Ned Resnikoff
The real reason we rushed into (another) war
The influence of the rich extends far beyond economic and fiscal policy
President Barack Obama answers a question on the ongoing situation in Libya during his joint news conference with President of El Salvador Mauricio Funes at the National Palace in San Salvador, El Salvador, Tuesday, March 22, 2011. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)(Credit: AP) Forget the State Department-approved euphemisms: We all know that America is now at war in yet another corner of the Arab world. Granted, our newest and shiniest military entanglement differs in its particulars from Iraq and Afghanistan, but it’s still jarring to watch American leadership leap once more unto the breach with such alacrity. Foreign policy commentator Steve Clemons, in a post titled “Obama Moved at Warp Speed on Libya,” put the breakneck pace of events in perspective: Coalition forces, he writes, moved to impose a no-fly zone as little as 31 days after the initial outbreak of violence. In Yugoslavia, it took over a year.
Taking 31 days to formulate a response isn’t exactly “dithering,” as some of Obama’s critics initially characterized his response. In fact, even supporters of intervention should be struck by how quickly we dove in to such an open-ended (though, for now, ostensibly limited) commitment. With our military already overextended and our economy still far from healed, how is it that we committed to such a large gamble with so little hesitation or public debate?
Maybe it’s because those in charge are gambling with other people’s money. In the past month, both Ezra Klein and Kevin Drum have written solid pieces noting that the policy preferences of the poor and middle class have ceased to matter at all to either major American party. But whereas Drum and Klein addressed only how the outsize political influence of the rich affects economic and fiscal policy, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz noted that it also distorts how we go to war. In a recent piece for Vanity Fair, he wrote:
Inequality massively distorts our foreign policy. The top 1 percent rarely serve in the military — the reality is that the “all-volunteer” army does not pay enough to attract their sons and daughters, and patriotism goes only so far. Plus, the wealthiest class feels no pinch from higher taxes when the nation goes to war: borrowed money will pay for all that. Foreign policy, by definition, is about the balancing of national interests and national resources. With the top 1 percent in charge, and paying no price, the notion of balance and restraint goes out the window. There is no limit to the adventures we can undertake; corporations and contractors stand only to gain.
In other words: The more powerful the rich have become, the more they’ve shifted the cost of war downward. And because the interests of the rich are effectively the only interests now being represented in government, politicians have no incentive to avoid policies that exert pressure on the middle and lower classes. For the people in charge, war has gotten cheaper than ever.
That makes the Obama administration’s promises of a “limited engagement” hard to swallow. The official policy of the United States in Libya is regime change, and the Obama administration faces no formal or material constraint on its ability to escalate the conflict. Even if they were to deploy a significant ground force to Libya, the reaction from Congress would be feeble at best — perhaps some symbolic outrage and an impotent, inconclusive Senate hearing.
That’s why the White House has scarcely bothered to consult with the legislative branch while pursuing military intervention. Congress has spent the past few decades gradually ceding its capacity to conduct meaningful oversight on matters of war. After all, if it doesn’t affect their constituency, why should it affect them? Better to have no say on the issue, so they won’t have a record their opponents can run against.
For these reasons, even supporters of intervention in Libya should be alarmed by the manner in which the United States now goes to war. Even if the rebels were to seize Tripoli with only modest American assistance, and even if they were to install a functioning liberal democracy in Gadhafi’s place, that would not change how America entered this conflict in the first place. Nor would it have any bearing on how we enter future conflicts.
Because no matter how the conflict in Libya ends, the rich will still be the only meaningful political constituency in this country. War costs them little. And until that changes, we can look forward to a continual state of war at the expense of everyone else.
A president whose actions scream for oversight
It's one area where the Democratic Congress utterly failed. But is there any hope a GOP House will do better?
U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at the U.S.-India Business Council and Entrepreneurship Summit in Mumbai, India, Saturday, Nov. 6, 2010. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)(Credit: AP) Congress won’t be passing much big legislation over the next couple of years. Various factions within either party might try, but most of these efforts will likely collapse either under the throat-clearing embarrassment of the party leadership or the larger institutional barriers created by a divided government. Much of the activity on the legislative branch, therefore, will focus on other Constitutionally-mandated duties — chief among them, oversight.
Now that the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is under the control of a party besides the president’s, it figures to come out of hibernation and get back to major, widely publicized interrogations of the executive branch’s activities. The big question is whether incoming committee chairman, Republican Darrell Issa of California, is more interested in muckraking or witch-hunting.
Continue Reading CloseSo, you think you know what a “person” is?
The definition may seem simple now, but new technologies are poised to make it a whole lot tougher
Last week, I defined a right as a certain advantage or form of protection that all persons are entitled to by virtue of their personhood. Of course, all that definition does for us is open up two ancient arguments: What do persons deserve? And what is a person?
The first question might seem a lot more difficult than the latter. Presumably, we should be able to use the Justice Stewart argument for defining personhood: You know it when you see it. Most of us encounter many persons every day, and nearly all of us are well practiced at distinguishing the persons in our lives — our family, for example — from other physical entities, such as chairs.
Continue Reading CloseThe non-existent moral case for tax cuts
In the debate over who should pay how much, we put far too much emphasis on the word "deserve"
Although conservatives generally make the case for specific tax cuts in economic terms, mainstream American conservatism very clearly has a strong moral commitment to keeping taxes as low as they can. You can see this in the Tea Party’s equating of progressive income taxes with “socialism” and “tyranny,” and you can see it in Fox News’ Stuart Varney’s on-air tantrum from earlier this week. Sure, the right will rend their garments over the Laffer curve and supply-side economics, but there’s a much simpler argument hiding behind the line graphs.
Continue Reading CloseQuran-burning saga boosts Palin-style Islamophobia
From Palin to Sean Hannity, the right's leading Muslim-baiters owe Terry Jones a giant thank you
Dove World Outreach Center church pastor Terry Jones announces the burning of the Korans will continue as planned during a news conference in Gainesville, Florida September 8, 2010. Jones, leader of a tiny, little-known Protestant church in Gainesville, Florida, which openly campaigns against what it calls "radical Islam," is facing a barrage of calls from U.S. government, military and religious leaders, and from abroad, to cancel his plans to publicly burn Islam's holy book. REUTERS/Scott Audette (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS RELIGION HEADSHOT IMAGES OF THE DAY)(Credit: © Scott Audette / Reuters) Pastor Terry Jones might not be an expert in theology, politics or basic human decency, but he more than compensates with media savvy. He can wring every last drop of press attention out of even a retreat, as he demonstrated last night when he announced the cancellation of Burn a Quran Day and then, not four hours later, issued a semi-retraction, claiming that he’d been misled (those sneaky Muslims!) and suggesting he might still burn some Qurans after all.
Continue Reading CloseThe ever-expanding tentacles of the Glenn Beck brand
He's constructing a world that allows his fans to avoid the pitfalls of introspection and critical thought
It’s been obvious for quite some time that Glenn Beck is not your typical conservative pundit. In the early days of Beckmania, style distinguished him from his Fox News colleagues more than content. He disseminated the same talking points as Hannity, O’Reilly and Cavuto, but he did it in the appealingly histrionic style of a true paranoiac. It was somewhat like listening to Alex Jones, talk radio’s greatest conspiracy monger, if someone convinced Jones to vote Republican, gave him a radio show, and then got him very drunk.
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