the disconnect

The War Budget

No sooner was the ink dry on a budget compromise than Leon Panetta, the new Secretary of Defense, went public with a letter warning against drastic cuts to the defense budget. This is nonsense, plain and simple. Why do we still have about 80,000 troops stationed in Germany, Italy and other western European countries? Why do we still have troops and bases in Japan? Why are we still spending money on the National Missile Defense (aka "Star Wars", SDI, etc.)?  The truth is that we do not have a “defense” budget, we have a war budget. Withdraw from Afghanistan, withdraw from Iraq, close bases in Germany and Japan, demobilize or redeploy some troops, end the National Missile Defense program;  major savings will result, long term, despite some short term costs.

I know that host countries pay sizable amounts of money to maintain the U.S. overseas bases, but these projections of U.S. power are still costly for U.S. taxpayers and often more costly in terms of long-term U.S. interests. In the case of Okinawa, for example, the U.S. promised to reduce the military presence and relocate a large base after the school girl rape case in 1995; the U.S. troop numbers on Okinawa remain what they were and the move to relocate is stalled at a very early stage. Okinawan and Japanese attitudes toward the U.S. are damaged by such intransigence. At this point, what U.S. interests are protected by our ongoing presence in Japan and Germany? In South Korea? 

What good is the missile defense program? The nature of the most imminent threat to our interests has changed radically since the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan first proposed this measure. Moreover, every billion dollars spent on Defense creates fewer jobs than if the same amount were spent on education, infrastructure, or almost any other publicly funded program. Can we get real about our war budget? We are not getting the defense capability we need now, even if we have built up the most effective military force in the world, indeed, in history.  

Historically, the U.S. demobilized and disarmed after each major conflict but we have done neither since the end of the Korean War. The Cold War is not much of an excuse at this point, since it has been over for two decades. The war on terror has never required the deployment of vast numbers of troops, indeed, Robert Pape and others have pretty much proved that stationing our troops on others' soil is an incitement to terrorism.  

Let's get real about our economic problems and cut the Pentagon budget as much as we have cut social programs, not nibble here and there at unpopular programs. Let's get real about language and revert to the old name, the War Department while we're at it. Let's also restore the draft so we all have a stake in deployments, in war and peace. 

 

The Real Budget Debate

When my wife and I first married, we needed to watch our money, so we listed our needs and wants, totaled up our after-tax income, and then decided how much money we'd spend each month on each priority. This is how most people do it, and it works so well that 36 years later, my wife and I still review our budget every January the same way. When we decide how much to spend and how much to save, we first review our priorities for the coming year or two; for example, this year we started saving money to purchase a new car, which meant spending less in other categories, like eating out or vacation travel.

In the seemingly perpetual debate about the federal budget, all sides talk much about our priorities as a nation, very little of it fruitful. Political rhetoric, in this case, does not persuade—the actions of Congress and the President trump their words. If my wife and I say our first priority is to pay off the mortgage, but buy a new flat screen television or vacation in Europe, our real top priority is entertaining ourselves, not paying off our debt.

We hear about jobs, big government, education and health care, deteriorating infrastructure, and so on. What our tax dollar actually buys, though, is wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Libya; that is in addition to paying for the U.S. military people already stationed in many other countries the world. About half of discretionary spending goes to the Pentagon, and that does not even count money for the civilian intelligence agencies, the Department of Energy's custody of nuclear warhead material, or the chunk of the foreign aid budget that actually finances military spending by Egypt and Israel among others. Is all this really our to priority as a nation?

Both parties claim to have the interests of the average citizen at heart but are cutting the federal programs that benefit average citizens. Sure, there are flaws in our health care system, and clearly there is something wrong with the way we educate our offspring. Fixing these problems even if they require more money should be a high priority, but our political leaders ignore the elephant of military spending.

If we have cut as much out of our family budget as possible but still can't meet our goals, my wife and I have an alternative to more cuts: we try to earn more money. I've been waiting for almost twenty years to see how tax cuts for wealthy people and loopholes for corporations produce more government revenue by stimulating the economy. I waited during the Reagan Administration for those trickle down benefits. I am still waiting.

So, if you and I are not seeing our own needs and wants reflected in our elected officials' attempts to solve our budget problems, whose priorities are they enacting? Follow the money.

