Daylight's Mark

2011-09-30T20:28:00.000-07:00

When do US citizens forfeit their rights?

The US government killed Anwar Al-Awlaki today. This was a premeditated liquidation – Al-Awlaki, a US born citizen turned leader of Al Qaeda of Arabian peninsula, was put on a list for targeted killing last year. I do not mourn for this man – he was a traitor and a terrorist and got what was coming to him. Some people and some ideas in this world, especially the radical Islamic fundamentalists, should be wiped out.

And yet. What was done today, while a significant tactical victory, sets a horrible and dangerous precedent. The US President just ordered and the US military executed an assassination of a US citizen in a foreign country with whom we are not at war. Granted, this man was a bad guy and an enemy of the state, and a threat to America. Yet this killing was not done during the course of a battle nor was any judicial process or congressional oversight involved in the targeting of this US citizen. Citizenship means something. The USA is distinguished from most other nations in how it treats its own citizens. In my humble opinion, how this killing was done is comparable to how Russia killed Alexander Litvinenko in London a few years ago – a targeted assassination of their own citizen who they considered an enemy of the state in a foreign country. It is a very dangerous concept that should not be legitimized.

The justifications given for this killing ring hollow. Some cite the case of Herbert Hans Haupt, a US citizen turned Nazi saboteur who was executed after infiltrating America in 1942. Yet Haupt received a military tribunal hearing prior to his sentence. Some state that a court considered al-Awlaki’s father’s challenge to the placement of his son on the hit list and that the court duly rejected the father’s plea as he had no standing and that the son was free to seek the protection of the court; would you return to a court of a nation whose President has put you on a hit list? This same court said that the government requires a warrant to tap Americans overseas, but extrajudicial killings of Americans are beyond judicial review; such a statement is patently absurd. Others state the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force gives the President authority to use all necessary force to destroy Al Qaeda and its affiliates, and that the Article II investiture of the Commander-in-Chief powers (including powers to suppress armed insurrection) in the Presidency is beyond question. Yet this a short road to carte blanche murder – do we want to invest one man with the power to designate US citizens at will as enemies of the state as part of the war on Al Qaeda?

With the one caveat that I am not privy to any knowledge of Al-Awlaki’s imminent threat capabilities, I would think that the right way of handling this case would have been to long ago try al-Awlaki in absentia for treason with appropriate counsel for his defense and strip him of his citizenship if conviction resulted. We certainly had the time; this guy was placed on the President's kill list over a year ago. Treason is something we don’t try anymore, and I don’t understand why.

This is qualitatively different than Guantanamo, waterboarding, or collateral damage. Constitutional rights do not extend to foreign citizens (lawful enemy combatants are entitled to Geneva protections, and unlawful enemy combatants aren't; they should receive basic human rights and, like pirates, fall under enemies of humanity rules). But US citizens do not forfeit their rights against the US government when they go abroad. They would forfeit in active combat with the US military, or upon conviction of a crime (and treason is certainly a crime). Law enforcement and the military have the right to self-defense. But the US government doesn't get to do what it wants to a US citizen and throw out the Bill of Rights when it's inconvenient. The President is not an elected king. US citizens at a minimum have the negative rights (what the government should not do to them) enumerated by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; they are not forfeited by being abroad. They are forfeited by treachery which is established by due process - the American Communists Julius & Ethel Rosenberg were executed after a trial, not by assassination.

The Obama administration has set all kinds of dangerous precedents this year – going to war with Libya without any congressional debate comes to mind. Then it was the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (which reports to the Attorney General) distributing guns to Mexican drug cartels. Now it’s assassination of a US citizen. This goes against the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Fifth Amendment. This is unbridled executive arrogance. This is wrong. Something wicked this way comes.

2011-04-25T15:05:00.001-07:00

Sight for the Sightless

I just got back from an intense week serving on a medical mission through the Sight for the Sightless Initiatve based at KK Eye Institute in Pune, India. This was a very different experience from any of my ORBIS missions or my Zambia mission in many respects. India is fascinating from a medical perspective in that it has first-rate physicians with some centers comparable to those of America but the population has masses of patients who have the health status of Africans. The country is in transition, with medical personnel & infrastructure highly capable yet simply overwhelmed by the sheer number of those in need, as well as hobbled by a lack of top notch equipment, instruments, and supplies.

For background, there are likely 20 million patients with at least one blind eye from cataract in India and about 8 million with corneal blindness. There are only 13,000 ophthalmologists in India, as opposed to 18,000 ophthalmologists in the US (which has only a quarter of the population). From a corneal perspective, donor tissue is much less available in India (unfortunately there is not as yet a well-developed culture of donation on passing away). So my objectives for the week were to do both service in terms of medical and surgical treatment of cornea and complex cataract conditions and skills transfer in advanced techniques and technology.

It was a physically grueling and emotionally exhausting week. With lectures, clinic, and surgery, we got done pretty much at 8 or 9pm each day (starting each day at 8am). Business dinners on future planning and needs followed, so I pretty much was going on 5 hrs of sleep each day. The most poignant moment was clinic on the first day during which we saw about 20 kids from the local blind school. For most of these children, I was a decade late and a dollar short. While I am a bit of a dinosaur in medicine (having finished medical school before the Internet and residency before cell phone), I was confronted by even more ancient demons this past week: children who had scarred corneas following measles infection when they were infants, children with wrecked eyes from Vitamin A deficiency. There are few things more heart-wrenching than telling child after child there is nothing we can do. There were 3 children who we thought we could help so we proceeded with transplantation later in the week.

Over the next several days, we performed (3 of these were children, the rest adults):
• An artificial cornea on a child who had lost one eye, and had a badly scarred cornea (barely able to see motion) in the remaining eye that was not a candidate for a standard transplant
• A combined cornea transplant with cataract extraction
• A partial thickness cornea transplant of the front of the cornea
• Two partial thickness transplants of the back of the cornea (one combined with cataract removal)
• A full thickness cornea transplant
• Several hard cataract cases and some amniotic membrane procedures

By comparison, I usually do 1-2 transplants a month in the US. These were all challenging cases given the complexity of the tissue damage on the eyes and the circumstances of available and (unavailable) equipment. But the best part (in addition to fixing the conditions and hopefully helping the patients) was teaching. I spent a lot of one on one time at the Institute with a very talented surgeon, Dr. Kapoor, and it was very rewarding to see her rapid progress over the course of the week mastering the techniques of chopping cataracts and picking up key elements of cornea transplantation. We also did some live surgery teaching the surgical maneuvers of some complex cataracts and the artificial cornea to a group of local ophthalmologists, and there were several excellent interactive small group sessions, surgeon-to-surgeon.

There were some funny moments during the trip. The hospital had arranged a press conference noting the complex cases being done that week and highlighting the need for corneal donation. During this, one of the reporters, whose first name was Nozia, came up to me and introduced herself as “Hi, my name is nausea.” It was all I could do to not burst out laughing and think of where else that joke could go. Then there were the episodes in the OR with the cotton buds with extra lint (which are a pain during eye surgery) which I nicknamed after the host and MC for live surgery, Ashiyana Nariani, who in turn promised to send me Q-tips for Christmas. Later on, I was trying to tell the patient to look down in broken Hindi, "Kali Baga Baba"; I apparently was not understandable and told Ashiyana my Hindi was worse than hers, and she told me I was actually speaking in Marathi (which I don't know either :( ). And then there was the ophthalmologist attending the live surgery and lecture workshop who requested to share his experience and promptly proceeded to regaling the audience with his life story, including the name of his childhood neighborhood street.

All in all, it was a fantastic trip. It was enabled by several groups and people to whom I owe great thanks and appreciation. The leadership of KK Eye Institute (Renu Wadhwa – CEO, who helped make things possible) and the international NGO Sight for the Sightless (founded by Dr. Ashiyana Nariani), the clinic and operative staff of the local hospital (especially Dr. Kapoor, Mr. Rohit, Ms. Madhu, Sister Pradhan, and Mr. Sachin), my mentor Dr. Claes Dohlman (the inventor of the artificial cornea who donated one for this trip), Sameera Farazdaghi of Tissue Bank International and Kelby Koop of Utah Lions Eye Bank, and my home team from Utah who organized things on this end: Jackie Simonis, Chandler Crane, and Tina Szarek.

I hope my fellow ophthalmologists and those interested in vision care will join the fight against needless blindness by contributing their time to service and teaching and making a difference where both short and long-term impact can be made. I also hope that developing societies as they develop focus resources on preventing needless blindness through awareness, encouraging eye donation, fighting diseases like the measles and malnutrition. Saving and restoring vision is probably one of the most important and cost effective things we in health care and societies as a whole can do. Especially for children, who are all too often neglected in the developing world.

2011-03-29T20:15:00.000-07:00

Below is the text of my remarks to the 2011 medical school inductees of the University of Utah Alpha Omega Alpha medical honor society delivered March 29 at Alumni Hall:

Thank you very much for a warm introduction and thank you to the students of AOA for the invitation to speak. It is my deep honor to spend this evening with you too, and to share my thoughts with the AOA Inductees of the University of Utah for 2011.

First, my hearty congratulations. After 20+ years of grueling study and work and school, college and med school, long hours in the hospital, and countless tests and trials, you are now recognized as the cream of your class, and more importantly, you are almost ready to start paying off your student loans!

But seriously, as you commence a new phase, it would be very nice to have a crystal ball. I don’t have one, but let me to take some time with you to do 3 things: caution you, counsel you, and challenge you.

Caution

Here are 4 notes of caution I’d like to strike. First, you are entering your profession in a time of treacherous shoals for medicine and for America. Fundamental insolvency of Social Security, Medicare, many states, and the federal government are real risks that are going to affect each of us in countless ways. All will lead to cost-cutting strategies premised on increased compliance enforcement, electronic medical records, and expanding scope of practice of non-physicians, each of which are daggers aimed at the heart of current clinical practice.

Second, the exponential growth of knowledge, medicines, technology, and media will strain your memory banks, stretch your attention, and overload your bandwidth. The ability to read, write, think, and ponder coherently and patiently is becoming increasingly rare and will be more prized as idea and vision become elusive with the fragmentation of thought and consideration.

Third, be conscious of the demons of desire and despair, and master them so they not disturb your peace yet still employ them to effect positive change.

Fourth, avoid the twin seductive sirens of greed and self-righteousness; humility is the best antidote to both.

Counsel

Next, let me share some words of counsel. Although I am not much older than you – at 33, I may be younger than some of you, yet in medicine I am a dinosaur! I went to med school before there was Internet and finished 2 residencies before cell phones. So while my knowledge is probably obsolete, I hope my experience and battle scars may be of some use to you as you hone your own judgment; good judgment is an asset that will keep you out of trouble, help you take necessary and good risks, and evaluate opportunity vs. hazard. Contrary to what you may have heard, it is vital to NOT be non-judgmental. The hard part of judgment is, as Mark Twain said, “Good judgment comes from experience; experience, well, that comes from bad judgment.”

Of all the skills and qualities you have and will need to foster, focus on cultivating three in particular: good listening, equanimity, and nimbleness.

Good listening is the foundation for almost every facet of your professional career: building bonds with your patients, learning from your colleagues and mentors, being there for your staff and residents, and so much more. Any search for truth must begin with the words “I don’t know” and a willingness to listen and learn from others. When you don’t listen, you wind up in a bubble which leads to stupid decisions. You fail to appreciate the other person, where they’re coming from, and the importance of their perspective and thoughts; you lose the ability to put yourself in their shoes. You deny yourself a lot of important insight, and screw things up more. Being a good listener is something one has to work at, consciously. And it’s the basis of what patients are looking for. Doctors care about diagnosis; you need to be a good listener for that. Patients care about prognosis – and you need to understand the patient’s needs, perspectives, and values to truly be their guide and champion in their time of duress, which is what they really value you for and what they think makes you a good doctor or not, more than your competence, knowledge, or skill (all of those are assumed).

Equanimity is what Sir William Osler deemed the first among virtues for the physician: no matter the situation, mental calmness affords clarity and steadfastness. The Bible, in Ecclesiastes, states, “The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor favor to men of skill; but time and chance overtaketh them all.” One of the Geeta’s core precepts is encapsulated in this verse from Lord Krishna to Arjuna in a moment of doubt and despair, “You must perform the right action, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action. Let no desire of the fruits be your motive, and yet be not attached to inaction.” I first read this 11 years ago when I was a senior resident, and wrestled with the concept for a long time. It finally dawned that what it means is that in a crisis, you must focus on doing your best to do what is right, but be detached from the outcome. It helped me be a better surgeon by helping me concentrate in the moment during a case.

There’s a great book I urge you all to read, “How Doctors Think” by Dr. Jerome Groopman. It guides doctors and patients on a journey of what kinds of errors doctors can make and why and how to avoid and mitigate them; his discussions on different types of “cognitive traps” are illuminating. As a surgeon, I realized long ago how important it is to minimize mistakes and how it is even more important how you to react to mistakes. Panic and despair make you lose your mental equilibrium and you make further decisions which stack up and aggregate and make the situation worse. Sometimes no matter what you do, the outcome will not be good or what you want but you do the best you can anyway. As Dr. Groopman emphasizes in his book, lowering your emotional temperature in a tough situation is key to slowing down your thought, enhancing your perception and analysis, and thus permitting clarity to dispel clouded thinking. Pressing for a solution when none is apparent can be the worst course of action. “Picking up a scalpel and cutting can be just the wrong thing” when you don’t see the whole picture. The good surgeon is not defined by technical dexterity or superior hand-eye coordination, but by sound decision-making and judgment that enable clarity and effectiveness in the operating room. Understanding issues and realizing what intervention can and can’t remedy takes a while to learn in a surgical career. Groopman, an oncologist, relates one of his mentor’s quips, “Don’t just do something, stand there” as he counsels against the impulse to jump in and do things. It’s awfully hard to do that as a surgeon. We by nature are gamblers, risk-takers who have to have confidence (perhaps arrogance) in what we do. Especially because inaction is also a decision, and can sometimes be harder to correct than a wrong decision. It all depends on context.

Equanimity is also about righting yourself in hard times. If the present is dim & bitter, and the future seems cold & barren, it is tempting to forfeit hope and forget that your life is an integral thread in the universe’s tapestry. Remember: it could always be worse, and if it can’t, then it can only get better! Be grateful for your blessings – health, home, friends, faith. Cultivate equanimity with literature – Frost, Kipling, Max Ehrmann, and Osler. Foster also your hobbies – hiking, photography, meditation, or yoga. And while others can take away so much from you – your money, job, reputation, even people you love – be thankful for the things which can’t be taken away: personal honor, what you’ve learned, and the satisfaction of service.

Nimbleness encapsulates several qualities – resilience, courage, flexibility, versatility. Pandora released the world’s evils from her notorious box but the last thing that came out was hope. While sometimes memory and even hope can feel like a prison, in truth they are the roots of change. George Bernard Shaw said, “The reasonable man tries to adapt to the world; the unreasonable man tries to make the world adapt to him. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” Success does lie in effort as much as in result. The need for struggle is not grounds for avoidance. As Bruce Wayne’s father said in Batman Begins, “Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.”

What gives you the strength to do these things is both courage and possessing different skill sets. It is very easy to fall into a rut and never learn anything after residency or fellowship. But medical training does not end when practice starts; indeed, practice is just another phase of training. I urge you to consider developing interests and knowledge in other areas – whether it be business, engineering, genetics, or whatever. The best innovations happen at interfaces. Further, if you are good at just one thing, you are very vulnerable. Always ask yourself – what jobs need to be done in America by Americans? If you become so focused as to know just one thing, could your job be automated, outsourced, or insourced? By being versatile, you can differentiate yourself and lay a foundation for being independent of government or insurance. And you make your mind more open to learning new things in the future the more you experience and learn along the way. Nimbleness – it confers joy, recoverability, the ability to think broadly from other perspectives, the ability to persist and roll with the punches while holding fast to your principles, and the ability to take doubt and use it to find and know faith.

When in doubt here are 4 principles that help cover most things:
• Promises are made to be kept
• Rules are made to be bent
• Records are made to be broken
• Schedules are made to be changed

With your finances, exercise caution and think of any financial mistake you make as tuition. Think ahead – fail to plan, and you plan to fail. When you must make a choice that is hard, ask yourself 3 questions: Is it good for the patient? Is it good for the profession? And if the answer to both is yes and only then, ask, is it good for me? Last bit of advice –till now, your time has been judged worthless by others. From now on, the value of your time will grow – so guard it jealously from fools and irritants yet be generous with it to your family, your trainees, and community.

Challenges

So I have sounded caution and offered counsel. Let me now throw down some challenges to you. First challenge is to get involved. For too long, physicians have been objects in health care battles. Learn about the issues and see if you can effect change. Perhaps some of these may capture your interest: tort reform, tax deduction for charity care (why can hospitals and sometimes lawyers write off charity work but not physicians), whether accountable care organizations will be anything other than capitation redux with its substituting of payments for services with incentives to do nothing, the Independent Payment Advisory Board impacting physicians in 2014 but exempting hospitals until 2020, forming a guild fund for medical education, encroachment on physician autonomy by hospitals (for example, physicians cannot own hospitals but no one says anything about hospitals owning physicians), and physician extenders (optometrists doing eye surgery, CRNAs replacing anesthesiologists). After all, neither hospitals nor ancillary staff take the Hippocratic Oath.

More importantly, to this point in time and for the next several training years, your path is clear. Landmarks of applications, tests, certifications, and so on are well defined. But once you are done, the road becomes hazy. You have to figure out what you want your own milestones to be. Will your primary goal be the personal maximization of wealth? There is nothing wrong with that, I encourage all of you to be capitalists, and you have a right to make money. But take a moment to consider – what is medicine to you? A job, a career, or a calling? If it’s a job, then you will make a living, and over time, coast with the least amount of effort to make the most amount of money. If that’s what you want, fine, but I hope all of your professors have not spent all this time training body mechanics. If it’s a career, you will set down several goals – papers, rank, awards, practice-building, etc. and hopefully achieve them. But hopefully, medicine is more than just a job or a career to you – I hope it will be your calling, an integral part of how you fulfill yourself as a person. And that is about things that aren’t dollars made or goals achieved, although money and achievement are important to secure. The original meanings of the word doctor are:
- One who makes things better and
- One who teaches

How will you make things better, make a difference? I think it’s about service – doing things beyond the remit of obligation or purview of compensation, things that you are not easily replaced for by someone else. Things like research, teaching, public health, overseas work, public policy. One of the most fulfilling things I do is to work with ORBIS.
Just wanted to show a video... : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RgOow2LUUY

To conclude, I’d like to share a quote, also from Mark Twain, “There are 3 types of people in the world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who don’t know what happened.” To be truly worthy to serve the suffering, let’s all try to be of the first kind. Thank you very much.

2011-03-15T07:57:00.000-07:00

Reflections

Those of you who are close to me know I have been going through some rough times recently; those of you who aren’t may have inferred that from the previous post. While I will not discuss details or circumstances here, I choose to write this post in the hope that it may help someone somewhere in a tough spot as well as perhaps help me be a better person as well.

Besides events that have happened, the other thing that prompted me to write this was reading “How Doctors Think” by Dr. Jerome Groopman, which made me reflect on how I think and do things. While the book guides doctors and patients on a journey of what kinds of errors doctors can make and why and how to avoid and mitigate them, his discussions on different types of “cognitive traps” are illuminating in a personal sense as well. Recently, I attended a “Night for Sight” event where Neil Beidelman, a guide mountaineer, related the events of “Into Thin Air”: in 1996, 8 climbers on Mount Everest died during a storm. When he talked about how a cascade of decisions, decisions that were a bit off but taken in unbelievably challenging moments, “stacked up in the aggregate” and led to the tragic outcome, that really hit home.

As a surgeon, I realized long ago how important it is to minimize mistakes and how it is even more important how you to react to mistakes. Panic and despair make you lose your mental equilibrium and you make further decisions which “stack up” and make the situation worse. And sometimes no matter what you do, the outcome will not be good or what you want but you do the best you can anyway. I teach these lessons and focus on them in training my residents and students, but probably should have, somewhere along the way, tried to absorb these lessons in my heart as well. As Dr. Groopman emphasizes in his book, lowering your emotional temperature in a tough situation is key to slowing down your thought, enhancing your perception and analysis, and thus permitting clarity to dispel clouded thinking. It’s just really hard to do when it comes to your own life.

Pressing for a solution when none is apparent can be the exact wrong thing to do. “Picking up a scalpel and cutting can be just the wrong thing” when you don’t see the whole picture. The good surgeon is not defined by technical dexterity or superior hand-eye coordination, but by sound decision-making and judgment that enable clarity and effectiveness in the operating room. Understanding issues and realizing what intervention can and can’t remedy takes a while to learn in a surgical career; I guess it takes even longer to learn that in life. Groopman, an oncologist, relates one of his mentor’s quips, “Don’t just do something, stand there” as he counsels against the impulse to jump in and do things. It’s awfully hard to do that as a surgeon, who by nature are gamblers, risk-takers who have to have confidence (perhaps arrogance) in what they do.

Which ties into one of the most essential qualities to being a doctor, indeed a good person: that of being a good listener. When I fall into panic and despair, I’ve realized I sometimes lose the ability to listen. And when you don’t listen, you make even more stupid decisions. You fail to appreciate the other person, where they’re coming from, and the importance of their perspective and thoughts; you lose the ability to put yourself in their shoes. You deny yourself a lot of important insight, and screw things up more. Being a good listener is something one has to work at, consciously, and something I can get better at.

I wonder a lot about “what ifs” and “if onlys”. It is, I suppose, the natural thing to do after bad things happen. But there is no rewind button on the VCR of life, no matter how ashamed I am of all my mistakes or tears I have caused. Theodore Roosevelt provides a little solace:
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
Falling short and the gnawing sense of not being good enough are awful things, but it is better to have loved and lost, to have tried and failed, than to have never loved, never tried at all. Or is it? That doubt can be banished only by the knowledge of all the good that I experienced, which outweighs whatever pain I am now left with.

The ancients provide some guidance. The Bible, in Ecclesiastes, states, “The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor favor to men of skill; but time and chance overtake them all.” One of the Geeta’s core precepts is encapsulated in this verse from Lord Krishna to Arjuna in a moment of doubt and despair, “You must perform the right action, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action. Let no desire of the fruits be your motive, and yet be not attached to inaction.” I first read this 11 years ago when I was a senior resident, and wrestled with the concept for a long time. It finally dawned that what it means is that in a crisis, you must focus on doing your best to do what is right, but be detached from the outcome. It helped me be a better surgeon by helping me concentrate in the moment during a case. How much harder it is to accept on a personal level…

When you feel useless, the present is dim & bitter, and the future seems cold & barren, it is tempting to forfeit hope. Yet one (I) must remain grateful for life’s blessings – health, a life in the US as opposed to suffering in the Middle East or Africa, a good career where I can still make a difference, wonderful friends who are good listeners and care. And while others or the world can take away so much from you – your money, job, reputation, even people you love – be thankful for what can’t be taken away: personal honor, what you’ve learned, and service.

Pandora released the world’s evils from her notorious box but the last thing that came out was hope. While sometimes memory and even hope can feel like a prison, in truth they are the roots of change. Why you may ask? As for memory, Mark Twain said, “Good judgment comes from experience; experience, well, that comes from bad judgment.”

And, as for hope, George Bernard Shaw said, “The reasonable man tries to adapt to the world; the unreasonable man tries to make the world adapt to him. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” Perhaps success does lie in effort as much as in result. And the need for struggle is not grounds for avoidance.

As Bruce Wayne’s father said in Batman Begins, “Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.” All I can do now is take a long look in the mirror, make some changes to try to be the best person I can be, and hope for the best. I’ll try to start as I head off tomorrow from Salt Lake to Australia.

2011-02-09T21:47:00.000-08:00

Selections from the Rubaiyat
Omar Khayyam was one of the finest poets of any age. I used to console myself with the thought that things could always be worse, and if they couldn't, then they could only get better. I used to believe with that to all things there is a reason and a season. But perhaps those were just illusions, and maybe Khayyam was right about everything. It sure feels that way sometimes. Here are what I think are the most resonant stanzas from his Rubaiyat:

Heaven’s wheel gained nothing from my coming
Nor did my going augment its dignity
Nor did my ears hear from anyone
Why I had to come and why I went

If my coming here were my will, I would not have come,
Also, if my departure were my will, how should I go?
Nothing could be better in this ruined lodging,
Than not to have come, not to be, not to go

Since all a man gets in this place of two doors
Is only a heart of sorrow and the giving up of life,
He who never lived a moment is happy
That man is at peace whose mother never bore him

As the stars have no increase but sorrow,
They restore nothing without taking away again;
If the unborn could know what we
Suffer from the universe, they would not come at all

Since all that is leaves us empty-handed
The only return from all that is, loss and ruin,
See what I’ve got from the world, nothing;
The fruit of my life’s work? Nothing:
I am the light of the party, but when I sit down, I am nothing

Suffering ennobles a man,
Enduring the oyster-shell’s prison makes a pearl of a water-drop
How long will you live, or run after Being or Non-Being?
A life so dogged by sorrow
Is best spent in sleep or drunkenness

My back is bent by time
All my affairs go awry
In this hole and corner of transience long you will seek
This borrowed moment, and never find it

Nobody has mastered the wheel of the universe
Life is never glutted feeding on men
You boast it has not eaten you
Don’t speak too soon, it’s early yet, it will

The skies’ vault brings flower out of the earth
Only to crush them and consign them to earth again;
If the clouds took up dust as they do water,
They would rain till Doomsday the blood of those who loved

I am not free one single day from bondage to the world
Get not one breath of joy from all my existence;
I have served a long apprenticeship to Time
Since in this halting-place there is no justice
And there will be nothing but empty air in the hand, I’m off!

Since a man’s gain in this salt marsh
Is nothing but misery till life’s uprooting
He who leaves this world soon is happy of heart
And he who never entered it at peace

Were I to find fruit on the branch of hope
I’d find the end of my life’s thread there
How much longer must I be in existence’s narrow straits?
If only I could find the door to oblivion.

I never would have come, had I been asked,
I would as life go, if I were asked,
And, to be short, I would annihilate
All coming, being, going, were I asked!

2010-08-30T18:40:00.000-07:00

Zambia: Monks among the Mosquitoes & Rumble in the Jungle

It’s been a long while since I have posted; my apologies. After graduating from MBA school in May, it’s been a hectic summer. Last week, I went to Macha, Zambia for a humanitarian medical mission doing eye care and surgery. By way of background, about 45 millon people are blind in both eyes around the world (25 million from cataracts which is typically a straightforward surgery in the West and eminently treatable). I will share our experiences & impressions in a “log” form and then write a bit about what I thought about what we accomplished and some of the medical ethical questions that tug at your conscience.

Day 0 (land in Livingston, Zambia). My contact comes about half an hour after I reach arrivals. I had half a mind to get back on the plane and go home, but did not. We saw Victoria falls – it is duly spectacular. Lots of mist. At the nearby trail, baboon attacks 2 of our group 4 pushing 1 close to the edge (the one who’s afraid of heights). Later, a different baboon steals our bread by doing a Houdini over my shoulder , jumping into the back of our car, and then scurries away after taking the loaf of bread, evading 3 of us (Lloyd, the organizer, David the dentist, and me). After Victoria Falls, we went to mosi-o-tunya park; saw impala, giraffes, zebras, elephants, rhinoceros, darter. Mosi-O-tunya is the Chitonga name for Victoria falls, literally meaning storms & thunder. It was a self-driven ride, so it was tons of fun. The guards did escort us to the rhinoceros, who enjoyed a nice wallow in the mud.

Day 1: 80 patients. LOOONG Day. Crazy stuff – never have I seen so much trachoma (chronic scarring by an infectious parasite) and so many stick to the eye injuries. On the stranger side we saw an Intracorneal beetle shell fragment. Multiple previous ruptured globes which have healed on their own with traumatic cataract or iris incarceration. One patient was wearing an arctic coat and a scarf (ok it was Zambian winter but it was 75 degrees!). 35 cataracts. 5-6 foreign bodies. 30 or so trachomas (including one with Herbert pits). Took a tour of the dungeon ORs to get ready for the rest of the week. A few people just needed refraction. One hard cataract with really bad phacodonesis. Needed lots of doxy and erythromycin. Never ending sea of patients. Had 6 patients at 6pm. Saw 4 of then. Checked waiting room at 630, still had 6 patients! We scheduled a white cataract removal on a patient with full ptosis. Handwashing required going to room 2 doors down.

