards which are likely to be more committed to the fight. America “defeated” a much larger military force in Iraq, but as we saw in Bagdad, Fallujah, and Basra, and Sadr City, defeating an armed force is one thing, calming a hostile civilian population with endless amounts of weapons is quite another. Beyond that the inventory of Iranian missiles poses a substantial threat to Israel and has the potential to spill conflict across the map of the Middle East. Exact numbers are difficult to come by but Haaretz reports that Iran’s client, Hezbollah, had about 14,000 missiles when Israel attacked in 2006 and launched about 4,200.

Election years are not, typically a good time to calm fears of foreign enemies. Candidates, especially those on the downside of the polls, can be counted on to try to raise fears and play on voter anxiety. It is clear that the circumstances of the Iranian Nuclear program are complex and worrisome, but America would do well to seek toned down rhetoric or less brightly drawn lines, especially those designed to draw America into an unnecessary war.

I am not certain that the Obama Administration is on the right rack in Iranian policy, but I deeply suspect the motives of the Likud Israelis and Conservative Right Wing Republicans who advocate a different more militarist path. Their solutions are always easier until lives are at stake and the fog of war seeps through our TV screen. America has learned the lessons of over extending ourselves even in what almost everyone believed was a righteous cause in Afghanistan: Getting in and declaring “Victory” is easy, getting out? Not so much.

Nixon Reconsidered

In many ways Obama is to the right of Nixon, who created EPA AND OSHA, both of which became  targets for right wingers in the past 20 years. He signed the legislation which initiated the Earned Income Tax Credit, and made the opening to China. Politically he was a race-baiter and invented the Southern Strategy to politically separate southern whites from their economic interests. He tried repeatedly to appoint Federal and Supreme Court judges which were sympathetic to the white back lash against the civil rights movement. His policies on busing and particularly his rhetoric were inflammatory and egregious, but the percentage of children attending all black districts shrunk dramatically on his watch. Nixon implemented the first federal programs which considered race as a factor in hiring and placement, Affirmative Action, which later Republicans came to use as a cudgel against Democrats. Nixon extended the Food Stamp Program started in 1964, and after much delay protected the Legal Services Corporation which provides legal protection for the poor, from Republican efforts to eliminate it. In general his rhetoric was white hot, but his policies were cool, even progressive.

Of course Nixon was a mean, paranoid, little shit, politically and he is personally and directly responsible for a massive and disastrous expansion of the Vietnam War into Laos and Cambodia. As with the President that preceded him, fealty to Cold War ideology, and personal torment, made Nixon a tragic figure. What could might have been a historically positive Presidency is now remembered mostly for its various and scabrous sins.

But when one tallies what the perverse Nixon presidency created on the progressive side of the ledger and lines it up against President Obama it is, at least of today, NO Contest. This is not a knock on Obama. It is merely to point out the obvious: Republicans who claim Obama is a Socialist are just plain wrong, ill-informed maybe, willfully ignorant more likely.

What Republicans propose is a sprint like race back to a time before Nixon when blacks, knew their place, woman were more ladylike, and had no access to healthcare decisions regarding their own body, and upper crust white folk could count on the quiescence of the rabble. Conservatives long for a time of Ward and June Cleaver and their Beav’, where the problems of the world did not exist. Beaver came into our living rooms in 1957 and left in 1963. In that six year span, Elvis and The Beatles bore their way into a somnambulant American culture and the Rolling Stones released their first single. The Cuban Missile Crisis nearly brought the world to an end, four little girls were killed in a Church in Birmingham, Marines are sent to Lebanon, The Berlin Wall was built and breeched by John Kennedy’s airlift, and Betty Freidan’s book The Feminine Mystique was released. A gay man named Bayard Rustin took a seminal role in organizing the March on Washington.  

