The Cost of Victory

On the first anniversary of the day that Usama bin Laden was killed, the President made a surprise trip to Afghanistan where he signed a historic treaty with that nation. Please note that this was an agreement and not a 'treaty', in spite of the fact that as that "defines a new kind of relationship between our nations" (according to the Fox News transcript).  Now normally such an Agreement between nations would have required Senate approval before having any legal meaning, but let's set that aside to consider the subject at hand.  

From Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, the President spoke both to the troops assembled, to the world at large, and just as prime in the US began; saying that, "The goal that I set – to defeat Al Qaeda, and deny it a chance to rebuild – is within reach." 

He went on to say, "In coordination with the Afghan government, my Administration has been in direct discussions with the Taliban. We have made it clear that they can be a part of this future if they break with Al Qaeda, renounce violence, and abide by Afghan laws. Many members of the Taliban – from foot soldiers to leaders – have indicated an interest in reconciliation. A path to peace is now set before them."  

And continued later with, "The Iraq War is over. The number of our troops in harm’s way has been cut in half, and more will be coming home soon. We have a clear path to fulfill our mission in Afghanistan, while delivering justice to Al Qaeda."

If in fact all of this is an honest assessment of the world situation in the fight against Terrorism (and I am willing to concede, at least for the sake of argument, that the President is better informed on such things than I am), then this means that for all intents and purposes, the War on Terror is all but over.  

While I have been thus far willing to concede points, my concession speech is now over, and I must say that all of this one gives me pause for doubts.  Nevertheless, if we are to believe that this is true and not just a political stunt pulled in an election year to win votes (a practice which all first term Presidents are certainly capable of), I for one have a few questions for this Administration:

• Why are we still permitting the draconian (and mostly failed) procedures and methods of the TSA to provide what passes for Airport Security in this nation?  If tensions are in fact easing, why are we still doing pat downs on 80 year-old women in wheel chairs, aggressive pat downs of seven year-old girls with cerebral palsy, and four year-old girls who run to their grandmothers?  Don't these practices contradict the statements being made on the international stage?
• Why do we need the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which suspends the right of habeus corpus (something of questionable Constitutional authority which has only been done previously during periods of war), and permits the government to indefinitely detain suspects without charges or trial, even if they are American citizens?  The president himself stated that he was reluctant to sign the bill in the first place.  Why then can't we see one of those famous 'executive orders' rescinding the Constitutionally questionable portions of legislation which shouldn't have been passed in the first place?
• Why must we continue to cede to the government the use of National Security Letters, which permit the FBI to do wire taps, searches of telephone and financial records, and email history without a court order, through the renewed provisions of The Patriot Act passed just under a year ago?  If this battle is winding down, surely this nation no longer requires the extreme and again Constitutionally questionable practices ceding the basic rights of its citizens guaranteed in the Bill of Rights to the government
• Why are we still discussing the deployment of unmanned (and at least according to the government unarmed) drones to perform what must in light of these changing circumstances, be considered little more than an unnecessary bit of 'routine surveillance' of the civilian population in this country?  If tensions are in fact easing, surely we don't need Big Brother watching over us quite so closely (and probably illegally) any longer?

The cynic in me cries out at the curious coincidence of timing in such an announcement so close to the November elections (like Leroy Jethro Gibbs, I don't believe in coincidence).  Certainly we expect there to be the usual amount of grandstanding, selective fact recognition, and creative story telling this time of year. The safety of this nation is not a game to be played or something to be trifled with for the sake of two, four, or six more years (depending on which office you're running for); and woe betide the politicians who attempt to play fast and loose in doing so. 

The political pundit in me is likewise suspicious of events which turn the public's attention away from critical domestic issues and towards the nonsense of a non-treaty treaty; one which in turn will be followed by another non-treaty treaty that will come later in Chicago. Such events often prove to be media events staged more for political ends than real agreements of regional peace; especially in an area that has not seen such a thing for thousands of years.

We knew going into the War on Terror that the price of failure would be a heavy one indeed, both in terms of the potential loss of life and that of damage to this nation.  The lesson of 9/11 taught both of those lessons to us the hard way. We knew going to war in Iraq and Afghanistan would likewise take their toll on this nation in lives and treasure, and we were not wrong.  We may have some idea of the financial burden we incurred, but it will be many decades before we learn what the real human cost of these conflicts are in the shattered lives and shattered families that we are only now beginning to count.