Day 2: Cows kept us up with clanging their bells overnight. 1st case; got vitreous loss. Whole day was hard. Last case (done by a visiting doctor who I was teaching some cataract maneuvers too) – we couldn’t put the lens in after taking the cataract out, and unfortunately, this was a functionally monocular pt . Really tough day. Is substandard medicine really better than no medicine at all? My nice instrument tray and instruments got mixed in and banged up with the rest. Cataracts are big and hard. 2nd microscope came but we had to sit on a microscope facing straight down. Everyone’s neck and back is sore. Some of the nurses are ok but most are just really inexperienced. The crew brought dinner back from restaurant but we had sheema from the nurses.

Day 3: No water this morning. Managed to wash face, brush teeth, and wash hands with 1 cup of water. Cases went better today. The lady who we left aphakic – I paid $60 and we gave a MA60 lens (I think) to get her travel covered to Zimba where they supposedly have a vitrector; will the patient really use the 250,000 kwacha to go to Zimba or for something else (she seemed a bit too happy at getting the money). Improvised a near-clear 6 mm wound (under peritomy) closed by a buried horizontal mattress suture. Worked pretty well I think for SICS. Flipped a huge lens out of the bag through a small pupil. The visiting doctor slowly got the hang of the capsulorhexis but one of them ran way out on both sides (flag sign). She recovered well. Cases coming into OR who we had never seen (can the scheduler do that? They can do anything).

Most notable case – this gentleman came in with a history of stick to the eye 10 days prior. He had a ruptured globe (iris prolapsed through corneal 5-6 mm cornea laceration). Try stuffing an iris back in with no general anesthesia, the patient moving, no assistant, bad scope, bad viscoelastic, and trying to close cornea too at the same time. Held iris back with iris spatula on my left hand and did no touch suture technique with my right hand on the corneal wound over the spatula. Nuts! Saw a girl with keratinized corneas (I mean, skin over her eyes – terrible). Got internet for a few precious minutes in the evening but Andrew hogged the bandwidth. Shirley (the med student from Holland) made a nice dinner for everyone. Andrew regaled us with stories of cabbages from the book Primary Surgery. Apparently I need to see the gods must be crazy.

Day 4: cows kept us up again. Power went down in clinic once. Lloyd apparently chased them away with dirtbombs. Today was minor OR day. Thought it would be easy. Postops were fine from day before. We cleaned up the clinic room. Lloyd did 2 bilateral lid eversions and a trauma repair of superonasal periorbita from stick to the eye (once again – that stick to the eye) (really tough as the poor kid was getting hit from wearing a winter coat and we had a surgical drape and just local anesthesia; no sedation). I did a double pterygium relocation (no AMT, no MMC, and better to leave superior conjunctiva for future cataract or glaucoma surgery). Then we had a couple of surface –omas to remove. 1st one was a squamous cell on an HIV patient. Without 5-FU, MMC, and poor systemic prognosis, I thought it would be best to close (no invasion seen after I took it off). Thought it would be easy. Once the tumor was off, microscope light 1 went down, then light 2 went down. Try closing conjunctiva with 10-0 or 9-0 nylon (the 8-0 was useless, and the 6-0 had a massive needle). Insanity! Only the 2nd time in my life I have cursed in the operating room (Lloyd was amused that I did that at a mission hospital). Lloyd and one of the helpers alternately helped with a direct and an indirect for some extra light. Managed to get it done and lloyd got the microscope back on eventually (after I had controlled the bleeding and got some stitches in). Last case was a melanocytic mass which we got off and closed within 20 minutes. Had dinner at the director’s house (a very interesting gentleman who has spent 22 years at Macha and is a native of Pennsylvania). His wife is very sad about leaving Macha. Learned a lot about NGOs, foreign aid, health care personnel market, medicine in Zambia. Shirley and Abby (the visiting nurse) made banana bread and chocolate cupcakes with icing and sprinkles!

Day 5: slept thru alarm. Woke up late. Took care of final things in Macha. Then Drive to Lusaka. Had a crappy half-donut in Zambia. Almost got arrested for taking picture of police car with cops riding in the back of the pickup truck. Found university hospital. Not bad actually. Got a nice tour of the place. In reasonable shape. Could definitely be a teaching facility.

Thoughts/Conclusions:

My main ethical dilemma I faced is: is substandard medicine worse than no medicine? I don’t want to think about all the violations of sterile technique I encountered and was party to (flies settling down onto the instrument tray just as an example). We had a couple of complications which probably would not have occurred had we had the regular equipment and instruments – one of which was in a monocular patient. The first part of the Hippocratic Oath is to do no harm. Clearly we did some harm. Did we do more good than harm? I think we did. We were able to do 26 cases out of 40 or so cases we had hoped to complete. I think we helped the vast majority of those people, along with the 80 or 90 patients we saw in clinic who we treated for infections, foreign bodies, and so on. But of course I don’t know the postoperative outcome.

I console myself with the fact there is no ophthalmologist for about 200000 people in this catchment area of Macha (in the US there is usually one ophthalmologist for 16000 people) . A famous ophthalmologist once said 50% success is better than 100% blindness. Is that truly consolation to the fact that I know I did not the best that I could in normal conditions and that some people may have been better off by not having met me?

Why would people go to a place like Macha? Mosquitoes, intermittent water, intermittent power, bad internet or phone service, grossly inadequate equipment/instruments/infrastructure/pharmacy, inexperienced staff. There’s nothing in the way of fun or sights or so on. You get bruised – physically, emotionally, and you risk malaria and dengue fever. The cases I did were not showmanship by any definition – they were tough to get through and not pretty. Do you go to run away? Maybe, but this is not a fun place to run away to. Do you go to feel important? Well, you are far richer than the natives and they are very dependent on you for medical care, but the mosquitoes and living conditions bring you down to earth real fast. Do you go to do the Lord’s work? That is all I am left with. Hopefully you made a difference to someone in that instant when you were the only person in the world who could that surgery at that time. There is no one else around. For a few days are you an instrument of God? I hope so for that patients’ sake.
As for as job satisfaction, it eats you up that you know you can do so much better, but cannot because of limitations. You know the bar you set for yourself in normal conditions but here you must accept humble pie and frustration. It leaves a bitter taste in your mouth. The creativity of improvisation that you devise is but a momentary respite from the sea of suffering that hits you day in and day out. From a systems perspective, are we just a band-aid or a crutch? Does the presence of volunteers and NGOs reduce the country’s capacity or interest for self-reliance and development? Perhaps as there is the potential to feed a culture of dependency. But there are so many who need help. Is it ethical to walk away from the suffering in the here and now in the faint hope that a better future could arise if the country had to bootstrap itself?

The trick may lie in training and education. But there is an intrinsic conflict between maximizing surgical volume and teaching trainees. It is not easily resolved in the US, with the benefits of facilities, personnel, and resources. It is infinitely more complex when power is failing and flies are flitting about the operating room.

So I return home with more questions than answers. Part of me does not wish to go back after the bruising several days but part of me wants to go back for a rematch – normally we get to wage war on cataracts, but this time the cataracts waged war on us. We brought knives to a gunfight – running out of supplies and without the full complement of equipment and instruments; we were outmatched on more than one occasion by the pathology and outgunned by the intensity and lack of resources. Perhaps I should go back with a full team and full force of stuff that we need and could have used. Stuff to think about!

2009-11-23T07:29:00.000-08:00

Do the Means Justify the Ends?

It is a common verbal attack to question an opponent’s motives by asking “do your ends justify the means?” The time has to come to ask the Obama administration whether the means justify the ends? This is a poignantly piercing query in health care, the war on terror, international relations, and environmental policy. Presumed (and perhaps presumptuous) nobility of purpose is weak perfume to spray on poor ends.
In health care, universal health insurance has acquired totemic status in the pursuit of “social justice.” A Medicare-for-all public program is deemed as the egalitarian road to a just society, but forgotten are the consequences of shunting $500 billion from the existing Medicare program, raising taxes by $400 billion, increasing job-killing payroll taxes, and of course, vastly raising government obligations and national debt. Sadly ignored are much simpler approaches of breaking insurance monopolies with cross-state competition, tort reform to ameliorate defensive medicine, encouraging charity care with tax deductions for physicians, ending direct-to-consumer marketing, and fostering cost transparency with direct patient payments from health savings accounts for goods & services costing more than covered rates. Burdening the American economy with more taxes and physicians with more regulations may make health care more equal, but more equally bad: crippled innovation, rationed or lack of services in intensive services (cancer, surgery, ICU), early physician retirement, and worse quality.
As far as the war on terror, it is now “overseas contingency operations”. Terrorism has morphed into “man-caused disasters”. And, now the logical conclusions of this politically correct nomenclature: terrorists are treated as common criminals in federal court, and a prima facie act of treason at Fort Hood was first medicalized as pre-traumatic stress disorder, which is apparently spread by respiratory transmission from soldiers who actually were traumatized, and now is justified as a response to Afghanistan and Iraq. Self-righteous and self-absorbed idealism in the pursuit of being fair to the evil has mated with political correctness to thoughtlessly warp reality: those who sought to be kind to the cruel have now become cruel to the kind. What exactly is the logic of trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in federal court while those who plotted the bombing of the USS Cole are to be tried in military tribunals? Foreigners who attack a warship in a foreign port do not deserve the constitutional rights of Americans, while those who murder nearly 3,000 American civilians for sport are? Eric Holder’s justification that the Cole was a military target necessitating a military trial is thin beer: the Pentagon was also a military target on 9/11. Leave aside the low, but non-zero risks of escape, terrorist attacks on New York, and acquittal: a replay the 1990s’ method of law enforcement to fight terrorism invites intelligence leaks (as is well documented in the Sheikh Rahman trial) and shows weakness (evidenced by escalating terrorist attacks climaxing in 9/11). The only purposes of a federal trial are to show off American idealism and provide an opportunity for terrorists to put Bush administration officials on trial.
In foreign policy, President Obama has gone out of his way to be nice to Iran, Venezuela, and Russia. He has needlessly antagonized Poland, the Czech Republic, and Israel. Turning our back on Iran’s young people and Eastern Europe’s democrats is terribly disconcerting. We shall soon see if these freshman moves were brilliantly calculated gambles or starry-eyed squanderings of American credibility. Right now, my bet is on the latter. I hope to God I am wrong, and no one will be better pleased than I if that I am.
On environmental and energy policy, the means of cutting carbon emissions have become an end unto themselves. Cap-and-trade legislation has become riddled with corrupt subsidies and the infrastructure to build a false bubble economy based on carbon credits as a new currency. Whether or not one believes in global warming, I think reducing dependence on oil from America’s enemies is a good thing as is increasing our efficiency. Elegant means of doing so would be carbon taxes offset dollar-for-dollar by cuts in income & payroll taxes, expansion of nuclear power, prizes for innovation in renewable energy technology, and funding for public transit.
In each of these arenas, idealism has become an article of faith. In doing so, it has become married to a thoughtless “devil-may-care” attitude disregarding grave long-term consequences. From now on, I’m going to start asking my liberal friends if the means justify the ends, and at what point they will start thinking about outcomes as much as they do about process.

2009-07-25T15:53:00.000-07:00

Health Care
“Those who are not liberal in their youth have no heart. Those who do not become more conservative with age have no head” -- George Clemenceau

I have waited to wade into this debate for a long time, since 1992 when I was 14 and a 1st year medical student taking “Medical Care Organization” in second semester. In the last 18 years I have been in the medical community, I have been a son & a brother, a patient, student, a resident, an attending physician in academic practice, a teacher of trainees, an overseas surgeon, and a researcher managing a budget of a lab group of about 10 people. These prisms of perspective inform my writing below. Although I have not (yet) been a husband, a parent, or a private practice physician, I hope I can take into account those frames of reference as well. I have also had the great fortune & privilege of knowing & working with citizens and physicians of Canada, Australia, Japan, and Britain who have lived in the US as well.

The health care issue is not just about cost, access, quality, value, profit, or innovation (we’ll get to those later), but about first principles:

What is a right vs. an earned privilege?
What is a public good vs. a private good?
What is the proper balance between harm reduction vs. personal responsibility?
What is the role of finance and profit in taking care of people? And how big of a sector should health care be in the broader economy?

My thoughts on these questions are that some things in health care (e.g., vaccinations, regular preventive care, a baseline level of prescriptions, and treatment for catastrophic or acute life-threatening injury or disease where there is reasonable hope for good outcome) are key elements for equal opportunity to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, for being a productive and contributing member of society, and as such, should be ensured by society. Other things (e.g., Viagra, private rooms, brand-name medications when generics will do fine, LASIK, treatment which is in all medical likelihood futile) I think belong in the realm of personal and private choice and thus cost. Further, personal responsibility in taking care of oneself (in areas of diet, exercise, habits, risky activities/behaviors, adherence to treatment) should be acknowledged and rewarded. On the last question (profit motive in medicine), I’ll address that last. Now to cost, access, and quality. First, let me tackle the (glib) indictment of the American health care system, which usually goes like this:
· We pay more than other countries
· Our outcomes (e.g., infant mortality, life expectancy) are worse
· 47 million people have no health insurance

That we pay more is beyond dispute. On outcomes, the oft-cited statistics on infant mortality and life expectancy are, to say the least, unfair. America has significant minority populations (which Japan, Canada, and much of Western Europe do not) and these groups have a variety of socioeconomic and historical issues that compromise health outcomes (poverty, drugs, gun violence, out-of-wedlock births, distrust of doctors and non-adherence with medication, follow-up, and diet regimens,). Further, on infant mortality, Western European societies have a lot more abortion and make much less effort to save preterm infants born under 28 or 30 weeks of gestation (such births there are often recorded as stillbirths), whereas in the US, NICUs routinely take care of preemies born at 24 weeks or even younger.

On the 47 million people without health insurance point, that too is a statistic where there is less than meets the eye. First, health insurance does not equal health care (there are not just emergency rooms but cash-based clinics, and conversely, a lot of people with insurance don’t get good health care). Second, of that 47 million, 14 million are already eligible for existing programs (Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ benefits, SCHIP) yet have not enrolled, 9.7 million are not citizens, 9.1 million have household incomes over $75,000 and could but choose not to purchase insurance, and somewhere between 3 and 5 million are uninsured briefly(<2 months) between jobs. That leaves about 10 million Americans who are chronically without insurance. Needless to say, extending the blanket of coverage to this group should not cost $1.5 trillion and require a wholesale overhaul of all of medicine.

Further, there is a lot of good in the American system. Far more foreigners come to America for their health care than vice versa. Same goes for physicians who want to practice medicine. Yes, Americans on the borders go to Canada and Mexico for prescription drugs, but Canadians and Mexicans come to America for surgery and even neonatal ICU care, evidence of a far superior infrastructure for high-intensity services. And, most importantly, our research, development, and innovation is unsurpassed – indeed, there is a good argument for saying that Americans subsidize other countries’ populations by allowing drug companies free rein in price-setting here (other countries have price controls, while we do not, which allows companies the breathing space for investment in R&D).

Ok, you say, but why does health care cost so much? So let’s look at the health care dollar, where it comes from, and where it goes. The US spends about $2.5 trillion on health care annually, and here's the percentage breakdown:

And the money is coming from:

Not well-accounted for in these figures are the costs of malpractice insurance and claims (approximately $10 billion per year) and of defensive medicine (estimates ranging from $60 billion to $100 billion per year; in some states, obstetricians and some surgeons must pay well over $250,000/yr in malpractice insurance premiums). With respect to health insurance companies, in 2007 they reported ~$15 billion in profits plus an additional ~$16 billion in stock buybacks (monies not used for paying claims or investments)

So to save on costs, the areas where significant monies could be squeezed from would be:

Hospitals and nursing homes
Physicians, dentists, and other providers
Drug companies
Insurance companies
Trial lawyers

Now, how would I go about deciding what to cut and how to save money and “bend the future cost curve”? I would rate behaviors & services on a scale of evil (which for this discussion I define as greed:utility ratio). So things that I’d like to see happen that I think would curb costs without degrading current or future quality of care would be:

Significant tort reform where arbitration is used to weed out frivolous lawsuits and a system where negative outcomes are compensated reasonably, while criminal misbehavior is handled criminally. HMOs should no longer hold their privileged immunity from malpractice relative to physicians.
Assigning the cost burden of unnecessary or likely futile services to patients or their families
Eliminating television and direct to consumer pharmaceutical marketing (which all started only in the late 1990s) (drug company marketing is now about $57.5 billion annually, according to a PLOS study by Gagnon & Lexchin in 2008, which nearly equals the $58.8 billion spent in R&D by the drug industry. This would help reduce costs by allowing physicians breathing room to recommend older yet equally effective medications to their patients.
Breaking the oligopolies of health insurance coverage present in many states & regions. 94% of insurance markets are highly concentrated. If ever there was a reason for anti-trust intervention, this is it. Consumer choice is constrained by such circumstances and costs are dramatically increased to patients and physicians. The solution to this is not creating a government monopoly of health care, but using deregulation & anti-trust law to allow cross-state insurer competition, and nurturing novel health care coverage systems through unions, community groups, civic associations, patient co-operatives, and physician-run organizations. Government could do a great service by jumpstarting the infrastructure to create such a true free market but it should not take over such a market.
Encouraging charity care: Lawyers can treat pro bono work as a tax deduction; hospitals treat charitable services (which are often overcharged in the first place) as a tax write-off and get income tax exemption for being nonprofits. Physicians currently have no such benefit.
Cost Transparency: A friend of mine who is a student in a professional school recently had an appendectomy and got a surgeon’s bill of $~3000 and facility bills of $13000. Insurance paid most of it, but he still paid $5000 out-of-pocket. By contrast, Medicare payment for appendectomies for the surgeon is $561 and for inpatient facility care is about $3000. Patients are charged wildly different amounts, and quite often indigent patients get stuck with full charges while Medicare or large insurance company patients get charged much less due to contractual arrangements. This process is just insane. If the rich or foreigners want to pay for concierge care and first-class service, so be it. But for the system as a whole, doctors should be allowed to set their own fees (which we, alone among professions, cannot – Medicare sets rates which we are obligated to accept if we accept Medicare patients), waive standard fees for the poor (remarkably, underbilling is considered fraud), and charges should be transparent and consistent. This ties back into the charity care issue, where some hospitals write off charity care at grossly inflated charge rates yet still make life incredibly difficult for the poor.
Encourage innovation: Increasing tax credits for R&D, establishing prizes for translating discovery for big problems, and extending patent protection for new molecular entities while limiting patent extension for me-too drugs maneuvers turning Prozac into Sarafem or Wellbutrin into Zyban, would promote advances in drug and device development and maintain America’s edge in science & technology.
Improve primary care: On this score, I think other countries like Australia and Canada are doing a better job. I feel lucky that as an ophthalmologist (which is mostly self-contained and which is alien to most other physicians), I can be the patient's doctor for almost anything eye-related, which helps me build the trust and rapport to exercise good judgment in deciding how frequently to monitor a condition, what medicines to use, what test to obtain, when to do surgery and when not to, and when to accept that there is an end of the road in certain situations. I feel that patients are missing that too often in their general health - before ophthalmology, I did a full 3 years of internal medicine residency, and care was so fragmented that patients (most of the time) did not have a doctor, in the classic sense of the word, someone who knew them, was their advocate, had a broad perspective of their life and values and conditions, and had their trust. This led to patients being dumped on the ER, diagnoses missed until it was too late, lab & radiology tests replacing clinical diagnosis, and great yet often unwarranted & futile efforts in situations without real hope. I think encouraging medical school graduates into primary care (full loan forgiveness, encouraging models like monthly or annual clinic "memberships" for patients rather than fighting for every bill or claim and booking patients every 10 minutes to make ends meet) would prove a long-term boon to patients and physicians.

Why do I think these are key measures which would be effective?
Our litigious system of jackpot justice does cause of a lot of unnecessary testing and drives a lot of medical practice, unnecessarily, to the ER or ICU where the full resources of a hospital are easily marshaled and engaged.
Costs in the last six months of year of life consume the lion’s share of health care spending; should the bill for that be covered by the hospital, the insurance pool, the taxpayer, or (in my view) the patient & family?
As for as marketing, television and direct-to-consumer marketing has exploded in the last 10 years, which has greatly distorted care, as patients often come in demanding specific medications, tests, or procedures. This has driven up costs but does not contribute to quality at all.
On the competition aspect, there is no free market in health care. We have the worst of socialism (regulation, poor service) with the worst of capitalism (corporate greed that seeks to distort and monopolize markets and imprison consumers into their own cartels of delivery networks).

Is the likely Democratic plan a good idea?
I have to say no. Expanding Medicare & Medicaid for all (which is basically what it boils down) opens the door to government price controls, which will devolve into wait-lists, poor quality personnel, salaried staff (who by definition are incentivized to give minimum effort), increasing physician refusal to see Medicare & Medicaid patients, and underinvestment in research and facilities (see Great Britain, and Canada). The Australian system, where public hospitals are well-funded and physicians can choose to accept government rates or charge higher, might be a viable option. The VA system (which was held up as an example by Hillary Clinton) is good at certain things (electronic prescriptions, some routine elements in primary care, traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury) but is poor at infrastructure maintenance, efficient clinic and surgical flow, and customer service; further, its costs are held down as much of VA health care is in reality delivered by residents. The proof of the pudding on the VA is that the vast majority of VA patients are enlisted personnel; the retired officers go elsewhere.

Which of the plans bouncing around have useful ideas?
I think the Daschle-Dole idea of giving tax credits to all who pay income or payroll taxes to purchase health care is a good thing – equalizing the playing field of those with employer health coverage and those without. We want health insurance to be available to all contributing or productive members of society, but we don’t want free health care as a dole to contribute to persistent unemployment. The Daschle-Dole, Wyden, Ryan, & McCain ideas of capping the employer health benefit tax deduction , creating exchanges/marketplaces, small business pooling, and allowing cross-state and nontraditional insurance coverage and competition are all also great ideas.
Health savings accounts have potential but what I have noticed is that patients tend to use them to buy “nice things” – e.g., LASIK, nice glasses, a nicer wheelchair, etc. and then rely on government when they need their medications or life-saving surgery.
Encouraging preventive care and discouraging risky behaviors are all nice things but I’m not sure I want the government as nanny. However, certain employers (e.g., Safeway, my university) give lower insurance rates for enrolling in wellness programs.

What things should we keep in mind going forward?
As a society gets older and richer, it naturally will spend more on health care. Further, innovation and research cost money along the way - NICU care was probably not cost-effective 15 or 20 years ago, but is now. Neither of these points are in and of themselves bad. But we should allow patients the freedom of choice and with it, the responsibility to take care of themselves and limit unnecessary costs. Yes, in acute situations, it is unseemly and unfair to ask a patient, before anything else, what insurance do you have? And that is a great advantage of Canada that we can learn from. But some patients do abuse the system (refuse to take medications and then come in when they are really sick, or come in to the ER at 2 in the morning for itchy eyes which they've had for 2 weeks without pain or change in vision), and such behaviors should bear the costs.

We do not want to destroy a system that has led discovery and contributed so much to the world and led to unprecedented advances in life expectancy over the last century. As for profit, medicine should not be a business where the profit motive trumps all. Yet money does make the world turn; indeed, money from high-margin services helps support and allow the presence of charitable care, research, teaching, and humanitarian work (much as first class on airlines helps subsidize the rest of coach class). Removing money as an incentive for performance, R&D, and innovation would be stifling. Humans are naturally lazy, and greed can & should be harnessed to useful ambition. But corporate greed, market-distorting greed, and the greed of corruption and unnecessary services should be checked.

2009-04-16T17:44:00.000-07:00

Piracy, Pakistan, and the 1st 100 days of Obama

My MBA classes have kept me superbusy and kept me from writing. But this piracy phenomenon in East Africa merits discussion. I am obviously pleased at the rescue of Captain Phillips and the professionalism of the Maersk Alabama's crew & captain, as well as the decisiveness and effectiveness of the US Navy. The debate about what to do now seems curiously stupid. The Somali pirates have declared that they will attack any US flagged ship they run across. If that is not a declaration of war, then what is? By the precedent of centuries, the US should bomb, shell, and destroy any and all pirate ports, harbors, ships, and assets. Then to prevent this from happening again, mine or blockade the Somali coast to the degree possible. And if it still persists, burn down the pirate's on-shore havens. This should be a no-brainer.

The bigger concern for me is what is happening in Pakistan. The Taliban have basically morphed into land pirates - taking the resource of establishment parties and flouting any notion of law. The Taliban have identified the Achilles' heel of the Pakistani nation-state - the long-standing feudal structure of rural Pakistan, where an oligarchy of wealthy landlords hold sway. By grasping the vulnerability of this ossified social structure, the Taliban have set the stage to potentially pull off a Bolshevik-style revolution. Pirates garbed as revolutionaries - that is a difficult problem to redress.

Democracies have historically and generally successfully met the challenge of bandits/pirates attired as demagogues by simultaneously enforcing the rule of law and breaking the outlaws while engaging in land reform and economic aid to take care of the populace's real grievances. Pakistan is so dysfunctional it cannot do that - a significant part of its military is in in league with the Taliban, while there is no economic sector separate from the military or the landlords that could be an outlet for the rural poor to focus their energies on. It has no politicians with charisma and credibility who could be a magnet for others to rally around.

So what should we do? I really have no idea. Is the occupation of Pakistan a viable option? The answer would appear to be no, but the time may come for it to be necessary. Alternatively, the break-up of Pakistan into its provinces may make the problem more manageable. I just hope we have some really smart people thinking this through. But what comes after the fracture of an abyss?

Which brings me to the 1st 100 days of the Obama administration. Many of my readers will likely wonder if my extended silence is due to buyer's remorse regarding President Obama. Maybe. I must confess to chagrin at the administration's budget policies, Russia approach, and initial statements on health care. But he has not screwed up Iraq and has left options open regarding Iran and North Korea. I sense the administration is just in a mode of trying to concentrate on the economy and keep options open to the degree possible on everything else. That sounds sensible for now but the rest of the year may not be as kind to President Obama as the 1st 100 days.

2008-11-29T12:05:00.000-08:00

Reaction to Mumbai
There are no words to express the horror, the disgust, and the rage I felt as I was glued to the television set on Wednesday night, Thanksgiving and the day after and the day after that. While I did enjoy the company of good friends on Thanksgiving dinner, and although my family and friends are primarily in Chennai and Andhra Pradesh, far from the carnage on the other side of India, my thoughts were not far from the country of my birth. What struck me Thanskgiving evening was the strangeness of so many of my friends asking – why? Who? I felt like asking, What would you have me say?

