Archive for February, 2009
Deeper into Afghanistan
President Obama yesterday announced his decision to send 17,000 extra troops (two brigades and support troops) to Afghanistan in the coming months, bringing the total American troop presence there to over 50,000. This has been in the works for some time. It comes as the administration conducts several reviews on Afghan policy.
You might say we are putting the cart before the horse, sending troops at a problem just as we reconsider our strategy for confronting it. On the other hand, our existing strategy, which is to prop up the Afghan state with US firepower, seems unlikely to change under Obama. Despite recent sensible comments about the limits of what we can accomplish in Afghanistan, Obama’s team likely remains committed to state-building there. Given that goal, it is hard to see why we should stop at two brigades. We could send five and still have a low force-to-population ratio, judging by historical ratios for counter-insurgency campaigns.
A stable Afghanistan is neither necessary to US security nor obviously possible at reasonable cost, as I have periodically written. It is not evident that Al Qaeda types would again find haven in Afghanistan should we go. But assuming that they would, there remains an alternative to trying to overcome Afghanistan’s anarchic history. We could attack only the remaining jihadists, their allies, and insurgents who will not settle for local power. That would require only a small U.S. ground presence, airstrikes and local allies.
Pundits tend to assume that counterinsurgency and state-building are identical — foreigners enforce the state’s claim to a monopoly on violence to gain it support and crowd out alternative authority structures. But there is another counterinsurgency strategy out there, which is to allow the insurgency local power, to appease it as part of a bargain. The key tactic that brought lowered violence in the Sunni part of Iraq – bribing insurgent militia leaders to cooperate with us — undermines the Iraqi state, sacrificing our stated goal for a simpler one.
While we’re on the subject, I see Matt Yglesias supports the troop increase because it will lessen the need for airstrikes, which too often kill civilians. That seems backwards. Even with 12,000 new combat troops, our forces will remain a relatively small force in a large mountainous region. That means operating in dispersed contingents with limited firepower and therefore depending on air support in firefights. The new troops will likely provoke more combat and more supporting airstrikes, at least in the short term.
New Podcast: Obama’s Shock Doctrine
Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, says free-market advocates spend their careers stockpiling free-market ideas waiting for a crisis that could be used as a springboard for implementing those ideas. But, as David Boaz asks, what about Obama’s policy proposals amid recession and financial crisis?
In today’s Cato Daily Podcast, Boaz exposes Obama’s Shock Doctrine:
We know from history that, while there are a few examples of free-market or somehow right-wing programs coming about after a crisis, usually what happens in a crisis is government seizes more money and power. And you can see that in the New Deal; the Great Depression led to the New Deal. You can see it after Kennedy’s assassination led to Lyndon Johnson and his 100 days of legislation. You can see it in practically every communist government that ever came to power, was in the devastation of war….
We had a financial crisis and what happened? Did the incumbent Republican administration say, now’s our chance to implement Milton Friedman’s program and privatize and deregulate? No, they did what governments always do: they expanded their own powers at the expense of civil society, and so in that sense, Obama’s just doing the same thing that Bush did. We could call this the Bush-Obama era.
It was, after all, Rahm Emmanuel who said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.”
Former MI5 Head Criticizes Exploitation of Fear
The BBC reports that Dame Stella Rimington has spoken out against governments’ use of fear to pass legislation that reduces civil liberties. It’s “precisely one of the objects of terrorism – that we live in fear and under a police state,” she says.
Carlos Marighella says so, too, as David Rittgers points out.
Events This Week at Cato
Wednesday, February 18
12:00 PM (Luncheon to Follow)
BOOK FORUM: Falling Behind: Explaining the Development Gap between Latin American and the United States by Francis Fukuyama (editor)
Featuring the editor Francis Fukuyama, professor of International Political Economy, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University; with comments by Norman Loayza, lead economist, Research Department, World Bank; moderated by Ian Vásquez, director, Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, Cato Institute
Due to overwhelming response to this event, registration is closed, but it will be simulcast live on Cato.org.
Thursday, February 19
11:00 am (Luncheon to Follow)
POLICY FORUM: “Mexico’s Drug War: The Growing Crisis on Our Southern Border”
Featuring Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies, Cato Institute; Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance; Vanda Felbab-Brown, foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution; and Daniel T. Griswold, Director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies, Cato Institute.
Register to attend this free event, or watch live online.
Friday, February 20
12:00 PM (Lunch Included)
CAPITOL HILL BRIEFING: “Why Markets Are the Key to Quality, Coordinated Medical Care”
Featuring Arnold Kling, author of Crisis of Abundance, Under the Radar: Starting Your Internet Business Without Venture Capital and Learning Economics and adjunct scholar, Cato Institute.
Briefing will be held in room B-340 of the Rayburn House Office Building. Register here for this free event.