What none of us forecast over ten years ago however, is what the 'Cost of Victory' would be.  Oh sure, we recognized that putting this country on a domestic war footing with an enemy that was more than willing to bring the battle to our soil was going to have a financial cost; most of it in terms of bureaucracy created to deal with this new world we were confronted with.  Few if any however, recognized the price that we would be paying in personal freedom; or in the aggressive power-seeking mentality that we were creating in government.  Few indeed foresaw the runaway train of government growth, fed by a mind-set that was apparently perfectly willing to sacrifice the liberty that's at the foundation of this country for a illusory security that never existed before and never will.

I sometimes fear that the cost of this victory has already been a far greater one than we ever realized, and one that we may not be prepared to bear in the years ahead.

 

Silly Bits III

Having all but exhausted myself with a rant earlier in the week, I was reticent to attempt to annoy everyone with another bit of nonsense this week.  There were however, a couple of things continuing to annoy me like an itch that I couldn't scratch.  There are therefore going to be two weekday efforts this week (and don't you feel fortunate that this is so).

As I mentioned earlier this week rather briefly (he offered sarcastically), the President was doing a bit of public prodding of the Justices of the Supreme Court for doing their job in reviewing the Constitutional nature of the 'Patients Affordable Healthcare Act' (which of course, he and his spin masters are now hinting never really happened).  While I believe that I probably said enough about most aspects of that subject, I would like to add a couple of related comments to the previous effort, since as the week has developed the President has added even more to his list of those who he's apparently not happy with.

Oil companies were early on the list, as the President once more attempted to attack subsidies and tax breaks granted 'by law' to companies that seem to be rather profitable.  It seemed strange that he wasn't demonizing car companies that had likewise returned to profitability, and that continue to owe the government considerable sums of money, but perhaps it's because high priced cars never kept an incumbent officeholder from being re-elected, but high priced gas most surely has.  It was also curious that the President wasn't demanding that Congress remove the subsidies from Corporate farmers or institutions of higher education who are likewise dining at the government trough while maintaining their profitability.

I also found it interesting that while he was more than willing to chide SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) for fulfilling its Constitutionally mandated responsibilities, he seemed unwilling to castigate a Democratically controlled Senate for failing to do theirs.  The Senate is after all supposed to be submitting an annual budget, but has failed to do so for over 1000 days.  I suppose that he might be holding back in doing so, lest the Senate take up the question of the President's most recent recess appointments.  Such backroom agreements between the President and Senate Majority Leader, both Democrats, call for (as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton once said as a Senator to General Patraeus about the Iraq War) "a suspension of disbelief".

On a completely separate but equally important note, I find myself continuing to be dismayed at the diminution of freedom in this country that has apparently fallen off the radar screens of the media and citizens.  We continue to expand the government's ability to do warrant-less wiretaps and searches, apparently have no problem with deploying federal troops to perform law enforcement functions in violation of the Posse Cumitatus Act of 1878 (as long as it's done on Federal Interstate Highways), see little problem with deploying unmanned drones to perform surveillance on its citizens, see less of a problem with killing US citizens overseas without due process (or even filing charges), and preventing citizens from speaking freely within zones of 'protection' provided by the Secret Service.

Perhaps never in this country's history has the Bill of Rights been so grossly infringed upon.  Oh sure, Lincoln suspended habeus corpus during the Civil War, shut down newspapers and exiled Congressman who said things he didn't like.  Sure FDR rounded up and imprisoned US citizens whose ethnic background he felt threatened by.  But you could at least you could say that we were in a 'state of war' declared by Congress.  And while many will try to make the case that the war on terrorism is just as much a danger as those previous conflicts, no such war has been legally declared by Congress (and certainly not one on US soil).  Beginning with the Patriot Act, and with continued assault on the Bill of Rights in what may be the only current example of continuing bi-partisan support, this nation can be said to have entered no less than a de facto state of martial law.  It seems, at least according to Democrats and Republicans in our current ruling class, that the only way to protect the freedom we hold dear is to surrender it a piece at a time.

If this were not despicable enough on its face, our current foreign policy is one demanding sanctions against those in other nations seeking to infringe upon the freedoms of their citizens in the very ways our own government is doing to us.  That it goes largely unnoticed by the mainstream media is tragic.  That it goes unmentioned and unchecked by leading members of both major political parties during an election year is criminal.  That it goes largely uncared about by the citizens whose freedoms are being compromised is .... just more Silly Bits.