As if we don’t know. How can we not know? Have we come so far from 9/11 that we don’t know the who or the why? It was simply sad to perceive the grasping at straws that I saw in my conversations – is it because of poverty, or lack of opportunity? Of course we know why – there are people in this world who believe they should be in charge, are angry that they are not, and are unhappy at the happiness of others. The who is even easier – radical Islamic fundamentalists are at war not just with Americans, Israelis or Britons, but with Indians, Thais, French, Australians, Iraqis, and many Africans. And these radical Islamic fundamentalists train in Pakistan (and parts of Afghanistan), are equipped in Pakistan likely by elements within the Pakistani ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) and military, and are funded by oil money from Saudis through Pakistan. And sadly, they probably receive some cut from the $10-11 billion President Bush has authorized to Pakistan in the last 7 years in the name of the war on terror.
So what do we do? Some would say India should behave as America did after 9/11 and go to war. At a gut level, I would probably concur. But at a cerebral level, realistically India should not risk nuclear war over this. But India can and should demand Pakistan extradite the known kingpins of terror in Pakistan:

Omar Sheikh (released by India after the 1999 Indian Airlines hijacking and the murderer of Daniel Pearl and the likely giver of $100,000 to Mohammed Atta in August 2001, and supposedly serving prison time in Pakistan),
Dawood Ibrahim (a key organized crime figure responsible for earlier terrorists attacks in Mumbai),
Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar (also released after the 1999 Indian Airlines hijacking and founder of the Al-Umar Mujahadeen
Maulana Azhar (released by India after the 1999 Indian Airlines hijacking and founder of the terrorist group Jaish-e-Muhammed),
Hamid Gul (a former Pakistani general, former chief of the ISI, and pivotal figure in the creation of the Taliban)

While India is at it, America should demand the hand-over of A.Q. Khan, the wheeler-and-dealer of nuclear technology to North Korea, Libya, and who knows who else. When Pakistan refuses all of these, India should pursue an escalating response set:

Cut off all trade and transportation links with Pakistan
Ask the International Monetary Fund (i.e., America) to not give the $7 billion in loan guarantees sought by Pakistan
Ask America to cut off all military and non-humanitarian aid to Pakistan
Cut off the headwaters of the Indus which originate in India
Blockade the Pakistani ports of Karachi and Gwadar (obviously the American supply lines to Afghanistan will be at issue, but increasingly Pakistan blocks those supply routes anyway)

2008-09-30T15:14:00.000-07:00

Follow-Up: Obama vs. McCain/Palin/Economy

Many thanks to Wretchard for linking to my previous post, and also thanks to all the commenters both at his site and mine. I would like to reply to some of the issues raised by the various comments:

My religion & background: I was born in India, came to America, when I was three, and am from a Hindu family. I would consider myself religious, believing in God, trying to read and grapple with scriptures, and attending our religious functions and festivals regularly.
Am I a misogynist because I oppose both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin being anywhere near the Presidency?: This I must take exception to. I gave my reasons for opposing both of these in previous posts, and those are my reasons. I will elaborate on Sarah Palin below. But would I oppose a woman for President just because she is a woman? Of course not. If Sen. McCain genuinely wanted a female Republican, he could have picked Kay Bailey Hutchinson or Condoleeza Rice. If he needed someone young and very attractive, how about Michelle Malkin (is she >35 to pass the age threshold?)? Personally, I was hoping in August McCain would pick Bobby Jindal who is much more accomplished than Sarah Palin and who I predict will do much more in Louisiana than she has ever done or will do in Alaska.
Obama's Record vs. his words: This is a fair criticism, that I focus more on what Obama says. He has little national legislative record of note or accomplishment. He has been a party line voter most of the time in the Senate. As I noted, ordinarily I probably would have gone with McCain based on his honor, service, tax policy, record of bipartisanship, experience, and toughness. But I believe the issues I raised about McCain-Palin are serious ones.
Am I anti-religion or anti-Christian? As noted above, I am not anti-religion. But I do value the separation of church and state, both because the state can corrupt the church and doctrines of religious infallibility can destroy state policy. And as a scientist, I do think creationism should not be introduced into school science classes, and I have legitimate worries that Palin, either as a VP, future President, or future Republican nominee would further that cause. To digress, I think God created evolution and we should all leave it at that - the evolutionists who claim evolution contradicts God and the creationists who just blind themselves to all evidence that contradicts their claims are just plain stupid. The latter to me is the greater danger as they are far more numerous and destroying science education would condemn generations of students to not understanding how antibodies are generated in the body, how bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, how drugs targeting epidemics can be generated by selective evolution in vitro and in vivo, and yes, how species share common ancestors. But to summarize my position, I do believe faith and reason are like a pair of shoes - you can go farther with both than just one.
Am I pro-Islamic fundamentalist?: This is frankly amusing. Please see my essay vault

- Myths of 9/11:
- Questions on the Quran I and II
- So called liberals need to face facts
- The only root cause
- Free Speech, Slavery, and Islam
- Defining a Religion
- Self-determination?

There are many others in the essay vault that may be of interest to the commenters

On Sen. McCain, I have great personal respect for him and would love to see him as a Secretary of State in an Obama administration - as a liberal hawk, his idea for a "League of Democracies" is nice (to self-promote, I tabled an idea for a Democratic Nations Against Terrorism Organization in this essay in 2006), and his toughness vis-a-vis Russia would be good to have, and it would be rich to have him be the point man on robust diplomacy with Iran. But his odd lack of focus on Pakistan and pretending its military is an ally is long past counterproductive; Pakistan is more of a failed state now after 7 years of Republican-backed military dictatorship. And Pakistan, along with Saudi Arabia, is the the real incubator of evil - let us remember Omar Sheikh, who beheaded Daniel Pearl, and had a key financial role in the 9/11 plot, has still not been extradited to the US. Let us remember AQ Khan who ran a Nukes R Us for years (kudos to the Bush administration for at least impeding his operation and hopefully shutting it down - we don't know because he remains at his home in Pakistan). Let us remember Pakistan's airlift of Taliban and likely al Qaeda fighters from Kunduz in the fall of 2001. And let us remember Pakistan's firing on US helicopters and allied soldiers just weeks ago despite our $11 billion in aid over the last 8 years.

On Obama vs. McCain on the economy, yes there are many unknowns on the economy. But Obama's team of Volcker/Rubin/Summers/Buffett gives confidence in hoping for a Clinton economy redux while McCain's team of Gramm and Fiorina gives considerable worry as to 4 more years of Bushonomics.

On Gov. Palin, several conservatives - George Will, Kathleen Parker, David Frum, David Brooks have noted charitably her frank inadequacy. Why did I say she is not bright or curious? George Bush may not pronounce words properly, but his sentences are understandable. The Couric interview shows she cannot string together sentences coherently or logically. And I don't think it's condescending to question the adequacy of the intelligence of someone who states she is ready to be a hearbeat from the Presidency who went to 5 colleges in 6 years to wind up with a journalism degree to become a sports reporter, and is now reported to believe dinosaurs and humans coexisted because she has seen footprints in dinosaur tracks. As far as curiosity, I would bet serious money that prior to this campaign, she has never read the National Review, Wall Street Journal, or the Weekly Standard, or any publication of substance outside of Alaska. I would even bet she has never read Belmont Club or LGF. Maybe she has not read them even during this campaign. So to put her in a Vice-Presidential role is plain irresponsible.

Notes on the Economy:

I hope yesterday's vote results in a better bill. I did not claim to be an expert in finance (I specifically noted I was not), but wanted to share what I felt were good ideas (and gave credit to those from whom I derived the ideas). I do not think McCain delivered his party, and to criticize Obama for injecting partisanship when it was McCain who stole the show last week is a bit rich. Anyway, I still think the key ideas I noted (suspending mark-to-market, buying equity stakes, restricting golden parachutes, using net worth certificates, buying and restructuring the underlying troubled mortgages, bringing back the trading tax while cutting long-term capital gains tax) are sound ones. And I still think the House Republican's plan for a government backed insurance plan for bad assets seems to me to be a setup for Fannie Mae meets AIG in the future. As for overall budget ideas (these are somewhat old), please see the following:
Smorgasbord
Focusing on Domestic Issues

2008-09-28T21:04:00.000-07:00

Obama for the Presidency + Notes on the Economy

It’s been a busy summer professionally so I have not been able to post for a while. I have also been waiting to decide who I was going to vote for, and now I am prepared to endorse Barack Obama for the Presidency.

I was seriously considering voting for John McCain well into August due to his strength on national security, less propensity to raise taxes, and his long record of bipartisanship as well as personal honor & service. But Senator McCain’s selection of Governor Sarah Palin, his performance last week with the financial situation, and several things he said in the 1^st debate have sealed my decision to recommend Senator Obama.

Let me revisit the key issues where I think Obama is the best choice and discuss McCain’s weaknesses:

National Security:
Pakistan: Obama has clearly defined Pakistan as the nest of Islamic fundamentalist evil, something which is 8 years overdue and which my conservative friends have only belatedly come to realize. Osama bin Laden and his gang must be hunted down and destroyed for symbolic and strategic value; it is not an easy problem but I think it will be more easily achieved by a leader who recognizes Pakistan is the problem. McCain, in Friday’s night’s debate is out to lunch on Pakistan: he justified Gen. Musharraf’s coup in 1999 by saying Pakistan was a failed state at the time. This is a blatant rewriting of history. Pakistan was led by a democratically elected Prime Minister at the time (certainly not a failed state in the sense of Somalia or pre-2001 Afghanistan). Background: Musharraf invaded india in june 1999 going behind the back democratically elected prime minister, who ordered a withdrawal. When the PM tried to dismiss Musharraf later that year, Musharraf conducted his military coup. This was widely condemned at the time by democrats, republicans, the UN, and the British Commonwealth. The question must be asked: Does John McCain support a military coup by Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state whose military’s intelligence service is in cahoots with al Qaeda and the Taliban, in the future if its democratic government struggles or tries to impose civilian control of the military?

Iran: On the surface, McCain projects a far tougher view on how to approach Iran than Obama, and Obama’s willingness to negotiate directly could indeed be construed as weakness. But let us look at the record – McCain’s approach has indeed been tried for 8 years, and Iran has only gotten closer to nuclear weapons. Maybe diplomacy with carrots & sticks has a shot at shifting Iran’s course (I doubt it) or at least building international acquiescence for military action, but ignoring Iran has not achieved anything. And the bottom line is that no US government and certainly no Israeli government will stand aside Iran to get nuclear weapons. Indeed, I’d like to raise the following question with regard to Republican policy on Iran (first noting that Gen. David Petraeus is a truly brilliant commander, and I don’t want to take anything away from him): was the success of the surge in Iraq enabled/bought by US allowing Iran to continue with its Manhattan Project unfettered (including for example that atrocious National Intelligence Estimate last year saying they pulled out of nuke research) and by the US allowing Assad in Syria to get away with the assassination of Rafiq Hariri (the UN "investigation" into that has gone nowhere)? We'll never know the answer, but i think the question should be asked. Iraq is important, but so are Iran and Syria.

Iraq: To reiterate my previous positions, readers know I supported the invasion of Iraq and continuing US military involvement. This judgment call is premised on hopefully turning Iraq into a decent democratic country to promote positive change in theMiddle East, a “democratic domino” theory. Readers will also know I have consistently bashed President Bush’s mismanagement and absence of planning, and worried gravely about the primary motives of this administration. Whether this was the right call or not will not be known for decades. I respect and applaud John McCain’s support for the surge; it was vital political cover at the time for that approach. But we are at a point, both militarily and economically, where $10 billion a month and >100,000 soldiers to support Iraq in an effort to have long-term bases there does not make much sense to me. Iraq wants us out by Dec. 2010; Obama proposes us leaving by June 2010 – that is a negotiable difference. We have finite army resources – might these not be better deployed for action against al Qaeda, possibility of action against Iran, and reserve uses elsewhere?

Economy/Financial Situation: McCain’s behavior this past week can charitably be called bizarre. There was an apparent deal (maybe, maybe not) on Wednesday and Thursday morning. McCain asked Bush for a photo op meeting Thursday presumably to emerge as a hero with Obama at his side. If anything, McCain backing House Republican proposals which had been previously rejected and then his mysterious silence in that meeting blew up that meeting. What did he accomplish? Delay. Now one can say that might be a good thing (I have grave reservations about a blank check for $700 billion). But he made this big show about returning to Washington to get a deal done. That along with advisors who say we are in a mental recession and who are pretty weak on economics (vs. Obama’s team of Rubin, Summers, Volcker, and Buffett) makes McCain a poor prospect for leading the economy. As far as the bailout package itself, I will highlight some ideas that I think are good (posited by various sources this past week) below.

Fiscal Policy: Obama will spend more, McCain will tax less. Neither have addressed entitlements or the national debt. Both will have this $700 billion (probably more) bailout to deal with. Neither are reassuring to me as far as America’s fiscal health long-term. Indeed, McCain's glib debate line about a spending freeze on everything but entitlements/defense/interest on debt/veterans' care is absurd: there is not much left in discretionary spending, and does he want to freeze spending on the FBI/DEA/Homeland Security/National Institute of Health?

Health Care: I have concerns about both candidates’ approaches, but I think Obama’s plan makes more sense than McCain’s of just getting rid of the employer health benefit tax credit to set up a “market.”In any case, McCain’s ideas of privatizing the VA, cutting funding for injured veterans, and his abstentions on preserving Medicare fees for doctors this summer make him a bad choice for me.

Science: Our long-term outlook as a nation depends on investment in research & development in medicine, engineering, energy technology, nanotechnology, etc. This link is very instructive. I think it shows Obama has thought much more constructively about maintaining America’s scientific pre-eminence.

Energy Policy/Environment: Both support offshore drilling (McCain more so), have extended some support for measures against climate change and for nuclear power, and for alternative energy. Emphases will be different. I don’t think there is that much of a difference.

These I think are the key issues to judge the two candidates. On the merits, I give Obama the edge. But McCain’s experience, service, and toughness could have overridden all of that for me. The clincher for me is McCain’s selection of Palin. She is just Bush + Huckabee on high heels. She is not bright, she is not curious, she is not coherent when dealing with probing questions. She is, in the words of Peggy Noonan (Reagan’s speechwriter), “chirpy” about war with Russia, talks about Putin “rearing his head into Alaskan airspace”, and can’t pronounce nuclear properly or speak “caricature”. She plausibly believes (the quote is unclear) that the Iraq war is “God’s plan”; she certainly said a natural gas pipeline in Alaska was God’s will. She is quite likely a creationist. Let me not even mention what Republicans would do if Obama could not speak proper English (either in pronunciation or grammar) or if Obama had a pregnant teenage daughter (even Republicans have already discussed that in passing). But the last is a distraction. McCain is 72 years old; his #2 pick has to have 2 out of 3 traits – experience, intelligence, or wisdom. I think Sarah Palin strikes out on all 3 counts. Obama has done us the favor of keeping Hillary away from the Presidency; may he do us the additional favor of keeping Sarah Palin away as well.

Notes on Financial Crisis:

Let me conclude with my thoughts, based on what I have read this week, about the financial crisis. If I had a $700 billion check, I could think of a lot of things to do with that money besides a Wall Street bailout. But a lot of serious people are saying a credit freeze would cripple America – I am not sure but we probably should not take the chance. I know people will say too much credit got us into this mess – but I have also seen that heroin withdrawal can be fatal and that such patients need detox – maybe this package will be detox; I certainly hope it puts us on that path. I am glad the Democrats have gotten executive compensation caps, equity stakes for the Treasury, and oversight; I am glad the Republicans have blocked some of the Democrats’ dumb ideas. I think the Republicans’s scheme for government backed insurance is weird and possibly dangerous, setting up potential for a Fannie Mae meets AIG situation in the future (a government sponsored enterprise which is an insurance company). Personally, I wonder whether a better plan (and most of these are not my ideas as I am not well-versed in these issues but those I have picked up from various commentaries in the national press and friends) would be:

The Fed providing credit for employer payroll, student loans, municipal bonds, i.e., key lines of credit in the economy
Purchase of a combination of net worth certificates and some equity (preferred shares; senior stakes) in these insolvent companies by the Treasury
Relaxation and rewriting of mark-to-market rules which don’t make sense in the present context
Buying troubled mortgages directly, restructuring those deals, and selling those back into the market later
Forcing banks to cancel dividends and issue new equity on the private market
Bringing back the 0.25% tax on stock trades (which was in force from 1914 to 1966) while cutting long-term capital gains tax somewhat – this would generate revenue while discouraging speculation
Encouraging executive compensation plans tied to long-term productivity

These are the best ideas I have seen on the net (Sebastian Mallaby; Anil Kashyap; Raghuram Rajan; Luigi Zingales; William Isaac; William Gross; some of my friends).

2008-03-09T12:48:00.000-07:00

Obama for the Nomination

Well friends I have been out of touch as I have moved to a new job in Utah. Things are settling in.

The never-ending Presidential campaign goes on for the Democrats. I have been reluctant historically to write in endorsement of any specific candidate as I treasure my status as an independent. But now the time is right to cast my support to Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination.

Two politically strong candidates have and will continue to fight a tough campaign. This is a full 60 minutes of football. The first quarter through Super Tuesday was a draw, and the 2^nd quarter belong to Obama through 11 straight wins. Too many commentators thought the game was over at the half. Senator Clinton regrouped and had a solid ground game in Ohio & Texas, ramming the ball into the endzone coming out of halftime So now there is still almost a full half left, with the very real prospect of this game going into overtime! What a crazy year this 2008 is.

So why do I write now in support of Senator Obama? I think it is vital to push for a candidate who offers the best possible chance for progress on so many fronts – dealing with radical Islamic fundamentalism and the threat of terrorism, rebalancing our foreign policy, revitalizing our economy, and dealing with real changes in energy policy, health care , education, environment, and our nation’s fiscal soundness. And with an evenly matched game, I hope I can influence events to some degree in the key remaining states – Pennsylvania, NC, Indiana, Oregon, Kentucky.

Senator Obama is a far superior candidate to Senator Clinton both in substance and in style, in the content of his character and the class of his campaign. Let me first give my overall impressions and then discuss issues point-by-point. Obama genuinely represents a break with the past. His crossover appeal rests not only in his badly needed eloquence and charisma, not just in running as a politician who happens to be black as opposed to a black politician (and as opposed to Clinton’s cleverly manipulative use of her woman-as-victim role), not merely in respectful dialogue with members on the other side of the aisle, but in consistently challenging conventional orthodoxy. For example:

· He was and remains the first candidate to identify Pakistan as the root of al Qaeda and as a critical arena to apply action, not just words. No one, not McCain, not Clinton, not even the “crazy cowboy” Bush has had the courage to say that.

· He recognizes the problems of the black community stem not from racism, but from deep cultural issues that need resolution – missing fathers, broken families, lack of emphasis on education in favor of basketball or rap, drugs, etc. To lend the Presidency’s bully pulpit to Bill Cosby’s trenchant message would be a tremendous advance and possibly a chance to move beyond race-based affirmative action and the corrosive battles over race.

I think these examples are windows into a mind that recognizes reality and is not imprisoned by received wisdom that is long past its shelf life. An intellect that is bright enough to see that, in the words of JFK, “The old ways will not do.”

Now let us turn to the issues and arguments of this campaign. Contrary to what the pundits say, there is a good amount of daylight between Obama and Clinton’s positions on several issues:

National Security: Obama has clearly and consistently identified the Pakistan/Afghanistan theater as a priority. McCain’s glib reply “Why would you bomb an ally?” is preposterous after a moment’s ponder – what kind of ally is Pakistan? I also think Obama is not as beholden to the Saudis as much of the Republican Party is.
Iraq: Readers of this blog know I backed the invasion of Iraq and continued US military involvement. This was a judgment call based on the premise that hopefully turning Iraq into a decent democratic country would eventually promote positive political change throughout the region, a “democratic domino” theory. Readers will also know I have consistently bashed President Bush’s execution and lack of planning, and worried gravely about the primary motives of this administration. Whether this was the right call or not will not be known for 10, 20, perhaps 50 years. I will grant it has seemed like the wrong call for much of the last 5 years, although I must point out that just as the North Africa invasion after Pearl Harbor lured the Axis’ best general & forces into a desert environ where we could defeat them, the Iraq theater has been much more of a meatgrinder for Islamic fundamentalists (both footsoldiers and high level commanders from all over the world) than it has been for Americans. Yet I digress - how is all this an argument for Obama?

It is vital to examine why Obama opposed the Iraq invasion and why Clinton supported it. Obama opposed it at the time because of his cost-benefit analysis – lots of blood and treasure invested with no obvious exit strategy. Clinton supported it becomes it seemed politically to be the best call for her future presidential run – support Iraq War II because Iraq War I was a slam dunk for the Republicans, keep a “tough” image, because it was supported by the polls and by most of her Senate colleagues. She was a follower, not a leader. She did what was convenient – sign on with Bush’s plan. And now when it is convenient and popular to bash Bush’s war, she does.
On future management, both have committed to withdrawal. But Obama’s deftly leaving enough wiggle room (committing to fight terrorists and prevent genocidal ethnic cleansing) suggest to me he is wise enough to adjust policy to the realities when he is in office. Realistically, we have a moral obligation not to abandon the Iraqi people to foreign terrorists and predatory neighbors. When and if they want us to leave, we should. But we are not there yet.

Iran: Obama’s statements that he would meet with Iran’s leaders are concerning. Yet as Martin Peretz points out in the Wall Street Journal, “Unlike the isolationists in the guise of idealists, or the cheerleaders for violence who pretend to be pacifists and populists, Mr. Obama is a patriot of the old cadence and the old convictions, and not easily pushed around. If he is elected president, he will disappoint many of his supporters, and surprise many of his detractors.” Senator Obama should be questioned more aggressively on how exactly he will prevent Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons and dominance of the Persian Gulf, but I believe his judgment and backbone are sound.
Economics & Fiscal Policy: There is only so much a President can do about business cycles and economic slowdowns. Yet Clinton’s proposal for a 5 year freeze on adjustable rate mortages is moronic (it will simply raise rates for everyone else and freeze lending even more) and her “timeout” on future trade deals is equally braindead. Obama’s push for fair trade with labor & environmental protections is more sensible. His perception of the Social Security payroll tax as a highly regressive part of our tax code is spot-on, and his proposal for prefilled tax returns is in the words of the Economist, “a gem”. I would hope he would build on this by seeing that payroll taxes are job killers, and while removing the cap, dropping the rate from 6.25% to 3-4% on all income, and normalizing the tax system so that all income (even for hedge fund traders) is taxed equally.
Health Care: Clinton’s first foray into health policy was a disaster, handing both houses of Congress to the Republicans for over a decade and putting Bill Clinton on the defensive for the rest of his tenure, Let no Democrat forget that it was Hillary Clinton who developed a gargantuan, unintelligible health care plan behind closed doors (initially with not even a single doctor on her panel), that it was unelected, unappointed Hillary Clinton who singlehandedly squandered the first two years of Bill Clinton’s presidency. Now she pushes for “mandated” health insurance for all, but conveniently does not specify enforcement. There are good reasons to require health insurance be obtained by all. But this is America, where freedom is justly valued at a high premium. The Republicans will have a field day with her health plan. Obama’s alternative of essentially allowing anyone to buy into a Medicare equivalent health system makes a lot more sense from a a variety of perspectives. I also fear for the future of medicine were Senator Clinton’s vision of national health care (she holds the VA as a role model for all health systems) to come to pass. Her complete divorce from healthcare reality is evidenced by her cluelessness that lack of incentives will lead to least common denominator care.

I think these are vital differences on substantive policy. On education, energy policy, and the environment, I think Obama’s proposals hold considerable merit as well.

The character of each candidate’s campaign is also important to consider. The Clintons, predictably, have fought tooth and claw. Throwing punches is part of politics. And as Obama has rightly noted with grace and class, it is important not to whine. But let us consider a few examples of the hollowness of Clinton’s arguments:

The Red Phone: If Senator Obama’s lack of experience is a concern (and it is a fair argument), how is Senator Clinton’s any better? First Lady of Arkansas and First Lady of the United States do not count. Senator Clinton claims she brought peace to Northern Ireland. Really? I think George Mitchell, Tony Blair, and her own husband would be surprised to hear that! And while on the matter of the red-phone, if she wants to count her White House years as “experience”, then the Clinton administration’s indecisiveness on Somalia, Bosnia, and killing Osama bin Laden raise real questions about whether she can make tough calls, as of course does her vote on the Iraq war. And finally, John McCain’s record would eclipse Senator Clinton’s on this score.
NAFTA: Admittedly, both candidates pandered to Ohio by bashing NAFTA, and Clinton pandered better. But how can she claim 35 years of experience and then claim she had nothing to do with NAFTA and was opposed to it from the beginning, when it was her husband’s administration that pushed it through? (On the whole, I think NAFTA was a good thing but should be renegotiated to some degree).
Michigan: She claims she won Michigan when she was the only one on the ballot, yet 45% of Democrats there did not vote for her! Enough said.

So far all these reasons, I support Senator Barack Obama wholeheartedly for the Democratic nomination. As an independent, I will give Senator McCain a fair hearing in the fall campaign. I must confess I would probably vote (for McCain over Clinton (or not vote at all), as I suspect would a lot of other Democrats (electability and battleground state coattails will be important for the superdelegates to consider). Senator Obama has gotten this far by being “all things to all people” – black and white, native and immigrant, fresh face and hope and inspiration. He must now put some meat on the table – illegal immigration, Iran, energy policy, economics, entitlements – he needs to put some solid policy options on the table. He has the braintrust and the judgment to do it. He needs to reach out to working class white voters and to Hispanics – Edwards and Richardson could really help him out here, and the party.

This is not a test of hope vs. experience. This is a challenge of talent vs. stubbornness, of hope vs. Hillary! The experience issue is a straw issue – Abraham Lincoln was all the experience of one term in Congress, and a lot of bad Presidents had a lot of experience.

And as my father used to note in his battles with school administrators, a 3 year old filly will beat a 35 year old donkey anytime.

2007-12-31T08:07:00.000-08:00

Bhutto Falls; who and what shall rise?

Funny, yet sad how back-to-back posts consider Pakistan. The shocking yet grimly expected murder of Benazir Bhutto cut down a larger-than-life figure. Ours may be known as the Age of Assassination - Putin putting Politskaya and Litvinenko on ice, the bombings of Rafik Hariri, Pierre Gemayel, and countless others by the Syrian mafia, and of course, now the death of Benazir. We now have mafias in charge of Russia, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia (perhaps we should throw China, Cuba, and Egypt on this list). al Qaeda is but another mafia in this rogues' gallery, funded by Saudis, increasingly manned by Pakistan, and with various links to Syria and Iran. That is the central foreign policy challenge of our time.

But let me return to Bhutto. She was flawed - her personal corruption was legendary. But her personal gifts of beauty and eloquence and knowledge of the West made her one of the precious few bridges between the West and Islam. Who killed her and why? I do not doubt the Pakistani government's assertion that al Qaeda was responsible and I do not doubt Bhutto's email from beyond the grave holding Musharraf and the government responsible. To me, there is no daylight between al Qaeda and Musharraf, and for that matter, much of his government/military/ISI. Musharraf and several of his henchmen noted by Benazir as likely suspects (Chaudhry Elahi, Ijaz Shah, and former ISI chief Hamid Gul) should receive the utmost scrutiny. As for al Qaeda, they probably provided the suicide bomber.

What to do?

There are no good solutions. The Bush administration bears responsibility for giving $10 billion to Musharraf and for sending Benazir as a weak pawn, but America is not responsible for the assassination. Our interests go beyond the security of the nuclear weapons and the sanctuary accorded to al Qaeda. We are talking about 165 million people. We must recognize we are now not only dealing with the fallout of Word War I in Iraq but now the fallout of World War II in Pakistan (the retreating British Empire leaving behind a legacy of a hateful state bound for failure in the form of Pakistan). The Pakistani provinces of Sindh and Punjab are potentially salvageable in reorienting towards joining the modern world. There NWFP, FATA, Waziristan, and possibly much of interior Baluchistan need to be separated from the rest of Pakistan - whether that occurs from a civil war or from an external invasion, that is what will happen one day. Pakistan is inherently a centrifugal state, and perhaps the one person who could have held things together for a time lies 6 feet under.

2007-11-05T08:05:00.000-08:00

What Beast Slouches Towards Pakistan, Where Buddhas Fall

The weekend's developments in Pakistan portend the onset of nightmare. Musharraf has decided that he wants to be a dictator, and will do what it takes to be a dictator. Hopefully now the scales will drop from the West's eyes. Musharraf has a knack of double-dealing and backstabbing - he undercut Nawaz Sharif's peace missions to India in 1998-1999 with an invasion of India's Kargil which Sharif was not aware of; then of course the coup of 1999, the ISI's holding of Omar Sheikh (murderer of Daniel Pearl and the man who sent $100K to Mohammed Atta in August 2001) in custody without turning him to the Americans, the airlift of Taliban/al Qaeda in Oct. 2001 from Kunduz amidst American bombardment, a truce with Taliban last year which only increased their terrorist activity both in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and pocketing of $10 billion with what to show for it - increased madrasas, less freedom, and the likely continued presence of Osama bin Laden in the hinterlands of Pakistan. When will America get it? Musharraf is nothing more than Arafat in suit-and-tie, a con artist skilled at the classic shakedown of "If I go, who follows will be far worse".

As one Wall Street Journal editor put it re. America's blind eye to Kunduz in fall 2001, "we are beginning to learn is that if one enlists dubious allies, one runs the high risk of treading knee-deep in--how shall I put it?--foul-smelling organic waste matter. And as allies go, Gen. Musharraf is as dubious as they get. "

It is no longer acceptable for America to back Musharraf with the paradigm, "He may be an SOB, but he's our SOB." I recognize the value of realpolitik, and that Musharraf's run an expert game as head of a Mafia playing America off against the zoids, achieving secure funding for his mob, er, military, amidst chaos they themselves sow. But that is the same charade done by the Saudi Royals and Mubarak, among others. Enough is enough already.

Bush started out vowing to marry America's ideals to its power, but ironically has distanced the two. Hypocrisy may be the homage vice pays to virtue; but there is a cost to hypocrisy which we may be about to find out. And there is a cost to the inheritance of detritus from earlier eras.