Expect the Worst
Yesterday, American Federation of Teachers’ President Randi Weingarten had an op-ed in the Washington Post calling for national academic standards. Of course, union support for national standards is itself almost reason enough to fight any such move to the death, but over at The Corner Ramesh Ponnuru asks a critical question, wondering “why we should expect federal standards to resemble the best state standards rather than the worst ones.”
As I’ve pointed out on numerous occasions, especially to the standards zealots on the right, there is no good reason to expect quality to prevail. The people who would be held to high standards, such as teachers and school administrators, have huge incentives and political power to fight rigor, and given their political heft would almost certainly prevail. Indeed, based on what’s happened with standards to date, the odds seem hugely in favor of wimpiness. As I wrote in response to Michael Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation a couple of years ago:
Given history and political reality, Petrilli and other like-minded conservatives have very few government standards successes to hang their hats on. Indeed, that’s why they’ve had to ask the country to play 6 percent roulette: “Of course, getting national standards and tests right is no small feat,” Petrilli acknowledges. “But McCluskey is wrong to insist that it cannot be done. After all, California, Massachusetts, and Indiana managed to develop excellent standards over the past decade. If it can happen in Sacramento or Boston, it could happen in Washington, D.C., too.”
So, because three out of fifty states have gotten standards right, we should gamble on the feds getting them right, too, and give Washington the authority to set the standards for every public school in America? That’s crazy.
Maybe if we tweak Petrilli’s statement, its insanity will be more clear: “Getting national standards and tests right is no small feat. And McCluskey is right to insist that it almost certainly can’t be done. After all, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas – and the list goes on – haven’t managed to develop excellent standards over the past decade. If it can’t happen in Montgomery or Juneau, it probably won’t happen in D.C., either.”
I Believe in Non-Political Government Comparative-Effectiveness Research (and in the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus…)
My colleague Michael Cannon has been writing about the folly of government-sponsored comparative effectiveness research. Now, in an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (subscription required), John Kraemer and Lawrence Gostin add another cautionary note for those who believe that the government’s decisions will be based on science and not on politics. In particular, the authors discussed how the Connecticut Attorney General has attacked the Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA) for recommending against the use of long-term antibiotics to treat “Chronic Lyme Disease.” Although the IDSA based its non-binding recommendation on the overwhelming scientific evidence, the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS), a well connected and media-savvy advocacy group for those with Lyme disease protested, taking its case to the Connecticut political establishment. As a result, Connecticut Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal sued the IDSA under the state’s anti-trust laws.
Political institutions are by definition political. A government body deciding on the comparative-effectiveness or cost-effectiveness of medical treatments will inevitably base its decisions as much on politics as on science.
The Biggest Check Ever Signed
The Obama Administration has banked a lot of political capital on the economic “stimulus” package signed into law today, and is hailing the measure as a sound-minded reaction to a dreary economic climate. In truth, many of the programs in the bill are not only wasteful and inefficient, but have the potential to do some real long-term harm to U.S. policy.
Among them:
- A dramatic rollback of the landmark improvements to welfare enacted in 1996 — one of the most popular and measurably effective pieces of legislation ever;
- A back-door measure to consolidate more power over individual health care decisions under federal government control;
- The misguided and incendiary “Buy American” provision — a veritable repeat of the disastrous protectionist policies of the 30′s, and sure tinder for a trade firestorm with our European and Asian trading partners;
- Billions upon billions for special interest spending that very much represents the “business as usual” that President Obama so vigorously campaigned against. (The nation’s most respected newspapers are openly taking issue at the suggestion that the package is free of “earmarks” for favored congressional leaders.)
The economic stimulus bill is merely a nearsighted return to government spending policies which have been discredited over and over again [PDF].
For more on the package, check out Cato’s Fiscal Reality page.
Now that the So-Called Stimulus Is Enacted, the Time Has Come to Look at Policies that Actually Improve Economic Performance
The faux stimulus bill will be signed into law today by President Obama. The bad news is that making government bigger will hurt the economy. The good news is that sooner or later there will be a recovery from the current downturn. The real issue is whether long-run growth will be robust. Unfortunately, the evidence strongly suggests that an increased burden of government spending is among the policies that harm long-run economic performance. In a new video, I review the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World and highlight the policies that expand freedom and increase prosperity:
Obama’s K Street Recovery Plan
Not that it needed it — lobbying was one industry that kept on growing during 2008 – the Washington influence business is getting a boost from the Obama-Pelosi-Reid massive spending bill. In a graphic on page A6 of the February 13 edition, not available online, the Washington Post reports that “A Washington Post analysis found that more than 90 organizations hired lobbyists to specifically influence provisions of the massive stimulus bill.” The graphic shows that the number of newly registered lobbying clients peaked on the day after Obama’s inauguration and continued to grow as the bill worked its way through both houses of Congress.