Republican policies and rhetoric expose nothing so much as their fear of the world we now occupy. This is not the most liberal presidency in our lifetime, as Hannity and the rest foolishly and endlessly claim. It isn’t liberal at all compared to Nixon, and with the possible exception of the Affordable Care Act isn’t particularly liberal even when compared to Clinton. Poor Conservatives, Leave it to Beaver turned out to be just a TV show. The endless march of history is in the direction of expanded civil rights for women, minorities, immigrants, the LGBT community. That all these communities have so much to do with who we are as Americans today, and in so many ways represent the richness of our culture and our workplaces is lost on those who now cower in fear to the change they have seen. The country is more dynamically diverse and engages a broader cross section of our population on all manner of societal endeavors than any time in our history. We have alog way to go, but we have come a long way thanks in part to the pragmatic and often progressive policies of Richard M Nixon.

Emergency Room Healthcare

I missed 60 minutes last night. In the last week or two I have started to avoid the  news. I can't watch anymore. Reading is enough, and in many ways that goes for Obama too. However, I see that that the Mittster thinks emergency room is medical care for the poor, a more ill-informed statement I cannot imagine. He cited the case of a person that had a heart attack and noted how an ambulance will pick up and take you to the hospital for care.

Plavix Oral is a medicine commonly prescribed for people with Heart conditions. A simple google search shows the cost of this medicine for about one month at about $75. Recently my son had to visit an emergency room for a few stitches. It was such a minor incident he did not even see a doctor. He was in an out in about an hour. The bill was $800. Assuming a heart attack victim could get in and out for $800, which is unlikely since he or she for sure needs to see a doctor, the mythical emergency room visit that Romney referred to would have-- if avoided-- paid for a year’s supply of Plavix. I do not think Romney is a stupid man, but the ideology to which he now tacks endlessly has made him stupid. It just can't be argued at this point that he is monstrously ill-informed on some subjects.

This statement is ideology masquerading as policy. Emergency  rooms, visited long after ill cared for symptoms have escalated to an emergency, are the MOST costly health care possible. Moreover, emergency rooms do not dispense preventive care for chronic patients so the likelihood of a repeat visit is high. This takes an inhumane toll on the patient, his family, and of course means repeat visits from which point the costs escalate.

Would Mr Romney also suggest the emergency room as the proper venue for cancer treatment or rehabilitation after a stroke?

Even a conservative should be trying to reduce emergency room visits. I expect the right to miss the moral issue of letting people suffer endlessly when cost is the only impediment to good health, but from a fiscal standpoint it is just stupid. How did he miss that? Team Obama can be slippery on what their plans are for second term, but Team Romney might be the dumbest that ever ran. This is certainly the most mean spirited campaign in my lifetime. The candidate himself may not be the mean little shit that Nixon was, but the principles on which he stands are the most heartless and dumb in recent memory.

Mitt Romney Gives Up

Everyone is piling on at this point, so maybe there isn’t much point in further parsing Romney’s words. He has shown throughout this campaign that he has little empathy or understanding for the lives of the middle class, let alone the poor, working or otherwise. He speaks of those hurting and unemployed but his patrician ways and frequently clumsy syntax make any real connection on his signature issue—fixing the economy for the middle class- seem hollow.

Whatever percentage of Americans that were cited by Romney to the money changers and CEO’s in the Palm Beach Temple of Self Satisfaction we can be certain that class and racial codes were dash-dot-dashed by the Republican Presidential candidate, and then received and deciphered by the largely white, largely male contributors at the dinner. Romney regularly travels in this world. This is not the first time he has belched the words victims and entitlement with contempt. These are more than knocks on the middle class. They are clarion calls to the Ayn Rand moneyed class, warnings that the rabble are after their money and their “liberty” and they need to fight back. Bless her little Social Security drawing heart, Atlas still shrugs. Jon Galt, the whining hero of the epic novel and political treatise would have loved Romney’s  backgrounder for the moneyed class.

 For all the tumult in the press it is the Us Against the Vile, Disgusting, Them posturing that is the most revolting. The media gets that he ate his shoe again, but seldom mentions that this is class warfare, the elites defining the have-nots or have-little as half the population and also the enemy. Those simply drawing from their well-earned government investment, whether Social Security & Medicare recipients or disabled vets are all part of the victim class with no stake in the country or responsibility for their role in society, their only desire, their only aspiration to suck at the government teet so loftily funded by the money changers and CEO’s in that room in Palm Beach.