Which brings me to Pakistan. The country is defined by being the anti-India. Born of partition, its identity is necessarily driven towards being opposite of India - for if were democratic and secular, what need would there be for Pakistan? Hence, the creeping Islamicization, the stillborn nature of its democratic institutions, and the military's position at the apex of control. Cobbled together from the Punjab and Sindh which are culturally close to India put together with Pashtun areas and Baluchi areas beyond the Indus River which are less so, the only glues that can hold it together are religion and the military - which explains the current state of affairs, most poignantly noted by this report - . an ancient 130 foot tall Buddha in Pakistan has recently been destroyed by the zoids. Last time this happened in that part of the world we will all recall what followed 6 months later - 9/11.

So what should America do? Afghanistan cannot be solved without destroying the Taliban/al Qaeda elements in Waziristans and the other parts of NWFP. Will that only drive those elements across the Indus into the main cities of Pakistani society? Perhaps that has already happened. If there are elements within the Pakistani military that would willingly submit to civilian control, perhaps what we should work towards is encouraging the marriage of those parts with a civilian government (presumably Bhutto-led) with a divestiture of NWFP and Baluchistan from the Pakistani government - they want independence, let them have it and face the wrath of America without the Pakistani nuclear umbrella. The other option is continued military control which will lead to Saudi/Egyptian style government with all of the diseases attendant to such an arrangement, or civil war which would make Iraq look like a picnic.

2007-10-30T14:02:00.000-07:00

The Unbearable Boredom of the Debates

The Presidential Debate Series is, contrary to Mitt Romney, much more interminable than Law & Order. This is my proposal to make the debates more useful and far more interesting than a series of 1 min soundbites that accomplish absolutely nothing.

So I propose to make the debates into an NCAA tournament with brackets of a series of 1-on-1 debates. This would allow for real debates of substance and challenges of mettle and grace under pressure. It would give opportunity for Vegas bookies to make money, office pools would abound, thereby enhancing the public's interest in the goings-on. Various organizations could sponsor the events. We could get special guest moderators (bring back Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, Al Gore for cameo appearances as moderators on themes of their interest). It would transform the boring into a sporting extravaganza!

2007-09-26T14:57:00.000-07:00

House to House

I just finished reading House-to-House, by SSG David Bellavia, a terrific book by a soldier recounting his time in the infantry in Iraq. The centerpiece of the book is the battle to retake Fallujah from the jihadis which is told in detail that is both breath-taking yet excruciating (in a good way), forcing the reader to put himself in the boots of the soldiers taking and dishing out the bullets.

The moral torments lived by soldiers, the dilemmas, the struggles with conscience and prayer and God, are all told well. The book reminded me of the horrors and struggles of medical training in med school and residency - the camaraderie of the team against the world, facing the dregs of society and trying to make the situation better against impossible odds, the day-to-day hassles of bureaucracy and higher-ups, - it's all there, only to the nth degree for the infantryman.

Interestingly enough, Michael Ware of CNN comes across as the soldier's reporter. While his journalism has struck me as anti-American, he seems to bond with the soldiers and is right there with them getting shot at and eating crap.

The book really makes one consider whether the whole endeavor is worth the sacrifice we ask of these soldiers. While there is and should be debate on that point (and I would say it is as I believe would SSG Bellavia), what one is left with is that we cannot let these young men down either in theater or once they return to America, and that society as a whole has to engage in war - the military alone cannot do all the fighting. I think our leadership has failed the nation and the nation has failed our young men in uniform by not committing the entire resources of the nation (not just material, but expertise, time, and resources of all different sectors) to winning. We need a new philosophy to bring together the principals and make everyone feel involved - I think programs of national service (for young and old), a new organization for democracies, and a realignment on the true roots of Islamic terrorism (Saudi Arabia/Pakistan/Iran) would be far better polestars for policy than the spent policies of the Bush administration or the whining of Moveon.org.

2007-05-28T11:28:00.000-07:00

Where Clausewitz Fails and Seraphs Fear to Tread

Housekeeping Mea Culpa: Sorry for the long delay in posting; been quite busy at work lately; sorry also for those comments who have been in my inbox; I just went thru it and got them all published on the appropriate posts. Hope the below piece is worth the wait

They say those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. But perhaps we are too bound by the truisms of the past: the guiding principle of many of our best thinkers and strategists has been Clausewitz’ chestnut: “War is a continuation of politics by other means.” But our Islamist enemies have, along with numerous other advances in asymmetric warfare, turned that on its head: politics is merely continuation of war by other means.

The privatization of violence achieved by the Islamic radicals – al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Sadrism, - has enabled a colossal evasion of responsibility: peoples and countries are no longer responsible for the murderers they create, countenance, harbor, and finance. The old mold of deterrence requires a return address for sure retaliation, and the old paradigm enshrined by the Treaty of Westphalia and centuries of diplomacy guaranteed that nation-states held a monopoly of legitimate violence for which their rulers and societies at large were responsible. The deterrence model worked generally well during the Cold War and face-offs between Israel and the Arab states, India vs. Pakistan, and other long-term rivalries. Yet the success of the old ways has bred complacency in the winners of the 20^th century, and a diabolical genius in the losers.

The events of the last decade wherein private groups have launched and successfully bloodied advanced countries begs a question which is oft-overlooked: is the conventional wisdom that al Qaeda and friends want to overthrow the Middle East governments just a charade? It is easily arguable that al Qaeda is financed and nourished by significant parts of the governments of our nominal allies Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Sadrists of course receive aid from not only Iran but Saudi Arabia and some of the prosperous Gulf States. The current state of affairs where terrorist groups attack the world's democracies while the autocratic governments they hide behind deny responsibility and play the "if you get rid of me, what comes will be worse" game suits both the terrorists and the dictators very well. The terrorists get to kill people and the dictators get to milk the situation for all its worth. The conventional wisdom that the Middle East governments are the targets of al Qaeda and company may be nothing more than a wool of lies over our eyes.

If this is indeed the correct diagnosis, what is the prescription? Iraq has put an end to any desire for direct regime change and occupation. Coming up with alternatives is of course much harder than staying in the peanut gallery. But I would come up with a few suggestions:

- stop playing their game: we continue to finance Pakistan directly, as well as Egypt and Jordan, as well as provide military protection for Saudi Arabia. In medicine, Medicare has now implemented "pay-for-performance" for physician fees. It is time we implemented something similar in our foreign aid packages - withdraw aid from these countries unless they meet specific benchmarks, including cessation of anti-American propaganda, massive educational reform, terrorist hunting & turnover, economic liberalization, education of women, building of civil institutions, etc. This would be much like the process the West undertook in the 1970s and 1980s which linked economic interactions to the USSR to specific reforms.

- institute a new game: we (the West) have become very predictable. The terrorists strike, we speak some harsh words, may or may not actually do something, and then falter in the follow-through. The harder the terrorists strike, the higher our degree of response. This is the standard strategy of proportionate escalation - worked pretty well as a Cold War strategy. But the Islamazoids are not necessarily rational in our sense of the term (certainly not chess-players like the Russians) and so mirror-imaging is not the way to go. They are quite adept in playing our strings and so their strategy of steady escalation desensitizes us to their violence, much like how lobsters are desensitized while slowly being boiled alive. We have to consider throwing out the proportionality rulebook. More importantly, we have to figure out how to threaten what is valuable to them. You may ask, they are willing to blow themselves up, live miserably, even blow their children up. Indeed, what is valuable to them? The only thing I know of that is valuable to them is their civilizational symbols and capitals & cities - Mecca, Medina, the Dome of the Rock, Damascus, Islamabad, Tehran etc. This is dangerous territory - before I get accused of being racist or crazy, let's recall that in the Cold War, both sides knew the other's target lists. If Washington goes, so does Moscow. If New York goes, so would Leningrad. We can no longer fear to tread the cold geometry of twilight choices of the 21st century, lest we fail as guardian seraphs of our civilization. Perhaps we need to figure out how to communicate to everyone, diplomatically/tactfully, (both the terrorists and the partly supportive host governments) that any future 9/11 type attacks or worse will be answered not by regime change but annihilation of cherished symbols and cities. The responsibility is then shifted onto those governments (i.e., Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Syria, Iran) for not letting anything bad happen on US or Western soil. Together with the next proposal, this would force the rational actors in Iran/Saudi/Pakistan to stop double-dealing

- Make a national commitment to end reliance on foreign (specifically Middle Eastern) oil. While our imports of oil equal 60% of our consumption, only about 15% actually comes from the Middle East. A grand bargain by the Republicans and Democrats to develop our own energy sources, a carbon tax, incentives for efficiency and alternative energy, expanded nuclear power, and so on would go a long way towards this goal which is more important than the ongoing posturing in Washington. This would truly threaten the livelihood and comfort of the financiers and enablers of terror.

- This still leaves the problem of sub-9/11 attacks. The death of a thousand cuts that India faces, the isolated suicide bombings and kidnappings inflicted on Israel - we are buffered by 2 great oceans but that happy protection is thin armor as 9/11 showed. We need to do lots of things - really get some start people thinking about how to better defend our targets here at home. Not enough people are strategizing like Stephen Flynn - red-teaming and gaming out possible scenarios are critical. We also need to consider that proportionate escalation may not be as good a response strategy as random shocks (credit here goes to a fellow scientist). Pardon the analogy, but lab mice get used to predictable electric shocks and can deal with them well whereas in the presence of random shocks they give up and become, well, depressed. Rather than respond to every provocation in a predictable fashion whether from some group or from Iran/North Korea, perhaps we need to respond pseudo-randomly to select provocations with unpredictable consequences - say for the kidnapping of a few US citizens, we sink the entire Iranian Navy.

We still need to figure out our national and international responses to the age we live in. I am glad to see that at least a former civil official has proposed the universal civil service program with option for military service ; I have fleshed out a similar proposal here. Building a team of the core democracies would also be great ; now that Sarkozy and Merkel have replaced Chirac and Schroder, the timing couldn't be better.

I have not addressed Iraq - I really have no new ideas besides what I have proposed in earlier posts - dealing with Iran/Syria, flooding the country with personnel, having the neighbors monitor Iraq's borders with the opposing countries (e.g., Iran's people monitor the Iraq-Saudi, etc.). At this point, I rest my hope on Gen. Petraeus, who seems to be the most capable commander the US has deployed to Iraq.

We are dealing with a multidimensional chessboard with implacable and irredeemable enemies as well rational psychopaths and opportunistic goons. Developing a good strategy will take time, patience, a national coming-together at both idea and policy levels, and perseverance. We have to figure out how to link together economic and political advancement again - since the Cold War ended, we have offered countless dictatorships access to our markets and economic development without political reform. This has been in the hope that prosperity fosters peace. At some level, it gives people a stake in the status quo. But it allows governments off the hook too.

Multi-D chess will also require how to figure out how to deal with those who in their love of the 7th century would usher in the evening of mankind without a new morning. It will require how to figure out how to split the bizarre alliance between the the Islamazoids who long for the past and the fringe leftists who feel so superior to and hate the past of the West, who together threaten to unmake logic, reason, truth, and the desire to exist and move forward. It will require a spine of steel and a subtle sense of smarts. Hopefully one of the candidates for 2008 will step up to the plate.

2006-12-27T08:52:00.000-08:00

Fight to Win

In all the debates over Iraq, a simple proposition has not been asked – what will it take to win? Winning has not been well-defined, but a good outcome would be a decent, democratic Iraq at peace with itself and able to protect itself from its predatory neighbors, specifically Iran, Syria, and to a degree, Saudi Arabia.

One key prerequisite of that include control of Iraq’s borders. For almost 4 years, no serious effort to do that has been done. The easy riposte is if America cannot control its own border with Mexico, how can it control Iraq’s borders with its 6 neighbors? Manpower is essential, and it is doubtful that the US military has the available boots to accomplish such a task. Today's WAPO piece is the first credible proposal but this will likely stretch the military.

Here’s an odd but potentially viable approach: invite Iraq’s neighbors to police the border with their opposite numbers, i.e., Iran can contribute to border patrol on Iraq’s southwest sector with Saudi Arabia, the Saudis and Jordanians can patrol Iraq’s northeastern border with Iran and Turkey, the Turks can monitor the southeast borders with Iran, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, and the Americans with their coalition allies can concentrate on the border with Syria where the ratlines to the God-forsaken Al-anbar province originate. The Americans would also concentrate on securing Baghdad and keeping the Turks and Kurds out each other’s hair. With this scenario, each of the participants is incentivized to do their job – to prevent infiltration into the chessboard of Iraq.

Longer-term, the need to expand our military looms. Our power projection capabilities have decayed and degraded, and a doubled or tripled force is probably required to restore enough deterrent capability against the rogues’gallery that confronts us and in some way which is being fronted by China and possibly Russia behind the scenes. The draft is talked about but there are serious arguments against conscription. Yet the pure volunteer approach is likely inadequate, and the foreign legion approach to recruiting Mexicans to fight our wars in exchange for citizenship has its downsides as well.

Here’s a blended idea that just might work: a national service program of 2-3 years for all 18 or 22 year olds, with the options to choose which underserved areas to work in – teaching, nursing, alternative energy development, and of course foreign intelligence & the military. The government could then adjust various incentives (1 or 2 years of college or other higher education benefits per year of service, long-term health insurance or tax credits) to meet the needs of the health, education, energy security, foreign intel, and the military while still leaving it to individual choice to who actually joins up the various services. This at a stroke would contribute to binding together the various strata of America’s social fabric, address pressing needs of our nation, and provide the manpower needed for our military.

Energy security is another central element to fighting to win. Only about 15% of our oil comes from the Middle East. It is true that over ½ of our oil is imported, but much of that is from friendly neighbors like Canada and Mexico. But the navy is providing a free service to everyone by protecting the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, and Malacca Straits. We really should stop shouldering all these burdens everywhere on our own. To this end, the federation of democracies which I hope one day will be picked up as a great idea by someone important, would be a great entrée.

True bipartisanship in this instance would mean adopting the Miller Lite commercial: let’s do both! Let’s raise fuel efficiency standards and nuclear power investment; let’s drill in ANWR, offshore, and wherever else (cleanly as possible) and pursue a campaign for conservation thru carbon taxes and incentives for efficiency. Let’s invest in renewable energy research (and I mean a trillion dollars, not a billion dollars) and recruit friendly nations in Africa and South America to our side and away from China.

2006-09-23T06:01:00.000-07:00

The Pope, Ahmadinejad, and Chavez

One might wonder why I included the above trio in one sentence - it is merely a case of the good, the bad, and the ugly. The waves created by the speeches of all 3 over the last week reflect the latest advance in the jihadist zoids' ability to pervert the hallmarks of the West into potent weapons of their own - civil aviation, media, and now, free speech itself.

The Islamic fundamentalist imperialists have now managed to turn the free speech of their opponents into an albatross, while simultaneously using the citadel of the West itself as a platform to demonize the President and worse yet, to disseminate silver-tongued skullduggery. This is the common thread of the events of the last week-and-half.

The Pope's eloquent speech on faith and reason has been twisted beyond recognition. His academic argument that faith and reason should work together and not at crosspurposes (as he notes has occurred in the divorce between Protestantism and science) was an elegant philosophical polemic on the necessity of the West to return to its roots - where Greek logic informed and suffused Christian faith. His point on Islam was that Islamic doctrine brooks no restraint of love or reason on God, fostering fertile ground for acts in the name of God without love or reason. Need I say that the reaction to this argument proved the point? While I might add that the Catholic Church in its history has done much to drive science from its bosom, as do the evangelicals of today, that is another post. The Pope's point remains valid and beautiful: faith and reason are like a pair of shoes, and you can go farther with both rather than one. The West needs to strengthen and restor the consonance of these 2 pillars.

The rantings of Chavez and the appropriation of leftist rhetoric by Ahmadinejad in the service of his pulling the wool over others' eyes just goes to show even more how much we need to leave the UN. History teaches that events abhor a vacuum, and that unipolar colossi are counterbalanced by other opponents. What is happening now is an alignment of a rogues gallery: Iran, Syria, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuala all acting in various capacities to distract and sabotage America. One can make a serious argument that China and Saudi Arabia covertly do the same. And of course there is France. For those who grew up with cartoons in the '80s, the Legion of Doom has presented itself. It is time for the Superfriends (or Justice League) to coalesce and assemble. Why Bush has failed to yet have the vision to summon an Alliance of Democracies is beyond me. Each day we wait, our position continues to erode. As I wrote previously in the Way Forward , an alliance of the US, Britain, Australia, Japan, India, Canada, Germany, Brazil, and other democracies would bestow both moral legitimacy and street credibility to US efforts. It would be a far easier panel to push foreign policy agendas through. It would provide backbone and stability to fragile democracies, and give a beacon for other states to follow in the footsteps of democrats everywhere. It would be a powerful way of linking economic progress to political and social progress, which while united in fact by dint of history, is not a link easily perceived by most of the world. Eastern Europe would join in a heartbeat. Spain, Italy, Mexico, South Korea, Turkey, Indonesia, Bangladesh could be kept from falling off the cliff into loony-liberal nihilism or Islamic fundamentalism. The presence of Third World democracies like India, Brazil, Argentina, Ghana, and Kenya would make it obvious this is not about Western oppression (fuzzy-wuzzy stuff to be sure but nonetheless vital to the media information war). Military defenses and free trade agreements would be conditioned on the ideals of freedom.

In short, a powerful ideological weapon based on positive idealism to turn back the erosive acid of loony liberal self-loathing married to toxic Islamic fundamentalism.

2006-07-30T15:48:00.000-07:00

Israel, Lebanon, and the Rest

Israel's operational strategy is baffling to me and quite disappointing. This is shaping up as Al Gore vs. George Bush in their 1st 2000 debate, where the favorite was supposed to have wiped the floor with the underdog yet merely by surviving, the underdog wins (no disrespect intended to George Bush or Al Gore). The fact that Israel is not winning handily yet claims to be only using "5% of its power" indicates diffidence and indecisiveness that may well turn out to be fatal.
Aerial bombardment serves battlefield preparation and political objectives - it is not an end in itself. The US took 4 weeks to bomb Iraq in 1991; one would think 2 weeks for Israel to accomplish the similar aerial outcomes in 2006 in a much smaller theater. From the way Israel is acting, it would seem that it is hoping for an outcome like the capitulation of Belgrade at the hands of American airpower; but such an outcome, rare to begin with, is fantasy when it comes to Hezbullah fanatics. I realize an invasion of Lebanon would bring back bad memories (much as a US peacekeeping force in Lebanon does for Americans), but that seems more and more necessary. What bothers me in this whole thing is where is Israel's Ariel Sharon in 2006; not the fallen prime minister, but the bold and daring commander who brought the PLO to its knees in 1982 and the Egyptian Third Army to its knees in 1973. Israel has behaved as if it could change a war of attrition it was destined to lose into a favorable war of attrition using airpower; but Israel's strengths are not attrition from the air- they are speed, maneuverability, and panache. Cutting the Bekaa Valley off from the Syrian border with a mechanized strike force and South Lebanon off from the north with an amphibious landing would be 2 ways of changing the discouraging dynamics of the current situation.

Israel's PR management has also been atrocious. Rumsfeld's ingenious embedment of the press in 2003 spared a lot of bad press; something similar might be a good idea for the Israelis. The message sent by aerial bombardment is beating of the whole population into submission, whether or not that is the intent. I wonder if the focus was more on retrieval of the 2 soldiers and assassination of Nasrallah, that would have been more effective by humiliating Hezbullah more.

And of course, there is the issue of fighting to win. Right now, it does not seem the Israelis are doing that. It seems they are fighting to get an international force in. When a problem seems insoluble, sometimes it works to expand the problem. Blowing up Hezbullah headquarters and some Syrian military targets might not be such a bad idea. What's the worst thing that can happen? Iran gets involved? Might as well bring into the open what is already clandestine. From this friend of Israel's perspective, it seems that what cannot be endured must be ended - showing a little flamboyance in warmaking might restore Israeli deterrence and end this crisis faster and better than the current grind.

2006-07-29T08:57:00.000-07:00

My Plan for World Peace

The following is said half-in-jest and more than a little tongue-in-cheek. I think I have a solution that will solve half the world's problems and everyone will be better off:

1) All Israelis move to America
2) All illegal immigrants in America move to Europe
3) All Muslims in Europe move to the Middle East.

It's a win-win-win - the Muslims get the land they get so worked up about, America gets the talents and brains of Israel and a Europe that is less hostage to the Middle East, and Europe gets a fertile community that is linguistically and culturally much closer to them than the Arabs are as well as be free of the threat of violence and dhimmitude. As for the moved populations, think of what the Israelis can accomplish without having to spend so much time, energy, and money on defense, the illegals of America can find good work in Europe, and the Muslims in Europe get to have the land of Israel and can live under sharia as they claim to want to do.

Yes, the Israelis will lose their holy sites and the Muslims in Europe may lose their freedom, butthere is a good chance both will be happier off in their new locales of America and the Middle East. I think Jacque Chirac would sign up for this, so that takes care of getting multilateral international support (or was it multinational interlateral support - I keep losing track of the latest PC term).

I would even give up credit for this be trial-ballooned as the Condoleeza-Chirac plan for world peace.

2006-07-12T14:10:00.000-07:00

India, Israel, Iran, N. Korea

Things have heated up dramatically in the last 36 hrs. Savage barbarism on the trains of Mumbai has massacred hundreds of people, while Hezbollah has opened a 2nd front with Israel which has picked up the gauntlet. Iran and N. Korea continue to play the great powers off of each other. Many threads - all connected by what?

All of these are intended to keep the democracies off balance. Centers of power can only pay attention to a given number of crises - China used the Cuban missile crisis to invade India in 1962, and the US could not come to India's aid till weeks after the fact. Israel is perfectly capable of handling Hamas and Hezbollah but are they merely opening acts to soften up defenses in advance of Iran's still mysterious plans? India made a business decision in summer 1999 and again late 2001 not to destroy Pakistan (after Pakistan's invasion of Kargil and after the bombing of India's Parliament), rationalizing the economic cost of a final, frontal assault as too high and choosing a battle of attrition, which it is now paying for. The US focuses on Iran one week and is distracted by N. Korea the next.

Something big is afoot, I fear. Two months before 9/11, a few phone calls from Osama sent the US Navy rushing out of Middle East ports, and 2 days before 9/11, OBL had a principal opponent of the Taliban, Ahmad Shah Massoud assassinated. I have no idea how to divine the Islamazoids' intent nor of course Kim Jr.'s loony mind, but I hardly think the flareup of the last few weeks is coincidence.

What should we do? When the opponent has you off balance, best to make him get off-balance too. Summon the democracies and use a new organizational vehicle to strangulate Iran and Syria and North Korea and Pakistan. Name the enemy of Islamic fundamentalism and make it clear to the Saudis, Egyptians, and the rest what needs to be done to the zoid financiers and preachers. Make China responsible for North Korea - we should leave S. Korea which is capable of defending itself and where we are unwelcome, and let go of Japan's leash when it comes to defence and nuclear weaponization. The Cold War depended on the US keeping its countries in line and the Russians their countries in line; it would be nice if the Treasury department was not in hock to the Chinese so that we could implement such a strategy for the Korean peninsula without financial pressure.

As for Pakistan, the day of reckoning will be costlier the longer it is put off. Musharraf is not an ally, only an Arafat with a suit and tie. India and the US have to start coming to terms with what it will take solve the Pakistan problem - a full-scale invasion, defanging of the nuclear sites, and eventual breakup of Pakistan into its 4 states. It is not better to have a few hundred people die every few months.

2006-06-25T11:24:00.000-07:00

Iran

Richard Perle has a terrific op-ed in the Washington Post today, "Why did Bush Blink on Iran?",
essentially stating that Condi Rice, rather than cleaning up the State Dept. bureaucracy, has become one of them, and thereby diverting the President from what needs to be done on Iran onto a path of extended and interminable negotiation with a malefide opponent. It does seem that Bush has become excessively passive on both Iran and on North Korea. The question must be asked, has Iraq so weakened the administration that is unable to cope with the rest of the "axis of evil"?

One of the key unstated arguments for the Iraq war was geography: having an American forward force on the borders of Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia (and out of Saudi Arabia proper) would be a valuable reminder to rogue regimes of the dangers of provoking America as well as a rapid deployment platform for a day of reckoning with those governments. But our enemies seem to have employed jujitsu, turning our dagger into an albatross. Or have they? The answer turns on whether we use our forces in Iraq as a weak pawn, as we have to date, or as a springboard and forward strategy. War and chess both rely on leveraging advances into gains as opposed to incremental moves followed by holding actions. Rumsfeld once understood this with his lightning strike across the Iraqi desert. But as the elder Bush said, "It is not clear what we would do once we entered Baghdad." That lack of foresight has been the cloud hanging over our nation's intervention in Iraq. Rather than using our forces in Iraq to pressure Iran and Syria, we have allowed them to hold us hostage in Iraq. That is the true quagmire. It is all the more tragic as there are real options against Iran as interim measures prior to either a peaceful resolution or military conflict - Bret Stephens laid these out last month:
* An open letter to Ayatollah Khameini
* Retooling Radio Farda along the old model of Radio Free Europe
* Freeze Iranian financial assets around the globe
* Support the labor and student movements in Iran as we did with Solidarity in Poland
* Lock out gasoline imports to Iran, which has a very poor refining capacity, and imports 40% of its gasoline.

And now comes North Korea brandishing a new ICBM. It is interesting how Iran and North Korea employ a tag team strategy of arrogating the world's attention. One wonders if they aspire to be the 21st century version of Germany and Japan, using not territorial conquest but shadow wars and serious threats, while the great power(s) are repeatedly caught flatfooted. But we are flatfooted only if we choose to be.

The curse of the 2nd term - without an election to concentrate the mind of the leadership, distractions and dithering take over. Bush once struck me as immune to inertia. Yet he seems intent on proving me wrong. I hope not, for all of our sakes.

2006-06-18T16:14:00.000-07:00

Democratic Alliance

Just to flesh out my thoughts a bit more on my post from this week on summoning an alliance of democracies, I think this could be made to work by having charter members, associate members, and perhaps an observer tier. Charter members would be established democracies, say having had stable democracies for >25 yrs. This would be not just the West but also India and Japan. After achieving 25 years of democracy with stability and respect for the normal societal protections, countries would join the first rank. This would serve as an aspiration magnet: countries would see that benefits of this club (free trade with the West, India, Japan, some sort of military umbrella, cultural and scientific exchange, and so on) were real yet earnable. A positive ideal of carrots without the fluff and corruption and garbage of the UN to complement the steel backbone necessary to take out the trash. The Cold War's battle of ideas was won by a positive vision; something similar should be deployed by the US and friends, and the sooner, the better. It brings to mind the exchange from Star Trek:
Spock: "One man cannot summon the future"
Kirk: " But one man can change the present"

2006-06-18T16:03:00.000-07:00

Moderate Muslims?

In a front page piece, the NY Times promotes Zaid Shakir and Hamza Yusuf
as US-bred moderate Muslim Imams:

Throughout most of the complimentary article, this pair makes several good and hopeful statements to the effect of promoting nonviolence and standing against Wahhabism.

But the final statement, of wishing for "America to become a Muslim country" and that any honest Muslim wishes the same is chilling. Even though I am Hindu, I do not wish America to become a Hindu country. Americans need to communicate to all of the different groups that make up the fabric of our nation the values that make our country unique - one of the key ones being that all religions are welcome and treated equally, another being the separation between church and state. The latter keeps religion from being contaminated by politics, and frees politics from the chains of self-righteously infallible dogma. The obvious retort of America being a "Christian country" is met by Christ's own "Render unto God what is God's, and render unto Caesar what is Caesar's." This goes to the crux of whether a Muslim Enlightenment/Reformation is possible - whether a mosque-state separation can be effected or set as a goal by "moderates." It is our duty to engage with those who abjure the sword for the pen and employ our finest methods of suasion to this end. Those who are open to reason must be convinced of the essentiality of an areligious arena of politics, where "I don't know" is the beginning of policymaking.

2006-06-14T06:37:00.000-07:00

A Way Forward

Now that the site has been updated to include previous columns and essays, I'm ready to start posting fresh material. Here's my very first original post:

As a liberal hawk, I have watched the events of the last several years with increasing dismay. Caught between the deranged rants of the loony leftists who are hijacking the Democratic Party and the painfully worsening incompetence and incoherence of the Bush Administration ever since the premature victory lap on May 1, 2003, those like myself, who recognize the existential danger of radical Islamic fundamentalism and the centrality of American ideals & resolve to the free world’s defense, have become marginalized as dark clouds have gathered.

