Kaddaffi: Good Riddance, but ....

The killing on Thursday of Libyan strongman Kaddaffi will spread much relief around the world, and cause very little mourning. The way it happened should be a concern to a world looking to raise the level of international justice.

Making his last stand at Surt, Kaddaffi was under constant NATO surveillance, as around him blood flowed from loyalists, rebels and residents. When his entourage tried to break through the forces besieging the town, missiles fired by drones disabled his vehicles, and Kaddaffi was wounded in the ensuing firefight. His remaining forces were destroyed, and he was captured.

During the confusion immediately following his discovery in a drainage culvert, he was dragged around and shot at close range. Videos of his final moments went viral over the internet. As the day went on, world leaders appeared on news broadcasts celebrating the success of the cooperative military operation, and the end of a forty-two year dictatorship.

A few briefly noted the role played by NATO and the extrajudicial execution of the dictator, but the general euphoria prevented a more detailed examination. But these events do need to be acknowledged as historical facts, and incorporated into the popular history, in order that future interventions be initiated with the best understanding of the risks and likely outcomes under similar circumstances.

NATO was given a narrow mandate by the UN to enforce a no-fly zone, and to take action to protect civilians during the popular revolt against the Kaddaffi regime. At the time, the revolt was failing, and a terrible massacre at the hands of the brutal Kaddaffi would almost certainly have followed its collapse. Swift intervention by a true multinational force disabled Kaddaffi's ability to attack by air or land, and the revolt continued, made stronger by supplies of arms from a variety of sources. The NATO forces continued airstrikes against Kaddaffi's forces, and bombed places Kaddaffi was thought likely to be; all the time denying we were trying to kill him.

In the US, Congress reluctantly demanded an explanation for US involvement beyond the allotted time President Obama could act on an emergency basis without Congressional approval. Semantic arguments were offered, such as that drone attacks don't rise to the level of "hostilities." Since Kaddaffi was so definitely a bad guy, even in Washington's highly polarized political environment, nobody pulled the plug.

Thus were the drones ready for their role in the final conflict of the Kaddaffi era. It would be a stretch to claim the NATO forces were protecting civilians by attacking, as Kaddaffi's convoy tried to flee. The argument that air support for the rebels would shorten the conflict, and thereby lower the human cost of the rebellion is valid only if the rebels prevail, and was not offered in the calculus used to formulate NATO's UN authorization. If NATO involvement was crucial to the success of the rebellion, then it exceeded its mandate, and that will inhibit building consensus for future interventions on humanitarian grounds. For purposes of analysis, it matters not that we are all better off without Kaddaffi.

Given the strategic importance of Libyan oil, the rush by western states to recognize a transitional government, and begin diplomacy [and commerce], is understandable. But caution is indicated by the lack of discipline exhibited by rebel forces, that led to Kaddaffi's execution. Again, analysis should not be pre-empted by the deservedness of the achieved result.

If there is not a Libyan government with broad popular support, we will be no better off, in the world community, than we were with Kaddaffi. We will have to deal with a strongman who can dominate the other parties, and corruption will be business as usual.

NY Times Gives Bankers a Pass to Disparage Protest

I have complained in the past about the NYTimes' too easily granting its sources anonymity, and the lead story in today's business section: "In Private, Wall St. Bankers Dismiss Protesters as Unsophisticated" is another prime example.

The article attributes only two of its quotes, and does not even offer an explanation for not citing the other dozen or so. I suppose the authors reason that "speaking privately" means not having to stand behind your words, but how can the resulting story be considered news?

The two quotes that were attached to names are so innocuous that their relevance to the story is hard to determine. One professes to believe that bankers are not really the objects of the protest; while the other notes that "most of our clients like us."

The anonymous quotes, on the other hand, are much more interesting: "If you want to keep having jobs outsourced, keep attacking financial services"; or "They [congressional representatives who have expressed support for the protests, and who accept large campaign contributions from Wall St.] need to understand who their constituency is."

The NYTimes does not discharge its mission, when it portrays the banking industry as so out of touch without naming the sources. Nobody who has spent any time in Zuccotti Park lately would describe the occupants as "a ragtag group looking for sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll." How can readers be assured it is really a top hedge fund manager talking? It sounds more like my neighbor across the the street, a retired car salesman who sports a tea-party flag on his front porch.

[A version of this was sent to the public editor at The New York Times]

Where Is This Occupation Going?

Occupy Wall Street is more than a "large mass of unidentified people discussing their concerns", whose energy Erin Bohanan offers to help focus. It is a focal point for the expression of outrage - by people who have given up on the regular political channels Ms. Bohanan suggests.

A lot of energy is going to Zuccotti Park that, in 2008, went into electing Barrack Obama to the White House. Disappointed by the lack of change, following his inauguration, in the grand bargain between Wall St. and K St., young and energetic citizens are bypassing a system that has lost the ability to change, but that absorbs and co-opts every initiative.