The Value of a Contract

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There's something that's fundamentally wrong going on out there these days.  It appears to be having increasing impact on society in general and the United states in particular; and has to do with the the concept of a contract.  

Now a contract is an agreement between two or more parties to do (or not do) something, usually as part of some kind of exchange.  Because such agreements can have something to do with both goods and services, they also become central to the definition of property; which includes not only the things that a person possesses, but the labor and freedom used to create them.  Because contracts have to do with property, they by extension have a great deal to do with liberty, as one of the central liberties is that which allows us to own or dispose of our goods and labors as we see fit.  A legally binding contract is so foundational that it's one of the few things that's recognized internationally, even in places where basic standards of the rule of law and liberty do not exist.

Once upon a time in fact, it was held that a person's word was their bond and sufficient pledge to be considered a legal contract.  Well, that used to be that case anyway. This is less the case these days, when contracts are almost always written, and grow ever longer as they simultaneously grow unenforceable.  Let's take a look at the chain of failure in the concept of a contracts in sports:

Athletes going to college on scholarship enter into an agreement to play a sport at an institution of higher education in exchange for room, board, expenses, and what passes for a college education these days (at least in theory).  Along with this, they are provided with specialized training and the exposure required to move them on into the pro ranks when that agreement is complete. While the agreements are set to last for four years, they are rarely fulfilled; as athletes find that they cannot resist the urge to cash in on the fame and fortune that such training has provided.

It's hard to blame them however, when the coaches who signed them to these agreements similarly abandon their own written contracts with the university to run a sports program, ditch their current employers, and the walk out on the players who committed to them in order to accept the first better offer that comes along.  In some twisted form of payback perhaps, the coaches often abrogate the agreement with the athletes before they can do it themselves; both sides abandoning their given word in order to bolt for cash.

The next step in the process allows both versions of oath breakers to truly enter the professional ranks, where this time they sign a truly legally binding agreement to provide a service for a fee.  Signing such legal documents in the presence of agents and lawyers representing both sides however, doesn't end the hypocrisy. Apparently even these contracts are easily set aside by a player having an especially good season or a coach approaching the end of a commitment.  Both now demand to renegotiate such agreements whether they are legally eligible to do so or not; content to violate their oath under threat that their job performance will suffer.

Government has learned a valuable lesson from this behavior, and while ostensibly being the arbiter of the law where contracts are concerned, it now contributes to the increasingly ineffectual nature of such legally binding agreements.  Seeking to serve those in elective office rather than the rule of law it was instituted to protect, it become increasingly more intrusive where contracts are concerned. 

And we see government itself (or its agencies) willing to ignore the letter of legal contracts to achieve what it perceives to be a desired end.  It directly or indirectly threatens one party in such an agreement (like Boeing) in favor of another (the Machinist union) in effect dictating where and how such a company will do business.  (The fact that the government is one of the largest customers of Boeing had nothing to do with its surrender, I'm sure.)

Boeing is not the first place (even recently) where government intrusion has rejected legally binding agreements in favor of 'approved' ones.  During the bankruptcy settlement of GM and Chrysler, bond holders who by definition hold first call on the assets, were passed over in violation of obligation clearly established in bankruptcy law (and tradition) to a group whose claim to recompense was far less.  Once again, a union (the United Auto Workers) was awarded what it was not legally eligible to receive at the discretion of the government which was financing the bail out of the companies involved (a bailout which Congress in fact voted against).    

Not wanting to limit itself to one segment of the economy in which it can ignore contractual obligation, government has gone on recently to establish that it can step in between an individual who signed a contract to borrow money to buy a home and the company that loaned them that money for this purchase.  The government now apparently believes that it's alright to ignore this legal contract and force financial institutions to renegotiate such agreements because the value of property is now well below the value of the loan.

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The fundamental question called into question is whether this is indeed a nation governed by the rule of law as we were taught and as the Founders once believed?  If so, what happens when respect for such laws no longer exists by the very government put in place to protect them?  If such legally binding agreements can be so casually disregarded by the government itself, to whom can citizens turn for redress of ills suffered?  What about the social contract between citizens of the United States and their government defined and limited by the contract known as the Constitution?  If government is allowed to abrogate lesser agreements without apparent challenge, how long will it be before the greater likewise becomes all but meaningless?