I started this blog to offer a forum and platform for constructive criticisms of current policy paired with hopefully pathbreaking ideas that hitch reality to vision. While I am a liberal, I want President Bush to succeed, because his failure at such a critical time in history, will be a failure for America with potentially catastrophic consequences. So let me put my 2 cents worth of perspective on the table.

While the received wisdom is that Bush’s difficulties stem from poor postwar planning (not securing the border and ammunition dumps after the war, insufficient troops, various political stumbles), I think an equally big yet perhaps unrecognized problem was his lack of putting forward a positive vision. He missed 2 critical opportunities to do so, after 9/11, and in April/May 2003. What do I mean by this? Bush’s thesis – that a lack of democracy/freedom/opportunity feeds resentment and dysfunctional societies which tolerate and foster the crazies who want to take over the world in the name of Islam, has value as a diagnosis. But there has not been a coherent approach to addressing that. We won the Cold War because our country came together, as a society, to offer not only resolve but also a positive goal to aspire to, for Americans and for others.

After 9/11, recognizing that we faced a generational war of arms and ideologies, Bush could have gotten just about anything he wanted. A call to national service would have been a tremendous and transforming opportunity to engage young people from all walks of society and would have provided much-needed resources many of our current challenges in service personnel – military, border patrol, teachers, nurses, first responders, etc. as well as provided a mechanism to encourage young people to go into science and engineering. Further, it could have been used to promote American ambassadorship abroad by the young for efforts in civil society development, health care delivery, seeding of infrastructure, and so on. I bring up these “soft” efforts not as a “touchy-feely” criticism of Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” but to make the point that the military is doing everything in Iraq, and having a foreign service corps could have sped up reconstruction and smoothed the American presence abroad while relieving the military of non-core responsibilities.

In the international arena, Bush, like Clinton, suffered from a huge blind spot in marrying objectives to ideals. Clinton, casting about after the Cold War for “a big idea”, settled on free trade as one of his signal achievements in foreign policy – NAFTA and the WTO are probably 2 of his most long-term achievements. Bush was greeted with disaster soon after entering office and rose to the challenge militarily, but he too has failed to transform the ideals of America into aspirations for others. While the Republicans recognize the deep flaws of the UN, a credible alternative, one that would be great for the world and great for America, has so far been incredibly missed. After 9/11, Bush rightly saw that the attacks were an attack on freedom, in the sense that freedom and democracy are an alternative world-view irreconcilably opposed to the Islamist utopia, and the only antidote the toxins of the Middle East. Recognizing the danger to freedom, Bush could have marshaled an Alliance of Democracies. This is not as hare-brained or pipe-dreamy as it sounds. How marvelous it would have been for Bush after 9/11 to summon the democracies of the world – the US, India, Britain, Brazil, Japan, Germany, Taiwan, South Korea, Australia, Israel, Turkey, Indonesia, Italy, the East European countries, Spain, Mexico, South Africa, Canada, New Zealand? (I am of course deliberately excluding France). Such an alliance, a D-NATO if you will (Democratic Nations Against Terrorism Organization) would have had great potential – a common front against terrorism, mutual support against threats such as Iran and North Korea, interlinking of political bases to help support the secular democrats in Turkey and Indonesia and pro-US forces in Spain, Germany, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, etc., Such an alliance would have several purposes:

Foreign affairs: mutual military assistance and support, a united system of economic sanctions against rogue states, cooperativity on energy independence
Economics: most favored nation status for countries that were free at home, an orderly system of immigration among the democracies
Social: a round table of exchange and cooperation on health, education, and scientific issues (again, sounds soft, but would have significant benefits)

What I am proposing then is a union of military, economic, and political objectives in a Democratic Alliance. Clinton’s mistake in the WTO was thinking free trade would free China. Rather, linking free trade and orderly immigration to freedom and good governance at home would allow economics to leverage ideals into actionable goals. Having the democracies united would be a powerful message against Chinese expansionism, Islamic fundamentalists, and assorted tyrants. The diplomatic cover and advantage of international support for military action would be much easier and much more morally relevant than with an ethically bankrupt and kleptocratic UN. Last but not least, a union of democracies would also offer substantial support to the emerging democracies threatened by non-democratic forces (e.g., Turkey, Indonesia), to build up vulnerable poor democracies (e.g., Botswana, Mongolia, Mozambique) and to embattled democrats in places like Iran and Venezuala. What I am proposing would be a means to transform beacons of freedom into magnets of investment and bulwarks against terrorism and tyranny.

I do not subscribe to the “it’s all America’s fault” crowd. The cheap canard that invading Iraq after 9/11 would have been like invading Mexico after Pearl Harbor is nonsense – we actually invaded North Africa after Pearl Harbor to fight the Axis in a place favorable to us. But the true problems are to acknowledge the mistakes of the past and not to repeat them. The Iranian coup of 1953 leads in a straight line to Khomeini, American support of Saddam against Iran, having to deal with Saddam, and not having to deal with Iran. American support of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan enabled and fostered Islamic fundamentalism. I bring these up not to say that America is evil, but to recognize that America has a unique responsibility to fix the problems of our past policies, and just as important, not to repeat them with our current support for Pakistan, Kazakhstan, and the Saudis. The America-bashers gain credibility whenever we hypocritize not only our long-standing principles but also our current statements on the importance of freedom.

Dealing with the America-bashing crowd and with the fence-sitters is essential to America’s future. And dealing means not yelling or ignoring, but turning a negative into a positive, to harness our promise to powers of persuasion. Wretchard at Belmont Club touched on this by commenting on the war on terror’s sterility in new concepts for marrying strategy to law, for not developing a new rulebook in how to deal with terrorists so that American need not always seem arbitrary and unpredictable. But the problem is more than that. Forgive me for quoting from Al Gore, but a cynic is just a dreamer yearning to dream again. America can reinfuse the dream of America with the clarity of challenges facing the 21^st century and a forward-looking vision. Continued small-mindedness and inability to acknowledge mistakes will hobble that effort. Bush, or his successor, must find the means to invoke Kennedy’s call to service and a twilight struggle against the night, and FDR’s ability to bring together peoples and nations.

2006-06-13T10:17:00.000-07:00

Comparing the Candidates

Published 10/26/04 at the Duke Chronicle

How is a hawkish classical liberal to vote Nov. 2? For swing voters who largely fall into this category, this vote seems to be about whom to vote against rather than a vote in favor of someone. But let me attempt to lay out the pros and cons of each candidate.

On domestic issues, drunken-sailor spending mated with irresponsible tax cuts, corporate-run policies, Orwellian-termed environmental policies like “Clear Skies, Healthy Forests,” gun delimitation and the spectre of a stacked Supreme Court militate for a change of helm. One wonders whether the current administration realizes it is driving national finances into a ditch or consciously trusts faith-based economics.

But this election will come down to Iraq and terrorism. Here the decision is most anguished. On one hand, President George W. Bush is guilty of, at the least, grave incompetence—not planning and not listening to others enough to guard ammunition dumps and minimize border infiltration and not cultivating public opinion in key countries around the world (and conservatives, I don’t mean France, but rather the republics of Turkey, India, Australia, Japan, Russia, etc., societies whose long-term support will be crucial to our success). At his worst, Bush continues to coddle the real axis of evil—Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the financial, logistic and ideological nests of radical Islamic fundamentalism—and has let Iran and North Korea fester by concentrating our resources to Iraq. Shirking of accountability, utter distortions of the truth, plain stupidity and a lack of grace and magnanimity characterize this presidency. Bush’s obtuseness of mind is matched only by his hamness of hand.

Still, Bush has presented a vision and is relatively predictable. Bush seeks to reform the entire Middle East with a democratic domino theory; even if you disagree with it (which I do not), he has a goal that is optimistic and a credible alternative to continued “stability” whose only wage will be immense pain all around. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., seems bereft of vision and unmoored from objectives. Certainly, Kerry’s emphasis on doing more to protect the homeland is welcome and necessary, yet grossly insufficient. Having a less polarizing figure than Bush may be salutary for building strategic alliances, yet one wonders whether Kerry’s signals would be interpreted by the terrorists as a strategic retreat, emboldening them. Kerry seems stuck on Sept. 10, treating al Qaeda as a law enforcement issue. Honor does not accrue to the ostrich. It is unacceptable to set a goal of reducing terrorism to the level of prostitution or gambling, each of which are legal and thriving in various states and countries. To acknowledge that every terrorist and radical Islamic fundamentalist cannot be eradicated does not mean the attempt should be avoided; while the world still has Nazis and Communists, they know their ideology and outlook is bankrupt and discredited largely at America’s hand, which must be the goal now.

Although Bush’s team has done poorly domestically, credit is due to Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft for the fact that there has not been a significant attack in the United States since Sept. 11. It would be helpful to know Kerry’s picks for key cabinet positions, his thoughts on the roots of terrorism are (Does he recognize the threat of radical Islamic fundamentalism, or does he whitewash it with the laundry of foreign policy mistakes?) and his vision for American victory is or if he has any.

My gut says if the trigger needs to be pulled, Bush will pull the trigger, whereas with Kerry it’s not sure. My head says Bush is driving the long-term solvency of the country into a ditch, and that this is a more serious issue than generally realized. My heart wishes we could dump both of these candidates in favor of someone with both brain and backbone. It is a dark time for classical liberals—the proud mantle of FDR, Truman, Kennedy, Scoop Jackson and Pat Moynihan lies forlorn in the attic of a storied history, waiting to be unfurled as the banner of a new horizon.

2006-06-13T10:15:00.000-07:00

Smorgasbord

Written Fall 2002

Energy independence from the Middle East requires a determination to reduce demand for fossil fuels, which entails shifting income tax to gas consumption taxes, improved mass transit, and redoubled efforts on renewable sources. Domestic challenges should be met with a focus on fairness in education, health care, and taxation, and a recognition of the looming fiscal disaster that awaits the baby-boomer retirement.

On domestic affairs, Democrats have great opportunities to craft innovative and creative solutions to America’s 2 most pressing issues: homeland security and replenishing the wellsprings of our prosperity.

Where national security meets domestic affairs, Democrats should grill the administration on its grossly misguided priorities in energy policy and law enforcement. The single-minded focus of the Bush administration on oil in Alaska is demonstrably pointless, as reserves there are nowhere near what we need to wean ourselves from Middle Eastern oil. Energy independence, an important goal, should be met through dramatic but achievable efficiency upgrades, emphasis on mass transit, technological investment in fuel cells, gasification, and gas-electric hybrids, developing natural gas and oil shale, harnessing renewable energy sources, and shifting imports to Russia, Mexico, and other friendly nations.

Democrats must also challenge the administration on why it feels 5^th amendment protections of due process and judicial review are elastic but the 2^nd amendment is inviolable, a position that, through the gun show loophole, has allowed Hezbollah and Osama bin Laden associates to buy assault rifles at gun shows in America itself.

The recently passed Homeland Security Bill is a prime example of the administration’s exploitation of good means for bad ends. Tucked within the bill are measures implementing an Orwellian “Total Information Awareness” program (led by John Poindexter of Iran-contra infamy) to track virtually every facet of Americans’ lives (except of course weapons purchases), exempting companies from prosecution under environmental, health, & safety laws, barring federal employees from “whistleblowing” such violations, and specifically exempting Eli Lilly, a major Republican campaign donor, from liability on using mercury derivatives linked to autism in children’s vaccines.

Turning to restoring the foundations of our nation, Democrats should berate the Republicans on their lack of coherent plans for economic revitalization, educational renewal, health care reform, environmental protection, and rediscovering integrity.

The fiscal irresponsibility of bankrupting the treasury to give hundreds of billions of dollars to the rich has kept long-term interests rate high despite the Fed’s rate cuts, sucks needed money towards interest payments on the ballooning national debt, and makes the day of reckoning with safeguarding the solvency of Medicare and Social Security that much harder. Blaming the deficit on 9/11 is the Republican’s latest installment of “fuzzy math”; what is clear is that the promises of paying off the debt, safeguarding Social Security, and a humongous tax cut for the very rich were based on fake math that continues to sap our economy and cloud our future prosperity. Targeted tax relief for the middle class, help for states and cities in dire fiscal straits, increasing limits on tax-deferred savings accounts, and rolling back egregious parts of the tax cut should all be on the table. Republicans remain obstructionist in reforming the accounting industry and pigheaded in privatizing Social Security despite recent events, both of which destroy credibility in economic policy.

On education, health care, the environment, and political integrity, the Democrats can come up with novel solutions, bearing in mind that national problems should be met with national initiatives. Public schools, students, and teachers should be challenged with rigorous standards and curricula and given the resources to meet that challenge to level the playing field. Small-bore maneuvers like faith-based vouchers supporting private schools without regulation blur the distinction between church and state, may open the door to future public funding of madrassahs and corrode the foundation of our society’s “melting pot.”

Health care has been taken over by insurance, drug companies, and administrators, transforming patients into “customers” and eroding the doctor-patient bond. A candid national conversation on what services should be paid for, curtailing the marketing of drugs that perverts medical care and drives up costs, regulation of pharmaceutical prices in exchange for free access enjoyed by drug companies to NIH-funded scientific breakthroughs, pragmatic copayments to prevent needless utilization, and a single-payer system that clears out administrative deadwood should all be considered.

On the environment, Democrats should insist that one of capitalism’s four pillars, exclusivity (that the costs and benefits of a product are borne by the product and consumer and not by society or the guy downstream of a factory), be met, e.g., in the form of pollution taxes. Renewed commitment to curbing greenhouse gas emissions, clean air & water standards, and clean-up of toxic sites is also essential.

With respect to restoring integrity in politics, the Democrats should push for public financing of campaigns, free TV time for candidates in exchange for the cheap licenses to public airwaves enjoyed by broadcast media, fairness in advertising to curb excesses of negative campaigning, and full disclosure of political donors.

And of course there are the ideas that capture the imagination, that stir the soul, rally the spirit, e.g., setting as goals cures for AIDS or cancer, or landing a man on Mars, ideas that define the American can-do spirit of optimism to rise to any occasion and meet any challenge.

Democrats and liberals have been sleepwalking off a cliff. When we stop, we will find a vast arena of opportunities for Democrats to dust off the ideals of liberalism, speak truth to power, and present uplifting solutions for national priorities.

2006-06-13T10:14:00.000-07:00

Fifth columns?

Written Fall 2003

Throughout the 1990s prescient Cassandras warned of the dangers of madrasahs in Pakistan and the West Bank teaching hatred of disbelievers to children and teenagers, and of their Saudi Arabian fountainhead of philosophy and money. They were screaming into the wind to an audience of the willfully deaf. It is thus deeply disturbing to read what is being taught now in America.

It is poignant that Islamic fundamentalist indoctrination is deeprooted in New York City, where Islamic schools use hate-filled textbooks to brainwash schoolchildren. Fifth and 6^th graders at the Ideal Islamic School in Queens learn “Jews killed their own prophets and disobeyed Allah.” The Muslim Center Elementary School uses, “What Islam is All About.” Some of its pearls: “Jews subscribe to a belief in racial superiority…their religion teaches to curses worship places of non-Jews! They arrogantly refer to non-Jews as gentiles, equating them with sin….The Christians worship statues…Many Jews and Christians lead such decadent lives that lying, alcohol, nudity, pornography, racism, foul language, premarital sex, homosexuality, and everything else are accepted in their society, churches, and synagogues.” Another textbook, “The Messenger of Allah”, teaches “The reasons for Jewish hostility lies in their general characteristics described in the Koran…You will ever find them deceitful…You will find the most implacable of enemies to the faithful are the Jews and pagans.” “Mercy to Mankind”, used by Ideal Islamic School, teaches “Allah revealed to Muhammed that the Jews had changed the Torah, killed their prophets, and disobeyed Allah. And the Jews did not want the Arabs to know about these shameful things.” One of the books’ publishers, Yahya Emerick, head of Islamic Foundation of North America, defends these hate manuals, “Islam believes its program is better than others. I don’t feel embarrassed to say that” and writes guidelines for Muslims on “how to make America an Islamic country.”

Elsewhere, the Muslim Students Association of University of Washingon defines jihad on its website as “8 stages followed by armed conflict when there is enough strength to do so for the establishment of the domination of Islam over all other systems of life, all over the world.” The Islamic Education Center in Potomac has a banner in its school teaching over 1,000 Muslim-American children that “those who struggle against the US will be rewarded by God”, and its officials praise suicide bombers and claim “Muslims will deal the death blow to Jews.” At the al-Qalam All-Girls School in Virginia, 7^th graders learn that Osama bin Laden may not be a villain but a victim of Americans’ prejudice against Muslims and Islamic leaders.

Some maintain their version of “true” Islam holds the key to solving problems, and want to see it conquer America, e.g., the chairman of the Council on American-Islamic relations, Omar Ahmad, told a California audience in 1998 that “The Quran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.” The American Muslim Council’s executive director proclaimed “I support Hamas and Hezbollah” in front of the White House. Imam Mohammad Asi of the Islamic Education Center in Potomac praising 9/11 as a “grand strike against New York and Washington” at the National Press Club soon after 9/11. The Toronto Khalid bin Al-walid mosque crystallized the attitude of Islamic fundamentalists: “wishing someone a Merry Christmas is like congratulating someone for murdering someone or having illicit sexual relations.”

It is clear the cancer of Islamic fundamentalist imperialism has spread to US shores as well not only in terrorist action but in noxious ideas. It is imperative to acknowledge and fight this menace not only with military and police actions but on an intellectual level. Those who constantly say Islam is peace must match words with actions, delegitimizing the inciteful imams, hateful textbooks, and embryonic madrasahs in the Muslim-American community and removing them from any role in manipulating beliefs or propagating hatred; till then, silent indifference equals complicit assent.

But too many “liberals” and “moderate” Muslims equate criticism of Islamic fundamentalism with attacks on Islam. Irresponsible allegations often reveal the true nature of the accuser. It is unacceptable to blur lines between Islam and Islamic fundamentalism, for obfuscation provides cover for terrorists and makes upstanding Muslims targets for suspicion; both further religious colonialism of Islamic fundamentalists, who usurp public discourse and purge moderates on their way to conquest.

2006-06-13T10:13:00.000-07:00

Shariatopia

Written Summer 2002

People remark the war on terrorism is unwinnable because it is not a war against a country but with ideas. But while one cannot destroy an idea, one can discredit it and destroy its manifestations and proponents.

Requisite is honest appraisal. At the start of this academic year, I stated this war is about whether America’s ideals will destroy or be destroyed by radical Islamic fundamentalism and I laid out what I believed America stood for. The next step is to recognize what radical Islamic fundamentalism is.

Clarity is critical: glamorizing suicide bombing by Islamic fundamentalists and fringe leftists perverts freedom struggle’s meaning. Linking suicide-bombing to Patrick Henry is false and disgusting. True heroes of modern times include not just Gandhi, Mandela, and King, who showed the power of virtue. Every region has heroes: Havel (Czechoslovakia), Walesa (Poland), Chammorro (Nicaragua), Aquino (Phillipines), the Dalai Lama (Tibet), Suu Kyi (Burma), Sakharov & Solzhenitsyn (Russia), Ramos-Horta (East Timor), Landsbergis (Lithuania), Alberdi (Argentina), Aylwin (Chile), the anonymous Chinese man who blocked a tank in 1989, and many others show nonviolence’s power against oppression. .

We must end excusing terrorism. Nouveaux chic morality only makes Islamic fundamentalist bloodlust fashionable. Ultimately any cancer will kill you. In the words of Burke and FDR, “All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

Not being radical Islamic fundamentalists, most of us turn away from it, hoping it will go away like a bad dream, or try to ascribe it to psychobabble victimology of “root causes.” This denial is dangerous and dishonest; much as we learned when someone says they want to kill you or “Death to America”, they mean it, it is time we take Islamic fundamentalists at their word regarding their aims.

It is surprising that despite the wide availability of writings of Osama bin Laden, his International Islamic Front, Mohammed Atta, and their comrades, so few familiarize themselves with their objectives and ideas. They believe the world should be modeled after 7^th century Arabia, with shar’ia as the code of justice, and everyone converted to their perverse brand of Islam.

Their domestic objectives were exemplified by the Taliban. Slaughter of political opponents, gender apartheid, repression of women and banning of women’s education (let alone basic rights), theocracy, and shar’ia law are their highlights. The last includes stoning of gays and adulterers (including women impregnated by rape), death for those who leave Islam and death for blasphemy, cutting off hands of thieves, women having ½ the legal credibility of women and ½ the right to inheritances, and banning of the practice of other religions. These occurred not just under the Taliban but also to varying degrees in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, Nigeria, Sudan, and some other Islamic countries. It is a vital to remember that throughout the 1990s many people, not just fundamentalists but numerous sympathizers among “moderate” Muslims held up Iran and the Taliban as role models for regimes best representing Islamic values on earth. The results are visible for all to see – poverty and deep despair for people under the rule of Islamic fundamentalists. Notable results of Islamic fundamentalism include the Taliban’s beating girls for going to school, Saudi police keeping girls from fleeing a burning school because they did not have their head-scarves on (condemning them to incineration), Sudan’s institutionalization of slavery, Nigeria’s stoning sentence for a woman impregnated by rape, Dubai’s jailing a Frenchwoman who was gangraped for adultery under sharia, and Iran’s mullahs considering legalizing prostitution under the rubric of “chastity houses” and “temporary marriage” run by the government (presumably officials would get revenue and other pleasures generated by these). Multiculturalists insisting on equality of cultures turn a blind eye; hypocritical racism of low expectations for other peoples is perhaps too painful to acknowledge.

Rather than look hard in the mirror with a no-holds-barred self-examination of societal rot, many in the Islamic world (including their governments, some of their people, terrorists, and sympathizers among “liberals” and self-proclaimed “moderate” Muslims) blame America and Israel for their problems.

Everyone should realize the threat of Islamic fundamentalist imperialism, and recognize that shariatopia and theocracy are one-way tickets to misery. Separation of church and state, consigning the barbaric and medieval practices of shari’a to history’s unmarked grave of lies, true freedom, democracy, and equality of all people regardless of religion are essential values that must be adopted and embraced for Islamic countries to move forward in the 21^st century.

2006-06-13T10:06:00.000-07:00

From Yahya to Musharraf

Written Spring 2002

Recently declassified White House documents from the Nixon administration reveal an appalling nonchalance to the depraved genocide practiced by Pakistan in 1971, a willful blindness by a Republican President to craven dictators that is being repeated by the current administration.

General Yahya Khan, the military dictator of Pakistan in 1971, refused to seat the winning East Pakistan party in parliamentary elections, triggering protests which he met with the most intense genocide of Muslims in history, killing 800,000 Bangladeshis in 8 months (by comparison, even the Taliban were only able to kill 1.5 million Muslims in 5 years, while Israel in 8 years of 2 intifadas has killed fewer than 3,000 Palestinians) and triggering a refugee wave of 10 million into India (the largest refugee crisis in history). Consul General Archer Blood of the US in then East Pakistan cabled home, “Our government has failed to denounce the suppression of democracy. Our government has failed to denounce atrocities…, while at the same time bending over backwards to placate the West Pakistan government... Our government has evidenced what many will consider moral bankruptcy”. Blood documented the selective genocide of East Pakistanis by the Pakistani military, writing “Full horror of Pak military atrocities will come to light sooner or later. I, therefore, question continued advisability of present US posture of pretending to believe Pakistan's false assertions...” US Ambassador to India Keating telegrammed, “"Am deeply shocked at massacre by Pakistani military in East Pakistan, appalled at possibility these atrocities are being committed with American equipment, and greatly concerned at United States vulnerability to damaging allegations of association with reign of military terror. I believe US should

(a) promptly, publicly and prominently deplore this brutality;

(b) should privately lay it on the line with Pakistan and so advise India; and,

(c) should announce unilateral abrogation of one time exception military supply agreement, and suspension of all military deliveries under the 1967 restrictive policy.

It is most important these actions be taken now, prior to inevitable and imminent emergence of horrible truths and prior to Communist initiatives to exploit situation. This is time when principles make best politics."

Even machiavellian Henry Kissinger recommended that the US lean on Pakistan to end killing and pave the way for East Pakistani autonomy. Nixon’s curt reply: “To all hands, don’t squeeze Yahya”, underlining “don’t” thrice. Further, the US military continued giving weapons to Pakistan despite a Congressional ban, and Nixon stated that “If there is a war, I will go on national television and ask Congress to cut off all aid to India.” Further, the Nixon administration encouraged China to intervene on Pakistan’s behalf and sent a naval task force to intimidate India. Fortunately, India was able to stop the genocide.

What is the point of this? Over the next thirty years, Republican Presidents have armed and financed Pakistan, which has been a military dictatorship for most of its history, despite its brutal violence towards its own people (besides the Bangladeshi genocide, use of chemical weapons against its Baluchi citizens in 1974), fostering of Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan (which came back to haunt the US on 9/11), and export of terrorism to India (where 10 times as many people have died to Islamic fundamentalist terrorists as on 9/11). The latest Pakistani dictator, General Musharraf, continues his sponsorship of terrorists, and is a man of treachery: India’s 2 summit initiatives in recent years were rewarded by an invasion and attempts to destroy India’s Parliament and Kashmir Assembly, while Musharraf makes a travesty of democracy with sham referenda and rigged elections.

Musharraf’s defenders say he is important in fighting terrorism and the alternatives are worse. This is unadulterated nonsense; Musharraf is an Arafat in suit-and-tie who speaks English. Pakistan created the Taliban, Pakistani intelligence links to al Qaeda are well-documented, and Pakistan is very likely Osama bin Laden’s landlord. Just as important, Pakistan has exported nuclear technology to North Korea not only for years but this past July, after 9/11, using C-130s provided by the US to boot. If God forbid North Korea drops nukes on the 37,000 US troops in South Korea, it will be courtesy of US-provided planes and money to Pakistan.

President Bush’s arms-open, eyes-closed embrace of Gen. Musharraf and the Saudi royals is appalling. It continues a tradition of hypocrisy bereft of foresight by Republican administrations (e.g., support for Saddam Hussain, Afghan mujahadeen) that have led to a careening cascade of colossal catastrophe. Will present US support for Pakistan cost us dearly in 10 or 20 years; will we rue this day of fellowship with fiends with events making 9/11 look like a spring picnic? It is unfathomable why President Bush has bartered his moral clarity for situational ethics, expediency for principle, reason for incoherence. Mr. Bush’s most memorable statements included “We will make no distinction between terrorists and those who harbor them…Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.” By supporting Pakistan’s military dictator and the Saudis, the real axis of evil, President Bush has cost his lot (and ours) with kingpins of terror.

2006-06-13T10:03:00.000-07:00

Lessons from the fall of Iraq

Published 4/18/03 at the Duke Chronicle

Iraqis' jubilation at the end of Saddam's reign holds lessons for all. It's time to demolish the petulant idiocies of the anti-American crowd:

1) Freedom must be achieved by those who seek it: Freedom is a precious gift but not one that should be denied because someone had the misfortune of being born under Saddam Hussein. And when the absence of freedom spawns nests of terrorism, aggression, genocide, and pursuit of nuclear weapons, it is morally imperative to intervene. If America must be the one to take out garbage others are unwilling or unable to face, so be it.

2) War is always a failure: When the U.S. galvanizes resources and American public support in the pursuit of a just aim, war is sometimes the only option that can accomplish anything of value. The UN was formed to keep the great powers from destroying each other; in that and in humanitarian assistance, it is effective. But the UN is incapable of "collective security" as each nation ultimately will look after its own; just as each nation will determine what affects its security, so will the U.S. There is no world government and given the nature of the rest of the world, that is a good thing. Much as courts would be impotent without enforcement, so are handwringing of naifs and idle talk of the Security Council. If America must be the enforcer that others are unwilling or unable to be, so be it.

3) Saddam is a bad guy, but...: The yes-but brigade has been clamoring since Sept. 11 pinning the blame for everyone's problems on the U.S. Stop. In a battle between imperfect good and pure evil, there is no choice. The U.S. is responsible for many bad things, but the U.S. is responsible for many more good things, more so than most nations and more than any great power ever; we must make our country better, which requires constructive criticism, not the whining self-loathing that's displaced patriotism as the last refuge of the scoundrel.

4) We should not attack those who did not attack us: The president must not just react but anticipate. If Clinton had invaded Afghanistan in 1999 to "get" Osama bin Laden (as reportedly he was to until Gen. Musharraf seized power in Pakistan), all the current protesters would have protested then as well. But they would have been wrong, just as they are wrong today. It is not acceptable to U.S. security for tyrants with any conceivable access to any terrorists to get nuclear weapons. Pakistan and North Korea are already two such states, and two too many; the U.S. can't let this club grow. Waiting for a mushroom cloud over Los Angeles is stupid and insane.