Should the occupiers prioritize the issues, select representation, and arrange meetings with government and business entities, you will see the life-blood sucked out of the movement. Souvenir t-shirts will be its only legacy. No, the open forum and constant influx of ideas are the proper business of Occupy Wall Street.

Calls for specific action will come from those inspired by what is taking place in Zuccotti Park. Ms Bohanan came up with a nice list herself. She should get in touch with her representatives, and help get the ball rolling, instead of telling Occupy Wall Street what they need to do.

The structures to effect change are already in place. We already have enough public servants. They just need to be reminded of their mission - and encouraged, by the voices in the streets.

It is useful to consider the trajectory of the often-compared Tea Party movement, that aligned with conservative political interests soon after erupting. Although it wields considerable power in the selection and manipulation of conservative politicians, it has made a circus of the Republican Party, and has yet to make any positive contribution toward solving the frightful problems facing our nation.

Did NYPD Sell Brooklyn Bridge to Occupiers?

From Zuccotti Park to the Brooklyn Bridge, the Occupy Wall Street marchers were escorted and directed every step of the way by courteous NYPD officers. Half a mile away, the entrance to the bridge sits across busy Centre Street. The police held up the marchers periodically, allowing traffic to pass, then let them onto the bridge in spurts. Once across Centre Street the walkway began, between the Brooklyn-bound and Manhattan-bound traffic lanes, separated by a low railing. As throngs of marchers crossed Centre Street, they spilled across both walkway and roadway as they approached the bridge, but were directed by NYPD toward the walkway.

The walkway runs even with the traffic lanes for a short distance, before gradually climbing above the roadway. The gauntlet of police officers, which had contained and directed the marchers from park to bridge, were absent along this stretch, and a few marchers crossed the railing, and began walking in the roadway; which for some reason, also was absent car traffic [possibly bridge traffic was also being stopped to allow marchers access to the bridge]. Presently car traffic resumed and kept to the right, as the marchers walked in the left and center lanes.




The marchers in the roadway were exuberantly encouraging the marchers on the walkway to join them on that side, calling out "they CAN'T arrest ALL of us," and "Whose bridge?...OUR bridge!" Many did join them, too. The few police on that part of the bridge were walking with the marchers in the roadway, and not making any effort to send them back to the pedestrian side, or discourage those now flocking to climb over the fence, before it go too high, as the walkway ascended.




Eventually, enough marchers filled the roadway that car traffic moved slowly alongside them in the right lane, and then all movement completely halted. A little further along, the reason for the stoppage became apparent: the police had sealed off the entire side of the bridge, and begun making arrests.




Some marchers on the roadway were probably looking to get arrested, to escalate the level of confrontation, possibly in hopes of generating more media coverage. If so, they succeeded in that. Most of those who joined them, though, did so spontaneously, not having thought it through.



Protests which are horizontally organized, while better able to resist infiltration and co-option, have more difficulty defining goals and tactics. The de facto leaders of the march had instructed the marchers before stepping off, that walking in the street, or stopping, or obstructing traffic would likely lead to arrest, but there was no discussion of whether that would be desirable or effective.


As the arrests proceeded, recorded by hundreds of cameras, the police were well disciplined, and held all of the strategic advantage. The marchers were clearly out of bounds, and had no easy escape. The police could work at their leisure, and the resulting traffic delays, affecting mostly Saturday night social travel, could be laid to the unruly protesters. Meanwhile, the march itself was fractured; half made it across to the designated park in Brooklyn, while the rest had been stranded on the Manhattan side, when the bridge was closed.

The popular reaction to the event, as it unfolded, remains to be seen. There was plenty of media coverage, and public relations were being spun by both sides. Despite the superior tactics and discipline shown by the NYPD, the increased media exposure could yield a net positive result for Occupy Wall Street, if they use it to connect with enough of the 99% they claim are affected by Wall Street shenanigans. If not, the movement will be set back.

Either way, the divergence of the two groups during the march shows weakness in the organization; a vulnerability which could be exploited, and uncertainty which could inhibit attracting greater numbers of participants. Perhaps that is intentional, in keeping with the loosely defined purpose of the occupation itself. Discussions in groups around Zuccoti Park, before the march, were wide ranging, intense, and open ended. In protest against powerful hierarchal organizations like Wall St., the acceptance of widely divergent points of political departure infuses great energy, but requires levels of individual tolerance difficult to maintain.

Media coverage of the occupation seems more focused on trying to figure out the dynamic of the movement itself, than scrutinizing the financial miscreants that are its purpose. It will be a challenge to induce exposure of individual targets for change, among the diverse constituencies represented in Zuccoti Park. So far there has not been a visible effort to prioritize issues.