The language is not new, not unique to Romney, nor exceptional in this political cycle. Limbaugh, Hannity and Mark Levin regularly describe what they see as culture of dependency and have often articulated similar views using remarkably similar language. To them Obama is growing government so he can buy votes with Federal dollars through the programs he advocates and has expanded.  The staggering number of people on Food Stamps has become exhibit A in their indictment. In the radio right’s world view the fact that 50 million people utilize food stamps to subsidize their purchase of food is not an indictment of a capitalist system which nearly derailed through limitless greed or willful lack of oversight.  No, no, no, for the $135 a month the average Food Stamp recipient receives in supplemental support to buy food Obama is buying millions of votes for the future. I find it ironic that in a year when a few dozen billionaires are trying to buy an election, the results of which will be returned to them many times over in tax breaks and deregulation of their businesses, that their media cohorts have decided to make these claims about government programs being an inducement for votes.  If $1,620 per year can buy a vote, then tell me how many votes can be bought with the $100 million being splashed around by  Adelson or the Koch brothers.

Ironically the biggest freeloaders in Romney’s cramped and bitter world are retirees, in the polls his strongest supporters. Almost half of the households Romney referred to as not paying Federal income tax are receiving Social Security or Medicare support, both programs financed by Payroll Tax deductions which almost everyone pays. Conservatives have been repeating the mantra that only half of all households pay Federal Income Tax for years, the suggestion being that half of all Americans don’t pay taxes and the rich subsidize the freeloaders.  Irony piled on irony Conservatives make the case that entitlements like Social Security and Medicare are turning us “into the next Greece”. Yet, when it comes to the collection side of the ledger these same Conservatives suggest that Payroll taxes which directly fund these two programs do not count as tax payments. I get so confused.

Seventy Five percent of the people on the Romney-dole have incomes below the poverty level, meaning that the overwhelming majority of those who Romney and the acolytes on the right see as refusing to take responsibility are the working, and here I emphasize the word working, poor.  Only about one in six of those households receiving government aide and not paying Federal income tax are actually unemployed but not retired. Romney seems to both blame these people for their lack of drive and the drag they maintain on the economy while he simultaneously blames the government for ruining the economy which would feed what he claims is all restless ambition waiting to be unleashed once Obama is run from office.  I know, I know. It gets confusing.

On the other side of the scale there are two groups who really ought to be scrutinized for their limited to non-existent contributions to the greater good. The Atlantic Monthly reports that in 2011 7,000 millionaires paid no taxes by virtue of the number of deductions they were able to claim or the amount of wealth they were able to hide in oh, I don’t know, the Cayman Islands! Citizens for Tax Justice reports that General Electric earned more than $10 billion in profits between 2008 and 2010. Yet they received tax credits in that period, paid no corporate income taxes, and actually got a tax refund. The same goes for Pacific Gas and Electric ($5 Billion), DuPont ($2 Billion), Verizon ($32 Billion) and dozens of other large corporations all avoided paying taxes on multi billions of profits. Many received tax credits against future earnings. I’m curious as to whether Romney believes these people and these companies ought to take more responsibility for their role in American society or whether he endorses their “Cayman Islands” strategy.

These companies claim that they pay plenty of taxes and that is true. Like the working poor they pay Payroll taxes (Social Security and Medicare) and also like the working poor they pay a variety of other taxes and fees, including sales, state and local taxes. It just seems that the language parsing goes one way but seldom the other. Poor corporations explain away their lack of a Federal tax bill by talking about all their other contributions.

Meanwhile conservatives make the argument that anyone not paying federal income tax is “dependent on government”. These are the ones Romney said “who believe that, that they are victims, who believe that government has the responsibility to care for them. Who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing…” For the working poor payroll, sales and local taxes are not mitigating factors in their engagement and commitment to the greater good.  The efforts made to educate their children in difficult circumstances, to get to and from work on public transportation weary with neglect, and even to vote in a hostile environment for both the poor and minorities do not indicate a sense of responsibility to the money changers in the Palm Beach Temple of Self Satisfaction.