5) The consequences will be unpredictable, with more terrorism, instability, etc.: The consequences of inaction in the face of terrorism in the last 20 years (TWA, Beirut, World Trade Center I, USS Cole, the embassy bombings) are clear. The consequences of stability of Middle Eastern regimes in cesspools that pass for societies are clear. For Iraqis, the consequences of leaving Saddam in power far outweigh the regrettable and unintended civilian casualties of war. Fortune favors the bold. Analysis isn't an excuse for paralysis. The self-appointed spokesmen for the Iraqi people who did everything in their power to perpetuate Saddam's reign should be ashamed of themselves.

To the protesters that said "not in our name": Iraqis' freedom and joy are indeed not in your name. The lives of countless Iraqis who would have been killed by Saddam for years to come are not in your name. The light that now pierces the darkness of fear in the Middle East is not in your name. Nonetheless, admit the obvious and be happy for all those no longer under Saddam's boot.

2006-06-13T10:01:00.000-07:00

The silent majority

Published in abridged version 4/9/03

Liberalism is disgraced by those who usurp its mantle to propagate anti-American and anti-Israeli hateful drivel. Protestors not only have the right but the duty to state beliefs; that is the democratic, indeed the patriotic thing to do. But those with signs “We support our troops –when they shoot their officers!” are repulsive. Celebrators on indymedia.org of Asan Akbar, soldier who murdered 2 of his colleagues, are disgusting. Sedition’s pinnacle was scaled by Prof. Nicholas deGenova of Columbia University wishing, “Peace anticipates a world where the US has no place…I personally would like to see million Mogadishus” for US forces in Iraq.

These are not liberals; they are an unholy alliance of Stalinists & Islamic fundamentalists. Many anti-war protests have been organized by ANSWER, subsidiary of the World Workers’ Party. Protestors should reflect on WWP’s pedigree. It split from the Socialist Workers Party over the USSR's 1956 invasion of Hungary; WWP supported the invasion. WWP and ANSWER supported China’s massacre of Tiananmen Square, supported Milosevic after the butchery of Srebenica, and today support North Korea in the mass starvation of its citizens, Saddam Hussein, Iran’s repressive mullahs, Hamas’ suicide-bombers, and Colombia’s narco-terrorists. Par for the course – at recent protests, their speakers have condemned the “United Snakes of America” and declared the difference between Bush and Saddam is that “Saddam was elected.”

The other engine of protests are apologists or abettors of Islamic fundamentalism. Protestors labeling America and Israel as terrorist states routinely excuse suicide bombers who target civilians in Tunisia, Israel, India, Russia, Bali, and New York. It’s time to review their activities. Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, leader of the University of Idaho’s Muslim Students Association (MSA) is under arrest for visa fraud and suspected of facilitating online networking of terrorists, and collaborating with the Islamic Assembly of North America in laundering money to Iraq; the IANA is a Saudi-funded group that propagates jihad recruitment tapes and fatwas approving suicide bombing, terrorism, including a fatwa in May 2001 stating, “The mujahid must kill himself if this will kill a great number of enemies…this can be accomplished with bringing down an airplane on an important location.” The MSA of Queensborough Community College recently hosted a talk featuring leaders of al-Muhajiroun, the London-based group that celebrates 9/11 as a towering day in history; speaker Muhammad Faheed proclaimed, “We reject the UN, reject America, reject all law and order. Don’t lobby Congress because we don’t recognize Congress! The only relationship you should have with America is to topple it!…Eventually there will be a Muslim in the White House dictating Shariah.”

Recent decades have sadly witnessed liberals fall prey to cheap philosophies of relativism and self-loathing, a culture where, in the words of the late Patrick Moynihan, “articulation of purpose is valued over achievement of good”, enabling the above-noted imbeciles to hijack the left’s cockpit. Sadly, genuine debates about the merits of the war focusing on credible analyses of risks and benefits are poisoned by these loons’ anti-American agenda. Protests have degenerated into a menagerie of people ejecting body fluids into public places, exclusion of Iraqis who suffered under Saddam, and silly slogans. Those who decried UN sanctions now promote them; others say Saddam should be removed, but not by force. Laments of action’s risks omit inaction’s consequences.

American and British protestors who say the war is counterproductive have some credibility; others who feign moral outrage are hypocrites of the highest order. They did not and do not demonstrate against Saddam’s rape rooms or gassing of 100,000 Kurds, Algeria’s repression, the Taliban’s forcing Hindus to wear yellow stars and destruction of ancient Buddhas while killing 1.5 million Afghans, Syria’s murder of 20,000 in Hama in one week, China’s occupation of Tibet, Egypt’s persecution of Copts, Saudi Arabia’s gender apartheid, Pakistan’s genocide of Bangladeshis, Syria’s occupation of Lebanon, Pakistan’s invasion of India, Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara, Iran’s and North Korea’s continuous repression, and countless other atrocities that not only dwarf unintended casualties of US action but which are also deliberate. Where are human shields, fulminations, and boycotts for those victims? Disdain for democracies has morphed into tolerance of tyranny, a tragic betrayal of liberalism’s deepest values.

It is time for the liberal silent majority to retake the captaincy of the left in standing against enemies who would destroy everything liberals cherish. The need for struggle is not grounds for avoidance. Let us once more recall Moynihan, “Liberalism falters when it cannot cope with truth.”

2006-06-13T09:58:00.000-07:00

Whitewashing Truth

Abridged version published 3/19/03 at the Duke Chronicle

Sugarcoating and whitewashing Islamic fundamentalism has become a pastime for an odd assortment of loony leftists, so-called self-proclaimed “moderate” Muslims, warmed-over ex-Communists, and perennial anti-Americans. The 9/11 aftermath witnessed these terrorist apologists issue blaming the CIA or Mossad for the attacks (the Saudi Interior Minister continues to blame Zionists for 9/11), spreading the idiotarian & bigoted canard about 4,000 Jews missing work that day, and simultaneously saying it was just punishment for the US. Those guilty of imbecilic dissonance demonstrate refusal to deal with inconvenient facts and damning reality. Rather than expressing contrition for these lies or mercifully shut up, they switched to blaming the attacks on Israeli-Palestinian conflict, “globalization”, or US “imperialism”, further proving themselves unmoored from reality, untethered from fact.

Their logical leaps and contorted convolutions never cease, now excusing the mass murder of Australian tourists in Bali on resentment over repression of Palestinians. The suicide bombing of a bus in Manila, torching of churches and worshipers in Nigeria, and throat-slitting and beheading of unveiled Kashmiri women are also no doubt due to resentment over repression of Palestinians. When will this weirdly wicked farcical falsehood yield to the truth, which is uttered by Islamic fundamentalists themselves? When a French oil tanker was rammed by explosives, the Islamic Army of Aden declared, “We would have preferred to hit a US frigate. But it is no matter-the French are also infidels.” It is time to take fundamentalists at their word – they want to kill or convert all “infidels” to their perverse brand of Islam.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has little to do with Islamic fundamentalist hatred of others. Islamic fundamentalists seek to form over decades a caliphate state stretching from the Phillipines to Spain, and they have suicide bombed Filipinos, firebombed tourists in Indonesia, massacred Hindus in temples in India , enslaved and performed genocide on Coptic Christians & animists in Sudan, and try to impose sharia on Christians in Nigeria. What does any of this have to do with Israel and the US?

All of this would be happening whether or not the US or Israel existed. 9/11, the suicide-bombing of civilians in Israel, and all the other recent attacks, are part of the ideology that is Islamic fundamentalist imperalism. This ideology holds that non-Muslims are worthy only of conversion to Islam or death, sharia should obliterate the difference between church and state, the ideal society is 7^th century Arabia (the Taliban being a close second), mass-murderers of “infidels” get 72 celestial virgins in heaven, and peace on earth will come when the whole world is “dar-al-Islam” (Islamic), a peace of the grave. Sheikh Abu Hamza of London spoke for many, “If a kafir person (non-believer) goes in a Muslim country, he is like a cow. Anybody can take him. That is the Islamic law…If a kafir is walking by and you catch him, he's booty. You can sell him in the market…if Muslims cannot take them and sell them in the market, you just kill them. It's OK. I say the reality that's in the Muslim books. Whether I say it or not, it's in the books." The Toronto Khalid bin Al-walid mosque crystallized the attitude of Islamic fundamentalists: “wishing someone a Merry Christmas is like congratulating someone for murdering someone or having illicit sexual relations.”

We must stop sugarcoating Islamic fundamentalist imperialism, whether by romanticizing or justifying suicide bombing or passing off grotesqueness as “cultural difference.” Justifying suicide bombers anywhere by any grievance bestows Mohammad Atta justification by his grievances. Moral relativism is popular because it enables the obtuse to rationalize cowardice. Without moral absolutes there is no need to choose between good and evil, and no shame in choosing evil. Further, if all is relative, one need not even admit to abetting evil. But ultimately any cancer will kill you. Nouveaux chic morality only makes Islamic fundamentalist bloodlust fashionable. In the words of Burke and FDR, “All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

Moderate" Muslim-Americans too often indulge in a PC combination of issue-avoidance, subject-changing, blame-shifting, and victimology seemingly designed to deflect reality & confuse the unknowing, e.g., passing off "jihad" as inner cleansing & spiritual upliftment (while simultaneously attacking the word "crusade"). Just last week, al-Azhar University, perhaps the world’s most esteemed Islamic seminary, called for jihad by all Muslims on all Americans. In the real world, jihad kills. Some have written that the Quranic verses I presented in prior columns that I found inflammatory were misinterpreted or mistranslated; but then why do so many imams and sheikhs use those same translations to incite terrorism? If indeed such verses are mistranslated, it behooves Muslims to discredit & defrock the imams and sheikhs who commit blasphemy to justify mass murder; till then, silent indifference equals complicit assent.

2006-06-13T09:48:00.000-07:00

Self-Determination?

Published in abridged form on 2/26/03 at the Duke Chronicle

Glamorizing suicide bombing by Islamic fundamentalists and fringe leftists perverts freedom struggle’s meaning. History demonstrates self-determination doesn’t require mass murder. Besides Gandhi & Mandela, every region has heroes: Havel (Czechoslovakia), Walesa (Poland), Chammorro (Nicaragua), Aquino (Phillipines), the Dalai Lama (Tibet), Suu Kyi (Burma), Sakharov & Solzhenitsyn (Russia), Ramos-Horta (East Timor), Landsbergis (Lithuania), Alberdi (Argentina), Aylwin (Chile), the anonymous Chinese man who blocked a tank in 1989, and many others show nonviolence’s power against oppression.

Desire to destroy others by one’s own destruction is fueled by craven clerics selling murder for sex by peddling depraved fantasies of 72 celestial virgins for “martyrdom”. Modern suicide bombing is bereft of honor: even kamikazes attacked battleships and carriers, targets that could shoot back, unlike today’s suicide-bombers who hurl themselves not at tanks but buses, towers, discos, and restaurants.

Squeaky wheels don’t deserve grease, especially when suffering that seduces is needless or self-inflicted. Why are groups employing suicide-bombing deserving of sympathy/intervention? Why are Palestinians worthier than Kurds, Iraqi Shiites, Tibetans, or southern Sudanese who have suffered more? Won’t political success of suicide-bombing inspire others? Justifying suicide bombers anywhere by any grievance bestows Mohammad Atta justification by his grievances.

The inhuman brutality of Muslim to fellow Muslim (800,000 Pakistanis killed by Pakistan in 8 months in 1971, 20,000 Syrians killed in a week by Syria in 1982, 1.5 million Afghans killed by the Taliban in 5 years, 200,000 Iraqis killed by Saddam in 1988, 5,000 Palestinians killed by Jordan in one month in 1970, 300,000 Palestinians ethnically cleansed by Kuwait in 1991) dwarfs anything done by Israel (3,000 Palestinians killed in 8 years of both intifadas) or the US; those ceaselessly blaming Israel & America forget these, revealing their indignation as hollow. Suicide bombing is not due to occupation, for then Kurds would be blasting pizza-parlors in Baghdad, Lebanese blowing up buses in Damascus, Western Saharans blowing up resorts in Rabat, Tibetans leveling discos in Beijing, and Palestinians would have practiced it for the first 29 years of occupation and on their Jordanian and Kuwaiti tormentors. Suicide bombing is due to brainwashing in media, madrassahs, and mosques by “clerics” and “leaders” drunk with lust for power and happy to barter their followers’ children’s blood. We must stop being seduced by Palestinians claiming monopolies on suffering or occupation. Many have grievances, yet only Islamic fundamentalists glorify and practice suicide-bombing on a mass scale. While every community has terrorists, only Islamic fundamentalists have global reach & aspirations of conquest, oil money, esteem of multitudes, and men with fantasies of celestial virgins.

Palestinians must acknowledge there was a good deal 3 years ago (removal of settlements, an independent demilitarized Palestine with 98% of the West Bank & Gaza (and further compensatory land from Israel proper), right of refugee return to Palestine (and aid for those who don’t), sovereignty over East Jerusalem, free access to all holy sites for all faiths; this was rejected by Arafat who demanded right of return for refugees to Israel itself and total control over the Temple Mount/Haram-al-Sharif, which constitute forfeiture of Israel’s political and religious reasons for existence. Palestinians must recognize that Israel has a right to exist and will not go away, there is a political price to pay for starting 3 wars & losing, and it was galactically stupid to spurn good-faith offers from Clinton-Barak to pursue idiotic violence with Sharon & Bush. Proponents for Palestinian self-determination should realize no one will care about that more than Palestinians—Arab countries who never offered Palestinians independence pre-1967 and keep refugees in hell-holes while bankrolling teenagers blowing themselves up are happy to fight Israel to the last Palestinian, Europeans will feign sympathy to keep trade concessions, and in the US, goodwill of many Americans sympathetic to self-determination was irreparably destroyed by Palestinian celebrations of 9/11 which were unforgivable (even Vietnamese did not celebrate 9/11). Suicide-bombing conveys that self-determination is secondary to destroying Israel, which is unacceptable and unattainable. If Palestinians don’t care about self-determination (blowing oneself up rejects life, requisite for self-determination), why should anyone else?

Ultimately, moral judgment must be rendered on suicide bombing and Islamic fundamentalism by Muslims themselves. Due to church-pedophilia scandals, Catholics felt shame as Catholics, and forced out a cardinal; it is incumbent upon Muslims to defrock imams sanctioning mass murder. Ideals which Muslims proclaim are belied by revolting realities practiced in their name – love dies where hatred is preached, freedom wilts under despotry, wisdom withers when all problems are blamed on Jews, Hindus, & America, learning is unattainable when free scholarship is banned, tolerance flees where dissent earns death, equality is a sham when women and minorities are enslaved, justice is mocked by shari’a with a travestic set of rules for believers and another for women and “disbelievers”, and peace is a veiled fraud when the peace of the grave is pursued by killers with Hitler’s enthusiasm. Silent indifference equals complicit assent.

2006-06-13T09:46:00.000-07:00

Free Speech, Slavery, and Islam

Abridged form published 2/15/03 at the Duke Chronicle

It is tragically morbid that champions of civil rights, liberals, now seem to cover for the most illiberal force on the planet, Islamic fundamentalists, who destroy free speech and enslave blacks, and heap blame on US policy but ask not the Muslim world to take a hard, long look in the mirror.

These trends converge in Europe, where Michael Houellebecq, a French writer who stated that “Islam is the stupidest religion.” That dumb and wrong remark landed him in a criminal trial, where a Muslim plaintiff and spokesman for a Paris mosque stated, “Words have a price. One can kill with a word. Freedom stops when Muslims feel insulted.” Echoing Salman Rushdie’s death fatwa is ominous: if Western’s society’s bedrock is no match for Muslim grievance, the future of public discourse is bleak. This is not isolated: Islamic activitists in Europe seek to ban Oriana Fallaci’s book The Rage and the Pride, and most ironically, Somali Muslim Ayaan Ali, who immigrated to Holland, was forced by Islamic fundamentalists’ death threats to flee the nation that has been a haven for refugees for centuries, because she criticized domestic violence among Muslims.

In America, Muslim author Kola Boof and UCLA law professor Khaled abou el Fadl received death threats from Islamic fundamentalists and no support from free speech advocates. A Muslim legal group tries to censor Alan Dershowitz’s writings. David Frum, who defended Isioma Daniel (the Nigerian journalist whose commentary earned a fatwa and Islamic fundamentalist riots killing hundreds), received a letter reminding him of “the fatal consequences” of ignoring what is objectionable to Muslims. Bat Ye’or & Andrew Bostom were shouted down at Georgetown by Muslim students preventing them from speaking on history of Jews under Islamic rule. Political correctness yoked to Islamic fundamentalist intolerance bodes ill for free society, portending a Trojan horse of sharia disguised as multiculturalism corroding freedom and justice. Where are the guardians of free speech, liberals, defending Boof, el Fadl, Fallaci, Hirsi Ali, Houellebecq, Ye’or, Bostom, Frum, Daniel, and Dershowitz? Preoccupied championing convicted terrorist Laura Whitehorn?

Now, to slavery. Liberals blinded by PC to Islamic fundamentalist imperialism’s evil are committing historicide, whitewashing slavery’s history in Islamic empires as “not as bad as the Atlantic slave trade.” Slavery in Islamic empires for centuries involved castration of men guarding harems and religious sanction for masters to sleep with slave-girls, persisting today in Sudan openly and covertly in Saudi Arabia as concubinage. Those saying Quranic verses justifying slavery and sleeping with slave-girls are acceptable given 7^th century mores forget that the Constitution’s three-fifths compromise has been rightly judged immoral; in any case, such verses compromise shari’a as a timeless, complete, and immutable rulebook of ethics, hence, other verses inciting violence should also be questioned. Slavery is always wrong; it is time for the Islamic world to ask forgiveness for its legacy of slavery and conquest much as several Western leaders have apologized for colonialism and slavery.

Shari’a law and imams justify slavery today. Islamic terrorist groups quote Hadith (Sahih Muslim 8:22 and 8:29) that coitus interruptus is permitted with slave-girls and captives (to avoid impregnating women and consequent reduction in ransom value) and that is permitted to have intercourse with captive women, as their marriages are abrogated on capture. Official Saudi cleric Sheikh Saad Al-Buraik told “Muslim brothers” in 2002 to “not have any mercy on Jews, their blood, their money, their flesh. Their women are yours to take, legitimately. God made them yours. Why don't you enslave their women?” In Sudan, a fatwa in 1992 endorsed by the oil-funded theocracy states “a non-Muslim is a non-believer standing against the spread of Islam, and Islam grants the freedom of killing him”.

Hundreds of thousands of black Africans in Sudan and Mauritania are enslaved by Arab masters invoking justification of Quranic verses cited in earlier columns. According to Abannik Hino of Wingate University, over 2,000 Sudanese slaves are shipped to the Arab world annually. Dr. George Ayittey, a Ghanaian-born professor at American University, commented on lack of Western outrage: “We feel betrayed, not only by our leaders in Africa, but by our fellow Africans in the diaspora. While African-American leaders played important roles in dismantling apartheid in South Africa, they maintain a passive stance on Arab apartheid and enslavement of black Africans.” Where indeed are liberals, inheritors of abolitionism? Too busy divesting from Israel & bashing America? Rage sadly is not opposite of cowardice: “liberals” frothing is reserved for democracies that provide freedom for slanderous prattle, not Islamic fundamentalists who would end freedom of speech and freedom from bondage.

Liberals’ blind eye to imams’ words is epitomized in Denmark, where Imam Mustafa Aden said, “It is good for girls to be circumcised. It is a sign they are true Muslims”, recommending removal of clitoris and labia for girls and stating Islam takes precedence over Danish law. While female genital mutilation has nothing to do with Islam, this is a clear example of Islamic fundamentalists perverting religion without opposition from liberals or moderate Muslims.

Imbued with Wahhabism and Salafism, sects borne in Saudi Arabia, Islamic fundamentalists view most Muslims as apostates. With oil money, they’ve exported toxic notions and hatched terrorism from Indonesia to Nigeria. Now they want to achieve Islamic fundamentalist empire. Liberals and moderate Muslims must open their eyes: Islamic fundamentalist imperialism suppresses free speech and nourishes slavery as well as wallows in mass murder.

2006-06-13T09:44:00.000-07:00

Defining a religion

Abridged form published 1/15/03 at the Duke Chronicle

Religions are defined not only by ideals but by realities, not just by their deepest & most beautiful insights, but by their adherents’ behavior. So while Christianity’s profoundest principles are mercy and forgiveness, the reality of Christianity in the Middle Ages and colonial period was inquisitions & empires. When moderate Muslims state terrorist attacks are disconnected from Islam, they ignore the reality that Islamic fundamentalist imperialists act in the name of Islam and Muslims, claiming “true Islam’s” mantle from conspicuously absent moderates. This reality must be confronted especially because many Muslims argue against separating church from state, hence, Islam exists as spiritual ideal and political reality. Until the realization that theocracies cannot be democracies (and thus have no place in politics or law) dawns throughout the Islamic world, actions of self-declared Muslims perpetrating violence in Islam’s name define key realities of the Islamic world. Saying terrorism is disconnected from Islam is a smokescreen employed to abdicate responsibility to face reality.

Over centuries, Christians broke the Church’s stranglehold over politics and ended religious persecution with moral and physical force, teachings and wars. The founding moral flaw of the US, slavery, was confronted intellectually and ended in 4 years of titanic war; persistent racism was assailed with the castration of the KKK, civil rights movement, etc., requiring active participation of colossal leaders and ordinary people. Due to the church-pedophilia scandal, Catholics felt shame as Catholics, and forced change. Yet Islamic fundamentalist imperialism has usurped the face of Islam with little resistance from moderate Muslims. Today when some Americans oppose conflict with Iraq, they protest “Not in my name” or “No blood for oil”; where are moderate Muslims protesting the actions of Islamic fundamentalists with “Not in our name” banners or “No blood for Quran”? There are countless demonstrations by Muslim-Americans against Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, but perhaps none against Osama bin Laden’s treatment of Americans. Replies that Islamic fundamentalists don’t represent Muslims are irrelevant; they claim to without a murmur of renunciation and are esteemed by multitudes throughout the Islamic world cheering bin Laden as Robin Hood, e.g., 2/3 of Kuwaitis believe 9/11 was justified. It’s vital not to let others speak in your name if you disagree, especially if they speak with guns and bombs. Rather than take on terrorist co-religionists, Muslim-American organizations compare themselves to Jews in Weimar Germany, an offensive depiction of America that is absurd when one notes FBI reports that twice as many Jews as Muslims have been victims of hate crimes in America since 19 Muslims killed 3,000 Americans.

Nowhere is silence of moderate Muslims’ voices more deafening than in discourse on suicide bombing, which glues the hydra-headed Islamic fundamentalist imperialism. Numerous imams, including at the holy mosque of Mecca and the esteemed al-Azhar university in Egypt, issue fatwas approving suicide bombing, while “opposing” Muslims remain silent, state it is merely counterproductive while being nonjudgmental, ignore the enticement of 72 celestial virgins, or proffer inane excuses for the inexcusable. Apologists for suicide bombing who qualify moral judgment with equivocal “Yes, but”s have regard for neither history nor consequence. Why are groups employing suicide bombing and terrorism more deserving of sympathy or intervention? With regard to account, why are Palestinians more worthy than Kurds, Tibetans, or southern Sudanese who have suffered much more? With respect to precedent, won’t political success of suicide-bombing inspire other groups to use it? Squeaky wheels don’t always deserve grease, especially when suffering that seduces (i.e., suicide-bombing) is needless or self-inflicted.

Saying suicide-bombing is used by the weapon-less is nonsense: Gandhi, Mandela, and King achieved tremendous success without violence. Waving them off as unique reveals a soft bigotry that Palestinians and Muslims cannot distinguish right from wrong, valor from cruelty, or self-determination from mass murder. Every region has heroes: Havel (Czechoslovakia), Walesa (Poland), Chammorro (Nicaragua), Aquino (Phillipines), the Dalai Lama (Tibet), Suu Kyi (Burma), Sakharov & Solzhenitsyn (Russia), Ramos-Horta (East Timor), Landsbergis (Lithuania), Alberdi (Argentina), Aylwin (Chile), the anonymous Chinese man who blocked a tank in 1989, and many others show nonviolence’s power against oppression. Most achieved success, and others continue fighting despite overwhelming odds without murdering civilians, even if their opponents do.

Another platitude, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” romanticizes suicide bombers as comparable to Washington, Che Guevara, Patrick Henry, or de Gaulle. This is the menace of cliché: statements without substance pervert history, as those leaders targeted military assets, never sending suicide-bombers to kill opponents’ civilians or children. Even kamikazes attacked battleships and carriers, unlike today’s cowardly suicide bombers who attack not tanks but buses, towers, and restaurants.

The world cannot afford the luxury of waiting centuries for Islamic societies to evolve.
Denial equals criminal indifference; the prophet Muhammad said, “Whoever sees evil, let him change it with his hand, and if not able then with his mouth and if still not able then hate it within his heart …Allah does not punish the general public because of wrongdoing of specific people unless they see evil while able to stop it and do not.” Justifying suicide bombers anywhere by whatever grievance bestows Mohammad Atta justification by his grievances.

Moderate Muslims must choose whether or not to let megalomaniacs, liars, misogynists, and murderers hijack societies and religion and pilot them into destruction’s abyss. Ideals which Muslims proclaim are belied by revolting realities practiced in their name by Islamic fundamentalists – love dies where hatred is preached, freedom wilts under despotry, wisdom withers when all problems are blamed on Jews, Hindus, & America, learning is unattainable when free scholarship is banned, tolerance flees where dissent earns death, equality is a sham when women and minorities are enslaved, justice is mocked by shari’a with a travestic set of rules for believers and another for women and “disbelievers”, and peace is a veiled fraud when the peace of the grave is pursued by killers with Hitler’s enthusiasm. Sidelines are not moral high ground; silent indifference equals complicit assent. Unequivocally repudiating and forswearing terrorist methods and imperialist aims of Islamic fundamentalism by moderate Muslims is overdue. This requires calling the present jihad by mujahadeen and martyrs awaiting paradise its name, hirabah (unholy war) by mufsidoon (evildoers) bound for jahannam (hell).

2006-06-13T09:42:00.000-07:00

Democrats must oppose Islamic dictatorships

Published 12/4/02 in abridged form at the Duke Chronicle

Overdue introspection by Democrats is sadly dominated by those who would sacrifice principles for power and those who would sacrifice both for ego. Too many “Democrats” mimic Republicans to win office (failing to wonder why voters wouldn’t vote for the real thing) and too many “liberals” chase chic causes like bashing America & globalization or whitewashing Islamic fundamentalism for sheer narcissism.

A coherent vision for America that is superior to the President’s has yet to emerge. There is no shame in being liberal, either in foreign policy or domestic affairs. On both counts, Democrats have great scope to challenge the Republican agenda.

After Vietnam and Iran’s hostage crisis, Democrats ceded defense and foreign affairs to Republicans for a quarter century. Yet liberals have an honored and esteemed record in this arena. All 3 of the 20^th century conflicts in which America fought and built democracies in the aftermath (World Wars I and II, Korean War), as well as the Berlin Airlift and Cuban missile crisis, were won by Democratic Presidents; the mantle of Wilson, FDR, Truman, and Kennedy should be reclaimed by Democrats in contrast to the cynical support of dictatorships which is the hallmark of Republican administrations.

It is therefore past time that the Democrats challenge the President on why he continues to mollycoddle Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The first is the prime exporter of ideology and money for Islamic fundamentalists, the breeding ground of 15 of 9/11’s hijackers (for which there has yet been no apology and no change in the brainwashing that passes for society and education in that country). While evidence accumulates that the wife of the Saudi ambassador to the US sent tens of thousands of dollars to the wife of a man who gave thousands of dollars to 2 of 9/11’s hijackers, the administration ignores, suppresses, or brushes off these connections. This blind eye is of a pattern with Bush administration efforts to spirit out the relatives of bin Laden after 9/11 prior to interrogation, efforts to block the 9/11 victims’ lawsuit against the Saudi royals, and the appointment of Henry Kissinger (with long connections to Saudi royals and Pakistani dictators) to chair the 9/11 inquiry. Might long personal and financial connections between the Bush family and the Saudi royals through the Carlyle financial group have anything to do with all this?