Signs carried in the march declared the strength inherent in union, and chants of "People united, will never be defeated" moved the march up Broadway on Saturday afternoon. Can the union of this occupation be sustained without emergence of a command structure? I hope so.

What Winning Looks Like

Today's New York Times published two war articles , neither among the day's news offerings, but taken together, offering a look at the broad impact the war has.

In one, a Special Forces major articulates his opinion about the possibility [and nature] of winning the war. In the other, we get a look at the effects, on family members, of caring for damaged returning war veterans. Thinking about our involvement in foreign wars requires that attention be paid to multiple aspects, and that evaluations based on single sources, even if compelling, be rejected.

One would expect an active duty officer, upon return from a productive year of deployment, and still subscribing to the mission, to be dismissive of those who see our involvement as a losing proposition. In this we are not disappointed, as he disparages the "...wonks, politicos and academics..." offerring their grim sound bites "While sipping their Starbucks." But after relating anecdotal accounts of progress on the ground in the area of his deployment, he concludes that the success or failure of the war can only be determined by what happens after we leave. I am left wondering exactly what his dispute is with those who have been saying all along that we can't win the war.

For a wife whose horizon has narrowed to the task of caring for for a returning veteran with a traumatic brain injury and PTSD, the war is only beginning. The several families profiled in this article offer a sobering look at the sacrifices we exact from our volunteer armed forces. One can't help wondering what life will be like for them, and the thousands of other severely injured war veterans and their families in twenty or thirty years. It is something to consider when budget cuts are debated - that no price was too high to pay for our security on 9/12/01 - that our obligation to those who went over there for us [whether or not we supported the invasions].

History is short on international disputes being successfully resolved by armed conflict, but nations seem unable to resist resorting to warfare. Military intervention can possibly be prevented only by vigilant attention being paid to all of the costs. The Defense Department's charge is logistical and political, and they can't be expected think in preventive terms. Moral and human direction must come from us. If we cede analysis to "the experts," we risk paying a high cost for not too much benefit.

January 20, 2009

We walked the four miles from the bus parking area at RFK Stadium to the Washington Monument in frigid temperatures, detoured around security "frozen" zones and fenced areas, at one point going through fences and climbing down embankments to cross a closed highway - thousands of us - our goal: to witness the inauguration of Barrack Obama as President.

Our vantage point, so far away that individuals on the scaffolding in front of the Capitol were indistinguishable, was augmented by large video screens showing the proceeding, although no audio reached where we stood. My wife and I shared the earbuds of a tiny radio, which played the oath of office, and Mr. Obama's speech.

Our frigid trek back to RFK Stadium was eased by the positive mood of the crowd, and I told a reporter interviewing riders on our bus that this was my first bus trip, among many to D.C. going back to the '60s, that was not for a protest.

The good feeling did not last long. We were hardly back home in NJ before the assertion that, since Chief Justice John Roberts has fumbled part of the oath of office, Mr. Obama's Presidency lacked legitimacy, began its rounds of conservative talk radio and websites. This first challenge was followed by similar attacks on the basis of anything and everything connected with him or his family, and distracted his supporters from their intended political goals. Mr. Obama's attempts to deal with irrational people on a rational basis were interpreted as weakness, both by his base, and by his opponents.

It is illuminating to compare challenges made to President Obama under freedom of speech in the media, to those made to former President George W. Bush in court on a matter of law.

George W. Bush's 2000 campaign victory resulted from a voting dispute in Florida, which was brought quickly to the Supreme Court, and that ended decisively [by 5-4 margin] in his favor. All further challenges were mocked as whining and grumbling, and never completely aired.

The whispering campaign about Mr. Obama's citizenship, although never brought before any official for scrutiny, has reverberated around the media, waxing and waning for nearly three years, not completely ended, even by President Obama's release of his birth certificate.

Blaming the media for the polarized gridlock that prevents any solution to our economic woes from gaining a hearing in DC, ignores the people consuming that media - us. We want a simple solution to a complex problem, and any proposals must fit the ideological template through which all political dialog is extruded. In our desperate quest to avoid facing unpleasant realities, we endorse one short-term deferral after another, while savaging our perceived opponents at every opportunity, even if it entails passing on a solution that otherwise would benefit us.

The inability [or unwillingness] of people to process issues may be partly due to a lag in adapting to the communication revolution that has accelerated dramatically in recent years [since its first effects were felt in the 1960 election of JFK]. So much information moves so quickly that staying on top of all of it is impossible. Your average American, allocating his or her time among the competing demands of career, family, community and grocery shopping is unable to keep up, and is desperate for an end to the barrage.

Packaging it in digestible pieces has fallen to highly specialized analysts and psychologists, operating largely behind the scenes, and distributed by recognizable media outlets, to a public grateful to be relieved of the burden of so much input.