In the accompanying article, the Post notes that — unsurprisingly — the $800 billion spending bill “is not free of spending that benefits specific communities, industries or groups, despite vows by President Obama that the legislation would be kept clear of pet projects.” My favorite, as I’ve noted before, is
a controversial proposal for a magnetic-levitation rail line between Disneyland, in California, and Las Vegas, a project favored by Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.).
Here are some other recent headlines from the political class’s newspaper of record: “THE INFLUENCE GAME: Lobbyists work stimulus to end“; “A Lobbying Frenzy For Federal Funds“; “Ohioans Seek Slice of Stimulus Pie“; “Lobbyists Get Around Obama’s Earmark Ban“; “Certain Firms, Industries Got Last-Minute Gifts in Stimulus.”
More on the frenzied efforts to get a piece of the taxpayers’ money in the spending bill here and here.
If you want money flowing to the companies with good lobbyists and powerful congressmen, then the stimulus bill may accomplish something. But we should all recognize that we’re taking money out of the competitive, individually directed part of society and turning it over to the politically controlled sector. Politicians rather than consumers will pick winners and losers. That’s not a recipe for recovery.
The Looming Horror of Global Cooling
George Will reminds us of the global disaster that faced us back in the 1970s:
In the 1970s, “a major cooling of the planet” was “widely considered inevitable” because it was “well established” that the Northern Hemisphere’s climate “has been getting cooler since about 1950″ (New York Times, May 21, 1975). Although some disputed that the “cooling trend” could result in “a return to another ice age” (the Times, Sept. 14, 1975), others anticipated “a full-blown 10,000-year ice age” involving “extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation” (Science News, March 1, 1975, and Science magazine, Dec. 10, 1976, respectively). The “continued rapid cooling of the Earth” (Global Ecology, 1971) meant that “a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery” (International Wildlife, July 1975). “The world’s climatologists are agreed” that we must “prepare for the next ice age” (Science Digest, February 1973). Because of “ominous signs” that “the Earth’s climate seems to be cooling down,” meteorologists were “almost unanimous” that “the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century,” perhaps triggering catastrophic famines (Newsweek cover story, “The Cooling World,” April 28, 1975). Armadillos were fleeing south from Nebraska, heat-seeking snails were retreating from Central European forests, the North Atlantic was “cooling down about as fast as an ocean can cool,” glaciers had “begun to advance” and “growing seasons in England and Scandinavia are getting shorter” (Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 27, 1974).
Will George Will or his successor do a similar column around 2039 about the hysteria over global warming?
The Blogosphere Has Corrected the Record
Will Paul Krugman?
At a Heritage event, Arnold Kling said:
Back in September when they were talking about taking $700 billion dollars to unclog the financial system I wanted to yank Henry Paulson out of the TV screen and say to him: “Keep your hands off my daughter’s future.” But he got away with it. For me it felt like sitting there watching my home being ransacked by a gang of thugs. And now we’ve got a new gang of thugs and they are doing the same thing.
Careless blogging and hyper-ideology twisted that into a knock on President Obama and imputed racism to Kling. Krugman incorporated it all into a column decrying the “ugliness of the political debate” over Obama’s stimulus.
Well, Paulson’s TARP and Obama’s stimulus are ugly, and so evidently is the cacophony in the echo chamber where Krugman gets his information. But not Kling.
President Honors Pledge to Post Bills Before Signing
. . . or does he?
Friday afternoon, the White House blog announced that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was posted online for public comment. This looked like good evidence that the President intends to honor his campaign promise to post legislation online and take public comment for five days before signing it.
But it’s not great evidence of that.
The Whitehouse.gov post went up at 2:05 pm, but the House didn’t vote until 2:24 pm and the Senate voted at 05:29 pm. (Click on the “votes” to see how your representatives did.) As of Saturday afternoon, the Thomas legislative tracking system doesn’t indicate that the bill has been presented to the President yet. And news reports indicate that the President will sign the bill on Monday, three days after it was “pre-posted.”
Regular order, Mr. President. When a bill is presented to you, post it online (at a consistent place on your Web site, not just at ad hoc URLs as you’ve done up to now). Then wait five days, reviewing the comments of the public as you promised to do when you asked the public to elect you.
The steps the White House has taken toward implementing the President’s promise are good steps. (In this Cato daily podcast, I characterized the President’s record on transparency so far as “mixed.”) But the promise is not fulfilled until bills receive five days online airing after they have been presented.
Presentment is a distinct, constitutional step in the legislative process. Until every non-emergency bill is posted online for five days after presentment and before signing, President Obama will look like he’s being driven by events and maneuvered by his elders in Congress.
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