Since the states with the highest ratio of non-payers are solidly Republican and Deep South: Mississippi, Alabama Georgia, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Florida, and Arkansas, with New Mexico and Idaho in the mix as well it would suggest that the inability to pay taxes is not a Democratic or Republican issue, but rather a matter of means and deeply ingrained, chronic, cross-generational P-O-V-E-R-T-Y. Neither party has proposed policies to correct that. How many generations will go by before poor whites and poor blacks across the South will hear another politician like Bobby Kennedy, who famously said, “I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil.”

Romney I guess would have us believe that the poor are lazy and not worthy of attention. Obama I guess would have us believe those statements are mean spirited. They are. But before Pro-Obama voters swell with pride that their candidate does not regularly stumble into making comments that even Bill Kristol called “stupid and arrogant” we might ask our own questions. What is our candidate’s plan to dramatically reduce the number of working people earning wages so far below sustenance levels that the Federal Government must provide a provide a safety net to maintain their lives and that of their families and children?  

The NY Times reports that “Lower-wage occupations, with median hourly wages of $7.69 to $13.83, accounted for 21 percent of job losses during the retraction. Since employment started expanding, they have accounted for 58 percent of all job growth.” Democrats and liberals regularly point to the fact that Obama has produced a lengthy string of private sector job increases, but jobs at or slightly above the minimum wage are not going to prime the economic pump, help kids pay off their student loans, or getting the housing market back on its feet.

On Saturday it was reported that Obama has now created more private sector jobs than Bush did during his full eight years in office. Were it not for the dramatic cuts in government workers at the Federal, State and local level unemployment would look quite a bit better. But the overall employment picture, not just the unemployed by the wages of those who are employed, makes you wonder whether Romney has thought about the structural challenges we face including the decimation of manufacturing jobs, the sinking performance of schools, and increased international competition. Obama's rhetoric sounds substantially better. But unlike Johnson who rassled a recalcitrant Congress into submission (granted, better economic times gave everyone more room to maneuver) even Obama’s most fervent supporters have no idea how he will govern in a way to bring his lofty ambitions something closer to reality. Blaming a hostile-- to the point of near psychosis-- Congress makes excellent politics, but it leaves behind a bitter residue from which to govern. There will be no moral victory if the next four years closely mirror the past three and a half.

But for all the lack of knowledge that Romney’s statements represented, and for all the real lack of concern the media firestorm belies, there is something darker in the Romney’s heart, something worse even than being a rich fuck defending his money. Romney has given up. His statement belies no aspiration for greatness, no desire to speak to and much, much, less convince some of those who do not agree with him. We and they are lost to him. On the Palestinian issue, a genuine cause of Western hatred in the Arab world, he talks of kicking the can down the road even before he even enters the voting booth, forget the Oval office. I guess that goes double for the working poor. Do we just kick them down the road as well?

I am a cynical person, perhaps more so with each passing year. I ask myself sometimes why I continue to pour so much energy into a political dialogue which is corrupted on both sides with repetition, group-think, and in my view a complete unwillingness to challenge old orthodoxies right and left.  I do not have an imagination large enough to consider how either party governs after this ruthless, idealess campaign. But something in me still aspires to a better day for Americans and for the citizens of the world. I still feel the battle is worth fighting even though some days it seems all for naught.

But consider this: An Obama 55 to 45% victory, a landslide in modern politics would be unlikely to give Obama any mandate for change, mostly because he like Romney has called for so little sacrifice and spoken so little truth. Entitlements must be reined in. Raising taxes on the millionaires and billionaires will not generate enough revenue to trim the Federal deficit to sustainable levels. Programs must be cut and taxes must go up even for some making below $250,000. Yes, all of this needs to take place. In the short term government needs to spend more, more than we are even spending now, but in the long term we need to spend less, perhaps a lot less.

But before all of that, Americans needs to aspire to greatness. Running for his second term Obama does not ask for greatness. That is deeply disappointing to me. Romney though, has the nerve to tell America that greatness is not in him, and worse it is no longer in us. He can’t even be bothered with lofty rhetoric. Say what you will about Representative Ryan, I do not believe even he is that cynical. Reagan was not that cynical. Nixon, constipated little criminal that he was, also engendered the most progressive domestic agenda of any Republican in the last century. Nixon was not that cynical. Romney is that cynical.  Romney may still become President and that can be called a victory for him, but as a leader, as President he is already defeated. How much worse can it get?