Individuals are free, of course, to venture out and sample raw information, but the cost can be steep, both in time and in the security of one's worldview. If you notice the man behind the screen, it is hard to restore faith in the big talking head.

How Not To Save Social Security

Amid the swirling "debate" underway on the distant planet Beltway [located just a kick away from Uranus] on the topics of debt and deficits, Social Security drifts like a rudderless ship in hostile seas.

An easy target for talking point fabricators and creative statisticians, it sustains attacks at every level, from its very conception to its current benefit structure. It is portrayed as the elephant in the room, or perhaps the sacred cow, or maybe a giant leach. So many economic problems would go away if only we could solve Social Security - or is it that we can avoid addressing so many economic problems since we have this behemoth sucking up all our problem-solving resources?

Suggestions for reform, if you concede the need for reform, range from privatization to full funding, with a panoply of tweaks, means-tests and various actuarial adjustments in between. Of course every proposal from any source immediately becomes a catalyst for severe exothermic reaction in the oxygen depleted Beltway atmosphere. I think I just felt a little kick down there.

One element of last year's Bush-era-tax-cut-extension compromise was lowering payroll taxes on employees by two percent, for one year. I think this was conceived as a trade-off for extending Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy. What seems merely a typically asymmetric exchange of benefit across the range of incomes, its connection to the Social Security problem is not readily apparent.

Payroll taxes are collected in a kind of smoke-and-mirrors way, supposedly splitting the contribution between employer and employee, but the destination for all of the funds is Social Security. By lowering the withholding by two percent, we get a larger paycheck, but the money comes at the expense of Social Security, which is already projected to run short of its benefit obligations, somewhere between three weeks and forty-two years into the future, depending on who's making the speech.

I didn't hear any discussion of this during last Fall's tax bill negotiations, but I expect we will; if its effect on Social Security's fiscal health becomes apparent. Conservatives will use it as further proof of Social Security's unsustainability, while liberals will wonder how this all came to be. Especially if, as has been proposed, the payroll tax "holiday" is renewed every year, and possibly even extended to the "employer's share." This last would yet more quickly deplete Social Security, but without even the modest boost in our paychecks.

That's not my idea of a stimulus - it seems more like "starving the beast."

Bill Keller's Unfinished 9/11 Business [and ours]

The tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks brought more than enough opportunities to revisit that day of shock and awe. Almost everyone felt the need to get his or her long view out there, and conventional wisdom got another coat of pitch to protect it from the elements.

I refrained from contributing, and after overindulging at the media buffet in the week leading up to the actual anniversary, from consuming as well.

Former NYTimes executive editor Bill Keller relieved his pent up reflections [while executive editor, he was not allowed to express his own mind] in the magazine section of the Times on Sunday 9/11. I get that on Saturday, and Mr. Keller's piece might just have been the dish that caused me to put down my fork.

Mr. Keller accepts responsibility for his lapses of attention during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, although he wraps his actions in the insulating company of many other smart people who also should have known better. He does not excuse himself or his paper for abdicating journalistic standards, but also does not fully acknowledge the terrible collateral damage that negligence facilitated.

Mr. Keller's most insightful passage describes the blowback affecting the newspaper's reputation among liberals: "For years, our early stories hyping Iraq's menace (and to a lesser extent what people like me wrote on the opinion pages) fed a suspicion, especially on the left, that we were not to be trusted". He seems regretful for having helped readers realize that they shouldn't depend on what they read in the paper, which I find ironic.

Not everyone who beat the drums of war in 2002 is afforded such a space for their confession, and I hope Mr. Keller finds forgiveness on those pages. We should each look back and examine our own actions and rationales during those days, and try to understand our own lapses.

Much business from 9/11 remains unfinished, and more yet from the subsequent ten years - actions and inactions in response to the 9/11 attacks that have harmed innocent people around the world, and diminished our freedom and integrity here at home. We can't square those accounts with drone attacks. Admitting mistakes and making amends shows strength in greater measure than loud proclamations of love for the homeland.

Could It Be One Too Many?

After trying several kitschy names for my first very own blog, all of which were taken long ago, and all of which point to blogs that have been long neglected, I tried this phrase; which my brother [and business partner] frequently say to each other, as an antidote to whining about one frustrating aspect or another currently facing us. Not surprisingly, it was available.

I have contributed on blogs in the past, but never wanted to be solely responsible for keeping one aloft. Those earlier efforts were abandoned or closed anyway, so why not have a go at my own? I'm sure the many reasons why not will reveal themselves in good time, and if the returns do not outweigh the investments, this too will join the heap.

Too many what? Too many blogs out there? Too many words in this post? Too many subjects for the writing? The only way to find out is to start writing, and see.

Thanks for reading!