Meanwhile, Pakistan is a country where the Islamic fundamentalist gunman who killed motorists in Langley, Virginia, was honored with a moment of silence in its National Assembly (as well as a hero’s funeral). Pakistan’s leading exports are nuclear weapons to North Korea and terrorists to India (ironically coupled to their import of terrorists besieged in Kunduz last year). Pakistan traded nuclear weapons technology for ballistic missiles from North Korea not just for years before 9/11 but this past July, using American military transport planes provided after 9/11 to boot (conveniently ignored by the President)! Bush administration officials now seek to give billions of dollars more aid to General Musharraf, continuing the fine Republican tradition of supporting military dictators, especially Pakistani ones (including Yahya Khan who committed the most intense genocide ever of Muslims, on Bangladeshis, in 1971 and Zia, who was instrumental in propagating shari’a in Pakistan and arming the Afghan mujahadeen).

“Allies” Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are dictatorships (one by mullahs and royals, the other by the military) that created the Taliban and continue to succor Islamic fundamentalists; their regimes are charter members of the axis of evil. During the Cold War, Republicans pioneered the tradition of foreign policy predicated on hypocritical expediency for the sake of oil or geopolitical games, engineering coups against democratically elected leaders in favor of military or right-wing dictators in Iran, Chile, Guatemala, Indonesia, and Zaire. This sorry saga of supporting dictators is now reaching new heights in the Bush administration with policies on Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Eritrea, and the administration’s support for the military coup in Venezuala earlier this year. Pinnacles of perversity are scaled by President Bush’s hosting 9/11’s checkbook terrorist paymasters at his ranch and his giving hundreds of millions of American taxpayer dollars to subsidize General Musharraf, landlord of much of the Taliban and al Qaeda, and quite possibly Osama bin Laden himself. Support of Saddam Hussein and the Afghan mujahadeen during the Reagan era returned to haunt us, as myopic and colossal errors in the guise of pragmatism. The US is poised to repeat these mistakes on a much larger scale with its continued support of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan; the argument that current regimes beat the alternatives is self-servingly dishonest, for the current regimes succor terrorists to blackmail others. It is incumbent on Democrats to challenge the President’s folly by emphasizing that holding fast to our democratic ideals best serves our interests in fighting Islamic fundamentalist imperialism.

Other domestic issues offers many opportunities for Democrats to lay out an agenda for progress with creative and innovative solutions for national problems, which I will explore in a subsequent column. But on national security, candor compels that the Democrats make the President realize that by continuing support for Saudi Arabia & Pakistan, he betrays the moral clarity he donned as the mantle of his presidency.

2006-06-13T09:41:00.000-07:00

Opposition to Hate

Published 11/13/02 at the Duke Chronicle

Jerry Falwell is a bigot and idiot for calling the prophet Mohammed a "terrorist." Such comments should be denounced from every quarter. Ibrahim Hooper, spokesperson for the Council on American-Islamic Relations said, "When it comes to hate, silence equals consent." Hooper's statement is beautiful and absolutely right. Yet CAIR and other Muslim-American organizations are strangely mute when it comes to the diarrhea of hate spewing from mosques and madrassahs all over the Middle East.

Every Friday, imams and grand muftis at mosques in Yemen, Qatar, Iraq, and even the holy mosque in Mecca, pray: "O God, destroy the Jews, destroy the Christians, destroy the Hindus"; "O God, the Jews and Crusaders are the filthy sons of pigs and monkeys. Destroy the Jews who the Qu'ran describes as wicked"; "O God, destroy all disbelievers. O Muslims, rise up in jihad. Terrorize the disbelievers in their homes"; "Jewish women are yours to take, legitimately. Enslave them"; "Islam allows acts such as the Bali attack." Arab newspapers proclaim that Jews eat the blood of Muslim children for Purim and Passover, and TV stations propagate the lies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This hate reaches across the oceans.

In Greensboro on June 21 of this year, the Ameer of the Islamic Center proclaimed, "Remember, you cannot appease the Jews who run this country.... They will pursue and persecute you." On 60 Minutes, a Muslim high school student in Brooklyn declared that if she "blew up a naval base, [she] would go to heaven." Textbooks at the Islamic Saudi Academy near Washington teach that it is "okay to hurt and steal from those who are kufr [non-Muslim]" and that on Judgment Day, trees will say, "Oh Muslim, oh servant of God, here is a Jew hiding behind me. Come here and kill him."

The co-founder of Global Relief, an Islamic "charity" in the United States, declares that "financing jihad is part of Islam" and that by targeting terrorist financing, the United States is "attacking Islam." The executive director of the American Muslim Council declared in front of the White House, "I support Hamas and Hezbollah" (groups which have killed hundreds of Americans). In London, al-Mujahiroun held a celebratory conference on Sept. 11 this year titled "A Towering Day in History." Forgetting the disgusting pun, where is the outrage at this hate speech? Where is the recognition that when it comes to root causes, this cancerous venom is front and center? It is immoral to seek the protection of the Constitution yet not stand up for its principles against those who despise them. Indeed, when it comes to hate, silence equals consent.

Make no mistake: Sept. 11, where men coveted murder over their own lives, was a hate crime. The difference between Falwell and the Middle East's bigoted imams is not their hate, but that Falwell does not fund, call or inspire his followers to murder. Indeed, since Sept. 11, Americans at all levels--from President George W. Bush's visit to a mosque to Rudolph Giuliani's assigning police to protect Islamic centers on the very evening of Sept. 11 to the average citizen--have taken measures to prevent an anti-Muslim backlash in an admirable display of tolerance. Sadly, this has not been reciprocated in any substantial way by the Muslim-American community.

While Muslim-Americans hold countless protests against Israel's treatment of Palestinians, have they held a single one protesting Osama bin Laden's treatment of Americans? Perfunctory condemnations and pro forma condolences do not count; where is the fervor, the rage against the mass murder of fellow Americans as there is about treatment of Palestinians? Governments and organizations from around the world took out full-page ads in the New York Times condemning the terrorists in the weeks after Sept. 11. Was there a single one from Muslim-American organizations? While Bush was pounced on for using "crusade" to describe defensive military action, Harvard's commencement speaker disingenuously airbrushed away the call to violence associated with "jihad," Muslim-American women sue Florida and Illinois for the "right" to get a driver's license while being picture-IDed with their veils on, but emit not a peep about Saudi women not being allowed to drive.

Muslim-Americans rightly call for a dialogue on Islam, but whenever anyone questions inflammatory verses in the Qu'ran used by imams to inspire murder and justify targeting of civilians, they are ignored, accused of bigotry or obfuscated by red herrings like Timothy McVeigh and Baruch Goldstein. But McVeigh, Goldstein, etc., are universally reviled within their communities, whereas Osama bin Laden is cheered by media, mosques, and madrassahs. More importantly Islamic fundamentalists cross oceans to kill thousands, demonstrating both global ambition and reach. Young men are continually brainwashed into mass-murdering others by enticement of getting 72 celestial virgins. On Sept. 11 not only Palestinians but Kuwaitis (even the information minister) celebrated.

There is a large problem-not one or two crazies, but an ideology with numerous sympathizers-Islamic fundamentalist imperialism-that seeks to destroy Israel, shatter India, cripple the United States and ultimately convert the whole world to a perverse brand of Islam. The problem is not just terrorism but its aims. It seems to me that it is not for Americans to decree what is Islam and what it is not. The decision of what Islam is, whether it will be defined by Islamic Jihad and its ilk, must be made by Muslims, and it must be made by them assailing terrorist co-religionists rather than those outside the religion who dare to inject uncomfortable facts into the conversation.

And until moderate Muslims castrate these psychopaths as the United States did to the KKK, make their preachers stop using sex with celestial virgins to sell mass murder by suicide, preach to young men that terrorism leads not to 72 virgins in heaven but one 72-year-old virgin in hell, that funding terrorism is neither charitable nor Islamic and ultimately repudiate not only the terrorist methods but the imperialist ideology of Islamic fundamentalism, there is a huge problem for the civilized world.

For if moderate Muslims won't take out their own garbage, sadly the militaries of democracies will have to.

2006-06-13T09:39:00.000-07:00

So-called liberals need to face facts

Abridged form published 11/6/02 at the Duke Chronicle

I’m proud to be a liberal. I’ve been a liberal all my life, espousing civil rights, environmental protection, fiscal prudence, energy independence, gun control, educational uplift, stands against military dictatorships, etc. I believe firmly in individuals thinking of causes greater than their own and translating such impulses into public policies to change society for the better.

Which I why I have been appalled, disgusted, and ashamed at the direction so many “liberals” have taken in the weeks and months since 9/11. Almost immediately, many left-wingers blamed America or Israel for the attacks (some still do). When idiotarian canards that the CIA or Mossad were responsible were shown transparently absurd and asinine, these same people blamed US policy with respect towards Muslims or Israel as the “root cause” for the attacks, conveniently forgetting the attacks were hatched while a US President worked harder and engineered a better deal than anyone in history for a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that same President had staked American blood and treasure for no material interest to protect Muslims in Kosovo, Bosnia, and Somalia while the so-called “guardians of Islam” behind 9/11 did nothing. American attacks on al-Qaeda and their Taliban hosts continue to be met with loathing and outrage that the US government would take action to meet its primary responsibility, protecting its citizens. Any US military action now is tarred with accusations of “imperialism”.

So-called “liberals” who mindlessly chant these taunts should reflect on facts. Who targets innocent civilians, whether in hijacked planes, office towers, Hindu shrines in India, Christian missions in Pakistan, discos and pizza parlors in Tel Aviv, beach resorts in Bali, theater-goers in Moscow, or Kenyan embassy workers in Nairobi? Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. What is the agenda of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists? It’s not difficult to find out. Read the words of Osama bin Laden’s fatwas, the International Islamic Front, Mohammed Atta’s farewell letter, or the sermons of countless imams and clerics in the Middle East. Unlike “liberals”, they think not in terms of today or tomorrow, but have objectives over the next 50 years: destroying Israel, shattering India, neutralizing Europe, crippling the US, and forming an Islamic caliphate state based on sharia modeled on the Taliban from Andalusia (the Arabic word for conquered Spain in the Middle Ages) to the Philippines, with world conversion to their perverse brand of Islam to follow. It’s not an implausible scenario, considering their access to oil money and brainwashable young men, Israel’s existential struggle against terrorists within and hostile armies surrounding it, America’s porousness, proliferation of nuclear weapons, the death of a thousand cuts being inflicted on India, and Europe’s demographic & moral implosion. There is a term for this – imperialism, Islamic fundamentalist imperialism.

When “liberals” denounce the US for the regrettable but minimized & unavoidable civilian casualties of US action in Afghanistan, do they consider the consequences of the Taliban regime to Afghans, leave alone Americans? The Taliban slaughtered 1.5 million Afghans in their reign’s 5 years; US action stopped an annual murder of 300,000 Afghans, let alone allow girls to go to school without being beaten! Why do “liberals” now defend one of the world’s most repressive regimes, Iraq, which has slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Kurds and Shiites, used chemical & biological weapons on its own people, and seeks nuclear weapons to expand a reign of terror? Why do “liberals” whitewash the world’s most illiberal regime, Saudi Arabia, which institutionalizes gender apartheid and stoning of gays while banning freedom of speech and religion? Why do “liberals” turn a blind eye in the name of “multiculturalism” and “relativism” to the sharia laws that mandate stoning of women who have children out-of-wedlock (even if due to rape) in Nigeria or to similar laws that give women half the legal credibility of men in Pakistan? Is the answer a covert racism that Muslims are incapable of freedom, democracy, and knowing right from wrong? Why are “liberals” eager to pin the root causes for 9/11 on the US, but dumbfounded when asked for the root cause of Daniel Pearl’s murder? It recalls Stalin’s remark, “The death of one is a tragedy, that of a million a statistic.”

It takes true courage to be a dove, but no honor accrues to being an ostrich. The Procrustean logic of blaming all the world’s ills on the US blinds these “liberals” to real evil. Shredding facts to fit pet notions is a poor alibi for the cowardice of willful ignorance of reality. I implore fellow liberals to think of the consequences were Islamic fundamentalist imperialism to succeed. The test of truth is not who is the conventionally weaker power nor is the measure of morality zealousness for suicide; only intellectually sloths fail to grasp that. Clemenceau said “He who is not liberal in his youth has no heart; he who does not become conservative with age has no head.” Sadly, too many liberals have lost not just their heads but their hearts, for in trying to be kind to the cruel, they have been seduced by the self-serving sirens of Islamic fundamentalists, becoming cruel to the kind. Saying America deserved 9/11 is every bit as repulsive as saying a rape victim “asked for it”. It’s tough enough to be a sane liberal as it is these days; I think I speak for many in hoping not to have to be a recovering liberal.

2006-06-13T09:37:00.000-07:00

Confronting Big Issues

Written Fall 2002

Bill Joy, founder of Sun Microsystems, wrote an article in Wired Magazine, in which he expressed his deep reservations about the exponential advances in the fields of genetic engineering, robotics, and nanotechnology. In short, he feels that scientific development has left moral and ethical development in the dust in a race that civilization does not know where it leads. The ramifications of his thesis should concern us all.

The question of whether science, and ultimately, knowledge is a good thing, is an ancient one. There is an old Indian joke that it is easy to convince an uneducated man, and easier still to convince a wise man, but even God himself cannot convince the half-learned man. History has shown that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, and that science & technology are good or bad depending on who is using them and for what purpose.

Exploration of the world, the human body, and the atom have perhaps been the Triple Crown of scientific advancement over the last millenium. Each advance has been a double-edged sword: trade and colonialism, medicine and biological weapons, the theory of relativity and nuclear weapons have all gone hand in hand. Mr. Joy has argued with passion and tenacity that recent advances will become confluent and give us the opportunity not just to destroy ourselves or other creatures, but to alter ourselves and evolution itself. It conjures to mind an image of a man playing with fire along a slippery slope overlooking an abyss.

So what to do? Mr. Joy proposes that we as a society consciously decide to abjure certain fields of research. But I feel it does no good to close Pandora’s box once it is opened. There are no glib solutions, but several necessary actions.

First and foremost, people have to start caring. That probably sounds corny, but the lives of most of the people around us have become so hectic that they never think of these kinds of issues, of problems greater than themselves. But all it takes is a little reflection to realize and understand that even if something is not your problem today because it is removed from your daily existence, it may be your problem tomorrow or your children’s problem the day after. There is a culture of apathy that permeates America, and that more than anything else is what hamstrings action and resolve.

Second, we need to ensure education and scientific literacy for the population at large. That is where we can take concrete action. Those who work at technology firms or who have significant material or political resources can mobilize action to make long-term changes in the way our schools and communities educate youth and adults on scientific issues. If people don’t understand science, they will likely revert to apathy and cede their sovereignty to those who would abuse it. We must become active participants in revitalizing our school system and increasing awareness of the general public to scientific and technological issues. We must harness technology not merely to make millions for a few but to put in place a sound infrastructure and education system so that the masses can become engaged in the scientific processes that are happening around them. The issues of genetic engineering, health insurance guided by genetic profiles, cloning, information technology and privacy, and interfaces between biological and computer systems need to be discussed publicly and sincerely.

Third, in our own lives, those who are in positions to do so, which includes all of us, should try to appreciate and gauge the long-term effects of our actions. That is a nebulous sentence, but again, we need to look beyond ourselves and realize that life is not a rat race; besides, as someone said, even if you win the rat race, you’re still a rat! Life is a team marathon with the rest of society and also a relay race where one generation passes on the torch to the next. So, I humbly ask that all of us at some point take a step back, think about the big picture, and see how you can make it better, no matter how small the way.

2006-06-13T09:35:00.000-07:00

The importance of voting

Published 10/16/02 at the Duke Chronicle

November’s election is right around the corner, and it is worth noting at this point that our system of elections is one of the defining features of our country. All too often, our democracy is taken for granted, especially by the young, and it is therefore essential to call on college students, the leaders and citizens of tomorrow and thus those with the most long-term stake in this country, to go and participate in the vote.

Young people aged 18-24 constitute almost 13% of the voting-eligible population yet only 7% of actual voters; barely a third of them voted in the 2000 election, whereas 72% of those over 65 voted. And of course, children don’t vote. Is it any wonder then that issues like Social Security and Medicare get far more attention and dollars than education and college tuition?

Apathy among the young for political participation bodes ill for future policymaking. Our common engagement in social and national policy is the bedrock for key decisions in all facets of life, large and small, and distinguishes our society in so many ways from other societies where repression is the rule. What a jarring contrast the last year has afforded us – on Sept. 11, firefighters in the citadel of a free society hurled themselves at death to save others, while this past March, officials in Saudi Arabia, the nest of Islamic fundamentalism, blocked girls from fleeing their burning school because they did not have their head-scarves on, condemning them to death by immolation. Every point of view is aired freely on Iraq and war, with congressional representatives even criticizing the President from Baghdad; does anyone ever see anyone aside from Saddam speaking in his meetings with his general staff? A tight and unpredictable race for control of the House and Senate is in the offing, while in Pakistan, the only Islamic nation with nuclear weapons, a military dictator stages sham referenda and phony elections with most of the major candidates barred from participating, as like most of that nation’s history.

But I digress. The point to note is that our common engagement in our nation is something to be proud of, cherished, treasured, and most importantly, nourished with our continued participation. There are so many issues at stake. Beyond Iraq and foreign policy, there are issues of critical importance to the renewal of our country’s domestic foundations – education, environment, health care, energy independence, preventing corporate abuse & minimizing corporate welfare, reforming while safeguarding Social Security & Medicare, judicial appointments to federal courts. A conservative has much at stake, especially if one wants to back the President on Iraq; a liberal has even more so, with the Senate the only Democratically-controlled institution in the 3 branches of government. So wherever you stand on the political spectrum, participate and make your voice heard. 90% of life is just showing up. So go and vote this November.

2006-06-13T09:23:00.001-07:00

Questions on the Quran Part II

Abridged form published on 9/25/02 at the Duke Chronicle

Last spring, I presented verses from the Quran used to justify terrorism and injustice in many mosques, media, and madrassahs and which I believe are employed in the motivational framework of Islamic fundamentalism. My inquiries were in hope for exchange and understanding, for Islam promotes ijtihad--freedom of thought and independent thinking. Sadly, some respondents to my column vilified me as “bigoted”, “anti-Muslim and anti-Arab”, “ignorant”, “blind”, and grouped me with Jeff Greene as a slanderer. Unlike Greene and the recent letter-writers, I will not descend to the gutter of ad hominem attacks, for using such attacks in lieu of logical argument reveals intellectual mediocrity unbefitting an university education.

Let me restate my goals. I sought to stimulate discussion on verses I found inflammatory and questionable but more importantly are used to promote violence today. I posed questions: Who are disbelievers—any non Muslim? Are Mother Theresa, Gandhi, Buddha, and Confucius consigned to hell? Is there divine sanction for women’s credibility and inheritances being half of men and for men to beat their wives? Is heaven a celestial brothel? Aside from Shaza Fadel calmly & cogently stating Islam does not condone domestic violence, no one has attempted to answer these questions, instead launching verbal assaults and calls for censorship. One pair of writers presented a translation of verse 2:191 using the word “slay” rather than “kill” disbelievers, hardly making it “turn the other cheek”. Others said I mistranslated or abbreviated the verses. For reasons of space, the original column did condense verses, but these were cross-checked with standard translations by Pickthall, Ali, Shakir, and others to assure fidelity of meaning. If there are alternate meanings, I welcome discussion, which is why I asked questions; however, numerous organizations and people use the verses I quoted to promote violence, which is the heart of the matter.

I also aimed to promote the recognition that religious verses can be wrong, so as to allow ethics separate from religion, and church from state. For example, one issue not included in my first column and alluded to by Fadel is slavery, the Quran in 23:5-6 & 70:29 states “Those who guard their private parts, save from wives or slave-girls their right hands possess, are not blameworthy”, and in 24:33 “Which slaves seek emancipation and can pay for emancipation, write it if they have some good” (also 4:92, 24:58, 30:50-51). Islamic empires practiced slavery for centuries after prophet Muhammed’s death and Sudan continues to do so today, underscoring why a theocracy cannot be a democracy, for the cloak of divine authority suffocates dissent & reason, requirements for human evolution.

Inge Osman hoped that in this “era of political correctness”, my column would not have been printed. Messrs. Eltom & Mustafa said I attacked the Quran after previously calling Islamic fundamentalism “pure evil.” I never attacked the Quran nor wrote Islamic fundamentalism was pure evil, although if they wished to so characterize any ideology that spawned 9/11 and the Taliban, I would not object. Let me be clear: I am anti-terrorist and anti-fundamentalist, very different from being anti-Muslim, a line Eltom & Mustafa seemingly would blur, for reasons beyond me. The Catholic Church is finally engaged in introspection of what structural issues may engender pedophilia; those who criticized the church for its delays are not branded anti-Catholic bigots. When Muslim clerics, leaders, and newspapers promote hate & terrorism in Islam’s name, it is not only rational but incumbent upon us to ask what engenders such behavior. I fully appreciate the beauty of wonderful verses like “to kill a life is akin to killing the whole world” and “Allah does not like aggressors”, but in counterpoint stand fatwas relying on other verses given by clerics and mullahs for murder and suicide bombing.

I still ask moderate Muslims telling Americans Islam teaches peace to please preach that to their community's fanatics, to acknowledge the depravity of the cult of death, heavenly brothels, forced shari’a, & conquest, to face down terrorists as the West purged the KKK & the like, and to cease conferring the mantle of freedom struggle to barbarians hijacking religion (which besmirches genuine & successful freedom leaders like Gandhi, Mandela, Havel, Walesa, and King who abhorred violence & eschewed suicide bombing whether in jail or not).

After 9/11, Americans at all levels made extraordinary efforts to prevent an anti-Muslim backlash, an admirable and eminently moral display of tolerance in the face of venom and hatred. Is it so much to ask that tolerance be a 2-way street, that Islamic fundamentalism be confronted with candid reflection, for which free speech and debate are essential? Let us not import shrill hysteria, censorship, political correctness, and stifling of debate from the Middle East. Intolerance of inquiry is but immunity to reason shielding the straitjacketing of thought.

2006-06-13T09:21:00.000-07:00

The only root cause

Abridged form published 9/11/02 at the Duke chronicle

There is no such thing as closure after 9/11 and there shouldn’t be as long as Islamic fundamentalism threatens America. Those who say we should move beyond that event fail to grasp what happened. After going to school and working in New York for 12 years, I was extremely lucky that no one I knew lost their lives that day, although many close friends were not so fortunate.

Writing this column is one of the hardest things I have done. How does one try to capture the emotions of that day, the horror, the honor, the sorrow, the sacrifice? Even attempting to seems like an insult; words on a page can never do justice to those who suffered and died and those who continue to anguish.

The word courage was defined anew by the heroes of that day who hurled themselves at death to save others, especially the uniformed officers of New York and the passengers of Flight 93, not by the false bravery of fanatic Islamic fundamentalist jihad-pilots. To redeem the sacrifice of heroes and the lives of all the victims, we must as a nation ensure Never Again. Doing that requires an honest appraisal of the situation.

The many who casually blame US support for Israel as the cause of 9/11 are guilty of callous opportunism and willful blindness to history and the statements of Osama bin Laden, who planned these attacks for at least 2 years (while Bill Clinton made efforts for peace that no US president had ever done) and who never mentioned Palestinians till after 9/11. Yet US foreign policy did fuel radical Islamic fundamentalism, the one and only “root cause” of 9/11.

The trouble with President Bush’s phrase “axis of evil” is not its bluntness or simplicity but inaccuracy. It’s time to hit the nail on the head: the evil that flourished in Afghanistan and struck us on 9/11 was incubated in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, countries nourished by US foreign policy for decades.

The intimate nexus between al-Qaeda and Pakistan & Saudi Arabia is illuminated by their behavior before and after 9/11. Our so-called “friends” were the only allies of the Taliban prior to 9/11, because they created the Taliban. The foot-soldiers of the Taliban and al-Qaeda were trained in Pakistani madrassahs financed by Saudi Arabia. Al-Qaeda gained most of its funding from Saudi “charities” and has close connections with the ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence service.

Pakistan used Afghanistan for years as a terrorist university with camps melded with al-Qaeda to export terrorists to Kashmir, where they have tried to Talibanise Kashmir (e.g., by throwing acid on women who don’t wear the veil) and, in ironic counterpoint to Kosovo or Bosnia, perpetrated ethnic cleansing, not of Muslims, but of Hindus, driving out 350,000. Pakistan supplied the Taliban weapons even after US bombing began in October, airlifted hundreds of fighters (Lord knows how many al-Qaeda) out of Kunduz, and promoted inclusion of “moderate Taliban” (a la moderate Nazis) in Afghanistan’s government. There are reports from the BBC that the ISI provided dialysis, shelter, and escape to bin Laden. It is also reported that Gen. Mahmud Ahmad, the ISI chief on 9/11, directed Omar Sheikh (prime suspect in the beheading of Daniel Pearl and hosted by Pakistan for years after his release by India after the Indian Airlines hijacking) to wire $100,000 to Mohammed Atta in the weeks before Sept. 11. Senior Taliban rest comfortably in Pakistan, even giving interviews to newspapers. Gen. Musharraf, in addition to releasing most of the terrorists he “rounded-up” (a la Arafat), stated that Pearl got “over-intrusive”, begging the question, what was Pearl killed to protect?

Saudi Arabia bankrolls a world-wide network of madrassahs and mosques to promote Wahhabism, their hateful brand of Islam. Saudi schools in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and even the US, teach high school students that “Judgment Day will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews, and Muslims will kill all the Jews”, and that “whoever is kufr [non-Muslim] it is okay to hurt and steal from”, while Saudi mosques in the West have held AK-47 training courses and hosted the 9/11 terrorists. Fatwas by Saudi clerics in addition to declaring “holy war against infidels” have said that suicide attacks are “the most noble rung a Muslim can attain” and specifically mention “crashing your plane into an important location that will cause your enemy to suffer colossal losses.”

Saudi Arabia prohibits freedom of religion, women from driving, continues beheading & stoning, and institutionalizes gender apartheid, to the point where women need the permission of male relatives to have surgery. Saudi royal oil largess has deflected anger at corruption & unemployment onto the West while relieving Pakistan of the burden of public education with madrassahs, allowing it to spend more on its military. This March, official Saudi newspapers have stated that Jews drink human blood for Purim and Passover, and Saudi religious police beat girls fleeing their burning school for not wearing the veil, forcing them back inside, where 15 died.

The cancerous venom manifest on 9/11 arose from the incubators of evil known as Pakistan’s military-mullah complex and Saudi Arabia’s checkbook terrorists; it will continue to metastasize unless we excise their medieval murderousness and dismantle the axis that incubates evil. We can do this by developing energy independence to break the sword of the oil weapon, and by standing against military and religious tyrannies that “help” us in the short term but foster hate for us in the long run. Americans must recognize that foreign policy beholden to oil sheikhs and military dictators has succored radical Islamic fundamentalism, a mortal threat ignored by too many: even if a pigeon closes its eye, the pouncing cat will not walk away. False realism should not override principle, because terrorism anywhere threatens freedom everywhere, a lesson learned in the bitter tears of Sept. 11.

2006-06-13T09:20:00.000-07:00

Focusing on domestic issues

Abridged form published 9/4/02 at the Duke chronicle

Commencement speeches should be given on the first day of college, when their inspiration to aspiration would exert more influence than as the last words before getting one’s diploma, for concentrating young minds on what needs to be done in the world is an important aspect of college too often forgotten by society.

Nothing concentrated minds more than Sept. 11, a moment of revelation about the world and who our true friends are; the upcoming anniversary should also be a moment of reflection on our country and what needs be done. Important issues before last September are still critical; policy in domestic arenas needs to be tackled, blunt questions posed, and tough choices made.