This is far more even, than the so-called 'living Constitution' that we've heard of, that allows government to claim the right to reinterpret this document after viewing it in a modern light, rather than use the Amendment process designed for such situations.  This is the thinking that casually confiscates the fundamental rights of citizens guaranteed in the first ten of those Amendments by passing unconstitutional legislation like 'The Patriot Act'.  This is the thinking that, as we speak, allows Congress to weigh the benefits of being able to use the military within the borders of the United States to arrest and detain US citizens indefinitely without the requirement of ever going before a judge (A bill known as the 'National Defense Authorization Act' which violates both the legal principle of habeus corpus and the Posse Cumitatus Act of 1878).  This is an elemental change in our interpretation of the law of the land in this country is bound to have dire long-term consequences.

Society may have begun the mischief and misbehavior by allowing the degeneration of the concept of a contracts, and by extension the rule of law that goes with them, treating their oaths (oral and written) as something of little or no value. It's government however that will in the end determine whether this moral lapse will into future misery, if not outright tyranny, for the citizens of this country.

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Airline Security - Firing With The Safety Off

I have watched in wonder in recent days, the changing position of our government since the failed attack against a US airliner in recent days. I was amazed when Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano initially stated that "the system worked". I was amazed again when less than 48 hours later, the President ordered a review of all of these same procedures because of "a systematic failure". 


What I found truly amazing however, was the bravery shown by passengers in this recent attempt. This is bravery far too often glossed over by government bureaucrats in their vain attempts to seek personal glory or political cover. This is bravery that has nothing to do with the TSA screenings, Homeland Security, or the continuing failure of airline security regulations and procedures in this country. This is bravery perhaps inspired by that of similar passengers on United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed into the fields near Shanksville, PA on 9/11 when terrorists attempted to use it as a weapon targeted at Washington DC. For the situation that we find ourselves in today is as much a part of the horrors of that day as any that have come since. 


The Bush Administration did what was necessary in the days that quickly followed, securing the country and the safety of air travel. It followed up on that success however, by subverting the very freedoms that it was seeking to protect in the name of such safety. The "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001" (USA Patriot Act of 2001) provided the federal government with the weapons for that protection and an equal amount of intrusion into the rights and freedoms of American citizens. 


Created in the same period in history, we saw the passage of the Aviation and Transportation Security Act in November of 2001. This in turn led to the creation of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to take over airline security from private companies that had previously taken care of it. Though originally part of the Department of Transportation, this government airline security arm was moved under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security (yet another agency created in the wake of 9/11), as the primary weapon to insure the safety of air travel. 


Eight years later with the Patriot Act well-established and as today's politicians seek continued expansion of the Federal bureaucracy and budget, I have to ask myself whether the creation of and reactive restrictions under TSA and Homeland Security have truly made air travel any safer. We take our shoes off because someone used shoes to smuggle explosives, getting past TSA. We carry smaller bottles of liquids to insure that sufficient combustible chemicals are not contained in our carry-on luggage, because someone got past TSA. This latest attempt involved an explosive device contained in a passenger's underwear, which begs a serious question of what new humiliations could be heaped upon us by TSA as a consequence. (I don't know about you, but I'm not putting my underwear on the belt, even though it would prove to my mother that I wear clean ones when I travel in case of an accident.) 


So as we congratulate ourselves on another unsuccessful terrorist attack on one of our airlines and as our government once more wrings its hands and delivers yet further regulatory abuse to air travel in this country and abroad, perhaps it is time to rethink the process. As even heavier artillery in the government arsenal seek to make the process more cumbersome, more intrusive, and more expensive to the airlines and the taxpayers; perhaps it is time we reconsider the failed path that we have been following. As we witness the continuing failure of the policies used to protect us, perhaps it is we instead who should be afraid of the all too imperfect weapons we continue to use in attempts to thwart this terrorist threat. 


Maybe there is something to be learned from the story of "The Hunt for Red October" (the movie of which has been on recently and struck a chord with me on this), when the V K Konovalov (a Russian attack sub) launched a torpedo at the titled submarine with the safeties off in an attempt to once and for all end its threat. That weapon, having missed both the Red October (its intended target) and another submarine (the USS Dallas) now continued on, searching for any target of opportunity. In the end, it chose those very same people who first sent it on its way. Perhaps we should use it as a teaching moment, when we listen to the words of the first officer as he scolds the captain of that Russian submarine for firing a weapon without understanding where the damage would actually occur:

"You arrogant ass, you've killed us!"