Energy: Oil addiction perverts foreign policy, fuels fundamentalism & repression, and wreaks environmental destruction. Alternatives --gas-electric hybrids, fuel cells, renewable sources, and conservation-- exist but remain untapped due to lack of political commitment.
Education: Public schools are a vital but crumbling pillar of our social, intellectual, and economic fabric. Neither throwing money nor piecemeal privatization can nourish the foundation of future citizenry, prosperity, and integration of immigrants. Watered-down standards are no substitute for leveling the playing field with better opportunity & higher expectations for all. A national curriculum, rigorous standards for students & teachers, incentives for teaching, increased resources, and cultural emphasis on academics need to be brought to bear.
Fiscal Policy: Two of every three federal dollars are spent on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense, and interest on the debt. An aging population, greater defense needs, and a budget-busting tax cut have wiped out the surplus and threaten to bankrupt the country’s future in the prime earning years of today’s freshmen. Reversing tax cuts & corporate welfare, slowly raising retirement age over the next 50 years, means-testing benefits, and paying off the debt need to be tabled.
Health: Over 40 million uninsured, costs of $1.4 trillion now forecasted to rise to 16% of GDP by the end of the decade, and tremendous patient dissatisfaction reveal a system adrift. Medicine is no longer about patients and doctors but about insurance companies. Health care rationing, national health insurance, arbitration screening frivolous malpractice suits, limits on drug marketing coupled with societal return on its investment in medical research, all need to be considered.
Environment: Global warming, habitat destruction, & pollution are insidious dangers to which indifference will only reap future suffering. Cleaner energy, shifting income taxes to pollution & conservation taxes, debt reduction in return for rainforest preservation, and smarter corporate regulation are all essential.
Integrity: While the business of America may be business, not everything should be reduced to profit motive. Commodification of practically everything coarsens life and taints society not only in business scandal but in political influence-peddling, grade inflation, perverse incentives in health care, and special-interests valuing their pockets over their purposes. Educators and parents must find better ways to impart the knowledge that a dollar value cannot be placed on character; special interest influence should be curtailed by public campaign financing and free TV time.
Vision: Not since JFK’s call to put a man on the moon has the nation been rallied to a mission that captured the imagination. Why not challenge the American can-do spirit with a call to cure cancer or AIDS, involve youth in national service, or put a man on Mars?
Science and Society: Advances in cloning, genetic manipulation, information technology, and robotics have outpaced public discussion, threatening a future where definitions of personhood and freedom may be made in a vacuum of ethics. Scientific progress must not relegate the meaning of humanity to statistics.
Liberty and Security: The old rules on individual rights and governmental responsibilities were unfortunately part of the rubble of ground zero; we have to write a new book, keeping in mind both basic principles and current needs. Security protects the liberty that is the purpose of America; guardians and advocates of both need each other and must remember this critical symbiosis.

Sept. 11 dispelled the illusion that individuals can ignore the world, and discredited the hubris of the conformity cops of the right and the apologists of terrorism of the thought police of the left, who share shrill hysteria, historical amnesia, and intellectual flaccidity. Society is often the best and sometimes only guard of the individual, as public initiatives are needed for public goods. It behooves tomorrow’s leaders to take an active interest in matters of state, develop an appreciation for society’s concerns, and be the cornerstone of the wellspring of domestic renewal to replenish America’s vitality. As a poet once said, the meaning of life is not a fact waiting to be discovered but a choice about the way we live, a truth best heard at the beginning of one’s journey through higher education.

2006-06-13T07:11:00.000-07:00

Two sides on the subcontinent

Published in abridged form on 6/23/02 at the Duke Chronicle

The current face-off between India and

Pakistan

has spawned a rash of commentaries predicated on the dishonest notion of moral equivalence between the antagonists. Deploying the audit of reality to dispel the ignorance shrouding this conflict demonstrate that naively balanced hand-wringing is not only foolish but counterproductive; attempts to equate India and Pakistan are as wrongheaded as those equating self-defense to suicide bombing and George Bush to Osama bin Laden. The currency of chic evenhandedness may be the coin of the realm of relativism, but trading in it in the real word is repugnant and intellectually bankrupt.

India

has been counseled to restrain itself and to open diplomatic negotiations repeatedly. Prime Minister Vajpayee has made 2 summit initiatives in the last 3 years, the first (in 1999) rewarded by Pakistan’s invasion into Indian-held Kashmir orchestrated by none other than General Pervez Musharraf, and the second (last summer) rewarded by attacks on Kashmir's State Assembly and the Indian Parliament by terrorist groups that operate freely in Pakistan and have also perpetrated the murder of Daniel Pearl. The terrorists rounded-up by Musharraf in January were almost all released barely 2 months later (a revolving door that would make Arafat proud), just in time for the snow to melt in Kashmir; on May! 14, these forces butchered dozens of wives and children of soldiers. This recent history mirrors India's restraint in all 3 invasions by Pakistan into Kashmir (1948, 1965, 1999). While India committed to not crossing the Line of Control in 1999 and to just removing Pakistan’s invaders as well as a no-first-use of nuclear weapons to avoid a possibility of nuclear escalation,

Pakistan

now recklessly issues threats to use nuclear weapons. Pakistan's call for a plebiscite in Kashmir are ironic and meaningless: the right of Pakistanis to free and fair elections has been abrogated by a military junta through coups and sham referenda (tactics which Pakistan would export to Kashmir as it has terrorism), while

India

has been democratic since independence.

Pakistan

's personality explains its behavior. Pakistan’s sharia laws state that a woman pressing rape charges must produce 4 upstanding male witnesses, otherwise she can be jailed for adultery (human rights organizations reports thousands of women in Pakistani jails on such charges), and religious minorities including the Shiite and Ahmadiya sects of Muslims are persecuted. Even when

Pakistan

has been democratic, minorities were not allowed the vote in general elections. Pakistan’s military has ruled the country for most of its history, and in 1980, East Pakistani parties won Pakistan’s elections, but

Pakistan

’s military junta barred the victor from forming a government, kindling a movement for East Pakistani independence. Within 8 months in 1971, in a horror belying Pakistan’s pretense of Islamic fraternity, the Pakistani military perpetrated one of the greatest genocides since WWII, killing 800,000 East Pakistanis; 10 million refugees fled to

India

(quadruple the Taliban’s rate of murder & refugees!). India girded to intervene, but Pakistan struck first. In 2 weeks, East Pakistan was free (becoming Bangladesh) and

India

seized 5,100 sq. miles of West Pakistani territory and 90,000 Pakistani POWs, but relinquished it all for an empty promise to resolve future conflicts through negotiations.

Restraint and diplomacy with terrorists and their sponsors and harborers is farcical and suicidal beyond a point that has long been crossed. Whether Musharraf is unable or unwilling to stop the terrorists is moot; the former renders him irrelevant, the latter an imminent threat. More than likely he is but an Arafat in suit-and-tie, conveniently masking radical Islamic fundamentalists bent on

India

's break-up. The bottom line is that

Pakistan

is a state crucible of terrorism, long supplying arms, supplies, training, money, and logistical support to terrorists to kill Indians and to coordinate with its attempts to break the Indian Union. Pakistan's so-called support to the US in the war on terror is overrated at best and a betrayal at worst: Pakistan supplied weapons to its creation, the Taliban, even after the US started bombing in October, airlifted out hundreds of fighters from a besieged Kunduz last November, and may have given shelter and dialysis to Osama bin Laden. The Bush doctrine should apply for India as well as the

: those who harbor, arm, and export terrorists are terrorists and should be eliminated. The US should assist in countering the threat that this sponsor of terror known as

Pakistan

poses, preferably by neutralizing its nuclear weapons whose number and hazards will only grow if ignored. Continued inaction at nukepoint will only embolden other terrorist nations to aspire to nuclear blackmail of the

. Expediency should not override principle, for terrorism anywhere threatens freedom everywhere, a lesson borne of the bitter tears of 9/11.

2006-06-13T04:42:00.000-07:00

Fighting for Our Souls and Ideals

Published in abridged form 8/23/02 at
the Duke Chronicle

It is easy to say that America’s current war is for our survival, freedom, or prosperity. But we are actually fighting for our ideals and our future as much as we are for our physical well-being, and so this war is not about bin Laden, or the Taliban,, but about whether the idea that succored them, radical Islamic fundamentalism, will destroy or be destroyed by the ideals of America. As an immigrant, I deeply appreciate the guiding principles of America that are often taken for granted:

1) Live and let live: This underpins our freedom of choice and culture of the individual. While the 1^st amendment gets all the glory, one of the most beautiful parts of our constitution is the 10^th Amendment, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” As long as you don’t hurt others, you can pretty much do anything you like, and the government won’t get in the way.

2) Empiricism: Americans are not wedded to any one ideology, and are wary of new “isms” but fond of things that work, focusing on goals, not processes. Empiricism, skepticism, and pragmatism fuel scientific inquiry (the beginning of any quest for truth, which is what science is about, are the words, “I don’t know). They also enable self-correction of mistakes in the government & society. The constitution’s preamble embodies this spirit: “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union…”, recognizing that America, the land of second chances, is and always will be a work in progress.

3) Exploration: All the mind-bending special effects wizardry of LA does not hold a candle to the accomplishments of NASA, deep-sea divers, particle physicists, biomedical researchers, and their predecessors. This culture of exploration has bestowed a young and resource-endowed nation with unparalleled dynamism, a fascination with the future, an eternal optimistic can-do spirit, and unprecedented physical, social, and informational mobility.

4) Anyone can be an American: The Statue of Liberty proclaims the welcome of foreigners (although that is not always matched in reality). In stark contrast to countries that severely restrict immigration, allowing in foreigners only as menial laborers and indentured servants, and/or have citizenship requirements that one’s ancestor was a citizen in 1910, the US recognizes it is a nation of immigrants and confers opportunities to newcomers and their children—a marvelous engine of self-renewal. I will never forget my Chinese medical school classmate whose parents sold noodles on the streets of Flushing. Fostering immigration has not only immeasurably enriched the cultural vibrancy of America but is a brilliant economic device: the country gets the talents and tax base of numerous adults without having to invest in their childhood. The most handsome dividends of immigration were in World War II, where we welcomed dozens and hundreds of scientists fleeing Nazi death camps who then went on to help us win.

5) The Rule of Law: John Adams wrote, “We are a nation of laws, not of men.” The careful system of checks and balances in the architecture of the Constitution, together with the rights of due process enshrined in the Bill of Rights, has shielded the world’s oldest democracy from the temptations of tyranny, moderated the passions of mobs, and protected our freedoms and the innocent. The mostly transparent nature of government and society is maintained by a vigorous judiciary and a free press, the organs of society that cast the light of day on government agencies and guard against abuse. The Freedom of Information Act reinforces the “public’s right to know.”

6) Opportunity for All: In principle, everyone has access to health, education, capital, and methods of self-improvement, and the goal is equal opportunity for the pursuit of happiness. Our system is intended to discriminate among persons based on their character and deeds, not on features of identity they were born with, principles of nondiscrimination codified in the equal protection clause of the 14^th Amendment and restated in the Civil Rights Act. These protections allow each citizen to dream the American Dream, the continual betterment of the material well-being of the individual and the country, a dream that has successfully nourished entrepreneurship and progress.

7) Separation of Church and State: The 1^st amendment leads off, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” This sentence has protected religion from politics and government from fundamentalism; both are vital to our society, for faith stems from divine revelation and should not be polluted by mundane concerns while a democracy requires the ability to dissent and to say “I don’t know”, which a theocracy is incompatible with, witness the Taliban. Separation of institutions also underlies the separation of powers of and apolitical military that are key features of our government.

These principles have helped this country become great. To be sure, they have their drawbacks (gridlock, bureaucracy, materialism), and the US has too often been hypocritical (the three-fifths compromise, lack of women’s suffrage, slavery, wiping out the native Americans, various skullduggeries), but within our system is the capacity for growth, to recognize our faults and change, to form a more perfect union.

We can no longer hold the illusion, nourished by 2 great oceans and 2 friendly neighbors, that the US is apart from the world. Our foreign policy must be informed by an appreciation of what we are to articulate and pursue cogent goals to spread freedom and uphold justice. This is what we defend: faith that people can rule themselves through reasoned argument, a belief without a home for the 2 millennia prior to the US. The radical Islamic funda-mentalists claim divine authority and ultimate truth, rejecting inquiry, seeking to impose their world-view on the rest of the world through violence; church and state are one, and due process and freedom are irrelevant. Aside from their religious twist and willingness to commit suicide to kill others, their creed resembles Nazism and communism. It is as much our duty as our right to discredit and destroy the idea of radical Islamic fundamentalism as much as one man. And in so doing, we must not trample on our superior ideals in order to save them.

2006-06-13T04:41:00.000-07:00

Incubators of Evil

Written in summer 2002

The trouble with President Bush’s phrase “axis of evil” is not its bluntness or simplicity, but short-term inaccuracy and long-term irrelevance. North Korea is a vestige of the Cold War on track for the dustbin of history, Iran is run by crazy mullahs who will eventually be eased out (or thrown out) by a restive young population bent on reform, and Saddam Hussein, while a threat, is weaker than in 1991; most importantly, none of these had anything to do with 9/11. It’s time to hit the nail on the head: the evil that flourished in Afghanistan and struck us on 9/11 was incubated in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

Pakistan, with policies directed by former ISI chief Hamid Gul and former Interior Minister, Naserullah Babur, used Afghanistan for years as a terrorist university with camps melded with al-Qaeda to export terrorists to Kashmir, where they have tried to Talibanise Kashmir (e.g., by throwing acid on women who don’t wear the veil) and, in ironic counterpoint to Kosovo or Bosnia, perpetrated ethnic cleansing, not of Muslims, but of Hindus, driving out 350,000. Pakistan supplied the Taliban weapons even after US bombing began in October, airlifted hundreds of fighters (who knows how many al-Qaeda) out of Kunduz, and promoted inclusion of “moderate Taliban” (a la moderate Nazis) in Afghanistan’s government. There are reports from the BBC that the ISI provided dialysis, shelter, and escape to bin Laden. It is also reported that Gen. Mahmud Ahmad, the ISI chief on 9/11, directed Omar Sheikh (prime suspect in the beheading of Daniel Pearl and hosted by Pakistan for years after his release by India after the Indian Airlines hijacking) to wire $100,000 to Mohammed Atta in the weeks before Sept. 11. Senior Taliban rest comfortably in Pakistan, even giving interviews to newspapers. Gen. Musharraf, in addition to recently releasing many of the terrorists he “rounded-up” (just in time for Kashmir’s spring thaw), stated that Pearl got “over-intrusive”, begging the question, what was Pearl killed to protect?

Saudi Arabia has bankrolled a world-wide network of madrassahs and mosques to promote Wahhabism, their hateful brand of Islam. Saudi schools in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and even the US, teach high school students that “Judgment Day will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews, and Muslims will kill all the Jews”, and that “whoever is kufr [non-Muslim] it is okay to hurt and steal from”, while Saudi mosques in the West have held AK-47 training courses and hosted the 9/11 terrorists. Fatwas by Saudi clerics in addition to declaring “holy war against infidels” have said that suicide attacks are “the most noble rung a Muslim can attain” and specifically mention “crashing your plane into an important location that will cause your enemy to suffer colossal losses.” Since 9/11, the Saudis have not cooperated in the investigation or the war and continue to refuse to provide passenger manifests of airplanes bound for the US.

The “personality” of these countries explains their behavior. Pakistan’s sharia laws state that a woman pressing rape charges must produce 4 “upstanding” male witnesses, otherwise she can be jailed for adultery (human rights organizations reports thousands of women in Pakistani jails on such charges), and religious minorities including the Shiite and Ahmadiya sects of Muslims are persecuted. Pakistan’s military has ruled the country for most of its history, and is responsible for one of the greatest genocides since WWII: within 8 months in 1971, in a horror belying Pakistan’s pretense of Islamic fraternity, the Pakistani military killed 800,000 East Pakistanis; 10 million refugees fled to India (quadruple the Taliban’s rate of murder & refugees!). When Pakistan was “democratic”, minorities were not allowed the vote in general elections.

The cancer of venom manifest on 9/11 arose from the incubators of evil known as Pakistan’s military-mullah complex and Saudi Arabia’s checkbook terrorists; it will continue to metastasize unless we excise their medieval murderousness and dismantle the axis that incubates evil.

2006-06-13T04:35:00.000-07:00

Security vs. Liberty
First Written in Feb. 2002

The World Trade Center attacks launched a battle between John Ashcroft and civil libertarians. But security and liberty are not enemies: liberty needs security and the raison d’ếtre of security is liberty. The battle between Ashcroft and his opponents is a necessary one, for this crucible will forge the justice system of the future, which must shield us from both fiendish terrorists and the spectre of McCarthyism. The first arena of this battle is military tribunals.

The tribunal fight involves moral imperatives and legal doctrine. The US has interests in:

maintaining intelligence secrecy (which was compromised by the revelation that the US intercepted bin Laden’s satellite phone calls during the embassy bombing trial, and could be compromised by terrorists learning what we don’t know)
expeditiousness (a decade-long trial like the Lockerbie bombers is not acceptable)
securing the judicial process to avert future hostage-taking and terrorist acts to spring bin Laden.

Given all this and the uniquely destructive nature of our threat, I agree that military tribunals are a necessary tool.

However, terrorist trials have aims beyond punishment. Catharsis for victims, keeping the attacks in the public consciousness, engaging people in civics, maintaining both the appearance and the actuality of fairness, and ensuring transparency to prevent abuse, cover-ups, and shady deals (as occurred in the Lockerbie trial) are important interests as well. Military tribunals also give an excuse for other countries to put Americans in kangaroo courts and be non-cooperative in sharing information. For these reasons, tribunals should be rare, as open as possible, and closely regulated.

The case for tribunals is based on precedent: Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, FDR’s use of a military tribunal, and the Supreme Court’s 1942 Quirin decision. It is vital that we scrutinize these legal justifications, for we are not a society that dispenses with the rule of law when it is no longer convenient. The rule of law is based on separation of powers, due process, and transparency, and the administration’s initiatives seem to disregard all three.

The President authorized military tribunals by executive order with rules at the discretion of the Secretary of Defense. However, Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution states, “The Congress shall have power …to constitute tribunals inferior to the Superior Court, to define and punish…offenses against the law of nations, to declare war…and make rules concerning captures on land and water…to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution…all powers vested…in the government of the United States.” Article III, Section 1 states, “The judicial power of the US shall be vested in one Supreme Court and in such inferior courts as the Congress may … establish.” FDR and the Quirin decision offer no support here: in the Quirin decision, the Supreme Court stated, “By the Articles of War, and especially Article 15, Congress has explicitly provided…that military tribunals shall have jurisdiction to try offenses against the law of war…” Quirin extended support to FDR on the basis of a Congressional declaration of war and explicit Congressional authorization of military tribunals, neither of which is present today. The lack of Congressional input on this momentous decision is inexcusable.

The President’s order also forecloses the right of appeal to any other court! Article III, section 2 of the Constitution states, “The judicial power shall extend to all cases arising under this Constitution, the laws…, to controversies to which the US shall be a party…In all cases, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, with such exceptions as the Congress shall make…”. Even the Quirin case states, “the President’s proclamation…does not bar accused from access to the civil courts…” The right of appeal is fundamental to our code of justice, and eliminating it traduces both the separation of powers and due process.

The President’s executive order threatens due process in other ways. Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution states that “the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.” That the public safety is endangered by infiltrators is not in doubt. However, as the Supreme Court stressed in its 1866 Milligan case, the Constitution does not authorize suspending any other judicial protection. The present order is breath-taking: the President alone decides who would come before the tribunals, the defense secretary sets the rules, the prosecutors and judges of the tribunals report to him as commander in chief, cases can be heard in secret, the defendant would have no right to choose his own counsel or see the evidence against him, and only 2/3 of the judges would have to agree to impose the death penalty. Aside from ignoring fairness, these fly in the face of both the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Article III, section 2 states, “The trial of all crimes…shall be by jury.” The Sixth Amendment states, “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to trial by jury…, be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation, to be confronted with the witnesses against him, …to have assistance of counsel.” Moreover, the present order does not adhere to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which requires open trials, unanimity in capital cases, allows for appeal, and allows defendants to choose counsel.

Also appalling is the order’s reach over all non-citizens, applying to millions of permanent residents (who, as they can be drafted, should enjoy constitutional protection). This stance is contradicted both by Milligan (in which the Court held that military tribunals may not try civilians unless the civil courts are “actually closed and it is impossible to administer justice”, and by the 1946 Duncan vs. Kahanamoku case, where the Supreme Court held that civilians could not be subject to military law and that civil courts could not be replaced by martial law without Congressional authorization.

Together with the veil of opacity that the administration is pursuing with secret detentions of hundreds of people, an order allowing warrantless wiretaps of prisoner-lawyer communications, and another executive order giving Presidents the right to veto indefinitely the release of Presidential papers, the erosion of due process and disregard for checks and balances is tragic. Already, a custodial death has occurred, and there have been reports of prolonged and unjustified detentions.

The rules of military tribunals should be made with congressional oversight and its outcomes subject to judicial review. Elemental due process (e.g., free choice and communication with counsel) should be respected in accord with both the Bill of Rights and the UCMJ. The scope should be limited to unlawful combatants captured abroad or non-resident saboteurs. As much as possible, trials should be open for the sake of catharsis, image, and fairness.

These discussions are not mere legalese. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are not contracts to be renegotiated at will; they are promises to the people, as worthy of respect as the promise of security. Rules may & should be stretched and bent in such times but must not be ignored or discarded. While the constitution is not a suicide pact (words of Justice Robert Jackson), in the words of the Supreme Court, it “is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances.”

2006-06-12T09:22:00.000-07:00

Questions on the Quran - Part I

Published in abridged version 4/12/02 at the Duke Chronicle

Since 9/11, many have stressed the need for dialogue about Islam. As such, there are questions that I need to ask about certain verses in the Quran and the practices of some Islamic countries and people. What follows is said in good faith, to seek understanding, without rancor or ill will.

1. Disbelievers. Verse 2:191 of the Quran states, “ Kill disbelievers wherever your find them.”. 8:12: “I will cast terror into the hearts of disbelievers. Therefore, strike off their heads and every fingertip.” 9:5: “Slay the disbeliever where you find them, take them captive, besiege them, and lie in wait to ambush them.” 47:4 states, “when you meet the unbelievers, strike their necks till you have bloodied them, then fasten the shackles.”

Who exactly is an “unbeliever” – anyone who is not Muslim, who is not Muslim/Christian/Jewish, who does not believe in God, or who is just evil? This is very important, as “unbelievers” are treated to an eternity of boiling water, pus for food, and torture in hell in verse after verse. Thus, are Mother Theresa, Gandhi, Buddha, Confucius, and countless others joined in that fate? Just as important, the 4 verses noted above are invoked today to enjoin Muslims to destroy others.

2. Friends. 3:118: “Do not take as close friends those other than your co-religionists.” 5:51: “Do not take the Jews and Christians for friends.” 5:82: “You shall find the most hostile people to be Jews and pagans.”

These verses are used to justify anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism in many mosques, media, and madrassahs in many places.

3. Women. 2:228: “Men stand a step above women.” 2:282: “In transactions involving future obligations, write them down. Get 2 witnesses of your men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women.” 4:3: “Marry upto 4 wives, or marry what your right hands possess.” 4:11: “Allah commands you, with respect to children, that the male shall inherit the equivalent of the share of 2 females.” 4:34: “Men are in charge of women…those of them you fear might rebel, admonish them, abandon them, and beat them.”

Is this really divine sanction for thinking that a woman’s credibility is ½ that of a man (which is how courts in many Muslim countries treat the issue), that a woman should get only ½ that of men in inheritance, and worst of all, that it is OK for men to beat their wives?

4. Celestial Virgins. 37:48: “Those in Heaven shall have wide-eyed maidens.” 44:54: “We give them wide-eyed virgins in marriage.” 52:17-22: “The God-fearing are in gardens and bliss…We shall wed them to wide-eyed houris.” 55:70-73: “In Heaven are beautiful, virtuous maidens…No man touched them before.” 56:22: “Wide-eyed houris, like hidden pearls, are a reward for what those who made it to Heaven used to do.”

Is heaven a celestial brothel? This concept is the basis for Hamas and other terrorist groups to brainwash young men by saying, “You can only have 4 wives on earth, but 72 virgins in heaven”, and for the Palestinian Authority to proclaim that “martyrs are wedded to celestial virgins.”

5. Slavery. 4:92: “Whoever kills a believer by mistake should free a believing slave.” 23: 5-6 “Those who guard their private parts, save from their wives or their slave-girls their right hands possess, are not blameworthy.” 24:33 “Such of your slaves as seek emancipation and wish to pay for their emancipation, write it for them , if you know there is some good in them.” 24:58 “Let your slaves…ask leave of you 3 times before they come into your presence.” 30: 50-51: “O Prophet, we have permitted you to marry anyone your right hand controls, and any woman who bestows herself upon you.” 70:29 “Those who guard their private parts except for their wives or what their right hands possess are not blameworthy.”

Does God really approve of slavery and sleeping with slave-girls? As a matter of historical record, Islamic empires had slaves for centuries after the prophet Muhammad’s death, and even today, Sudan practices slavery and Saudi princes have harems of concubines.

------

I realize that what I have presented herein is selective and that the Quran also explicitly states “to kill a life is akin to killing the whole world” and that “women are equal to men”, among other very beautiful verses. But that is not relevant, as the verses I have presented above, along with others prescribing death for blasphemy, cutting off hands for stealing, etc. are invoked today to preach violence, terrorism, and injustice.

Self-proclaimed “moderate” Muslims explain terrorists’ behavior on the basis of hopelessness and oppression. But millions of sub-saharan Africans who suffer far more than any Arab population do not train or celebrate suicide bombers. Whatever Israel has done to the Palestinians, it is dwarfed by the Taliban’s murdering 1.5 million Afghans, Saddam’s genocide of Kurds, Pakistan’s murder of Bangladeshis, Kuwait’s expulsion of 250,000 Palestinians in 1991, and even King Hussein’s killing of 5,000 Palestinians in one month in 1970 to suppress a Palestinian revolt in Jordan. The “root” of 9/11 is the same as the root of Daniel Pearl’s beheading, not grievance or despair, but evil desire: Islamic fundamentalist terrorists explain their actions by dividing the world into dar-al-Islam (the Islamic world) and dar-al-Harb (non-Islamic world), and perceive a divine mandate (based on 48:28 & 61:9 “It is He who sent His apostle with the religion of truth to make it triumph over every religion.”) to conquer the latter -- anything that stands in the way of that conquest, whether a country or a journalist, should be destroyed, an idea that inspires terrorists from Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines to bin Laden to Sudan’s government . It falls to Muslims to disabuse the fanatics in their midst of this notion, lest the US military have to do the same in a far more bloodsoaked fashion.

For centuries, verses in the Bible (e.g., Exodus 21:7 and Leviticus 25:44) were used to justify slavery in the West. But Western societies evolved to separate church from state, and realized that ethics can be separate from religion, and that religious verses can be wrong. The West had to take down the KKK and religious despotry. Moderate Muslims must do the same today to Islamic fundamentalists. The Islamic world is host to all but one of the world’s military regimes, only 2 of its democracies, and 28 of the world’s 33 active conflicts. It took 1700 years for the West to recognize the evil within; while Islam is less than 1400 years old, given modern weapons, the world does not have the luxury for Islamic societies to mature for several more centuries. A theocracy cannot be a democracy, for ethics and law etched in scripture and based on divine right quash dissent, reason, and uncertainty, which underpin democracy, progress, and science: ideological certainty devolves into insistence upon ignorance. Much as cream rises to the top of milk, Islamic fundamentalist terrorism is the scum that has risen to the top of the sewer that is politics in the Arab world. And while every society has scum, only Islamic fundamentalism has suicide bombers and global reach & desire.

Moderate Muslims who have been explaining to Americans that Islam teaches peace should take that message to fanatics and radicals in their community and their inciters, followers, and would-be suicide bombers. Suicide bombing is particularly repugnant for why should anyone care about one who relishes killing others more than one’s own life? Moderate Muslims must state in mosques, media, and madrassahs that Osama bin Laden, the cult of death, the concept of heavenly brothel, etc. are a disgrace to Islam and Muslims everywhere. As long as moderate Muslims do not directly confront the wolves in their fold, they turn a blind eye to terrorism.

I ask that moderate Muslims acknowledge the depravity of Islamic fundamentalism, on par with Nazism and Stalinism, and unequivocally & unconditionally repudiate the notions that shari’a is the answer to all problems, that the whole world should strive to mimic 7^th century Arabia, that religion must govern politics and law. We saw these ideas embodied in the Taliban’s Afghanistan and 9/11, and rather than disgust and horror, too many “moderate” Muslims have responded with denial, rationalization, blame-shifting, and justification: 36% of Kuwaitis feel that the 9/11 was justified! This must cease. Islamic fundamentalism is fundamentally hideous backwardness capable only of hate and destruction, whether of the Twin Towers, the Buddhas of Bamiyan, or thousands of people. It is time for all to admit that the ideals of freedom are superior to the perversity of fundamentalism.

“On account of religion being identified with virtue, a religious education gives courage to the stupid to resist the authority of educated men…There is not one word in the scriptures in praise of intelligence; in this respect ministers of religion follow divine authority more closely than in others.” Bertrand Russell