 

True and False

We are now offered our choice of two budgets, one from the President, one from the Republican Party, both choosing war and militarism over education, infrastructure, innovation, and health.  Not to mention alternatives to militarism. Some take solace in what has not happened:  the programs that were not eliminated for this fiscal year (now half over, by the way), or the tax increases that were not passed.  Others see small signs of hope:  our politicians are finally addressing the deficit, they say. These consolations are both true and false:  the plans address the deficit by carving giant swaths out of the social safety net, by ignoring some costs and exaggerating others.  The two budgets are both true and false, deeply flawed.

What is clear is that our elected representatives, and by extension most of us, have chosen war, have chosen weapons, have chosen militarism.  Our tax system increasingly favors large corporations over private citizens, the wealthy over the middle class, the few over the many.  War is easier than the alternatives, easy to plan, easy to finance. It is easier to tear down than to build, and apparently more profitable for large corporations and wealthy investors. It is not so profitable for poor people, old people, or anyone who does not rely on investment for her/his livelihood.  

We tell ourselves the truth that America is an exceptional nation, perhaps flawed but different, better than all other nations, but that is false, we are a nation like any other because like all nations we are a nation of individual human beings, flawed, limited, tempted by fame or money or sex, sometimes acting at our best and out of our highest ideals but more normally just trying to survive. A little honesty about this might cause us to reflect on our budget and policy choices and change some of them.

 

Libya, Egypt, and Our Choices

A few weeks ago, protesters demanded change in Libya but the country slid into civil war very quickly; now the opposition is relying on a no fly zone and multilateral military assistance which escalates the violence there even further. In contrast, Libya's neighbors, Egypt and Tunisia, are experiencing orderly change through successful nonviolent movements to oust unpopular governments. In Bahrain, protesters continue nonviolent resistance in the fave of armed suppression by its own ruler and that of its neighbor, Saudi Arabia. What's different about Libya? Why did nonviolence work in Tunisia and Egypt, why is nonviolent resistance continuing in Bahrain?

Egyptian demonstrators slept in front of tanks, responded to violent attacks by pro-Mubarak forces mounted on camels and horses, and even cleaned up Tahrir Square because leaders trained in nonviolent strategies and tactics planned and organized the protests. Egyptians, Tunisians and Bahrainis who studied nonviolent action and engaged in years-long efforts to train themselves and others built on earlier successes in other countries. This did not happen in Libya, where initially peaceful protests quickly devolved into armed conflict. Nonviolent movements that changed unpopular authoritarian governments, particularly the Otpor!-led overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia and the 1986 Edsa Revolution in the Philippines, share common success factors, especially reflection about and training in nonviolent techniques.

Carefully planned and prepared nonviolent campaigns like the ones in Egypt and Tunisia are not glamorous, easy to spot or quick to bear fruit. Long-term preparation for nonviolent action has powered nonviolent change in many circumstances, but nonviolent action is not easily understood by those conditioned to view military intervention as the best way to defend human rights and spread democracy. Despite the repeated failure of military interventions over the last twenty years, Western leaders are blind to the truth: Commitment to peaceful change, whether from moral conviction, faith or pragmatic assessment of the balance of power, gives movement leaders and organizers staying power in the face of adversity and even armed resistance. It may feel good to shoot missiles at Qaddafi, but we do not know what sort of government or society will result from a revolution born in violence and missile strikes by outside powers. Reality is always more complex than the simple narratives constructed to promote wars, and real problems require complex solutions and grass roots initiatives.

To understand the difference between Egypt and Libya, we need to know about Otpor!, the Yugoslavian youth movement that employed nonviolent action to oust Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. Otpor! alumni in turn trained activists from Egypt and Tunisia in nonviolent action, investing their training and experience in others to continue to help promote democracy and peaceful change. Current events remind us that peacemakers are truly blessed, and should inspire us to learn more about how effective nonviolent training has been throughout the last fifty years in promoting peace and justice in countries as diverse as the Philippines, South Africa, the former Yugoslavia and now Egypt and Tunisia.

Project Homeless Connect

During a recent cold spell, I spent a lot of time in the emergency shelter operated by the Whatcom Interfaith Coalition. Mostly, I volunteer for the overnight shift, when things are quieter and I have the opportunity to listen to people's stories. What strikes me every time I hear someone tell their story is how much violence these folks experience. Many of the men are combat veterans of Vietnam, the first Gulf War, or the “little wars” and special operations between the two. Others are not veterans, but their experiences of violence are just as harrowing.

It may be because of such violence that they are living on the street or in camps at the fringes of society or they may suffer violence because they live on the margins. The fact is that when homeless people become violent, they are most likely to inflict violence on other homeless people. Every day, poor people, homeless or not, experience rejection, deprivation and suspicion. We are doing violence to poor, homeless people every time we cross the street to avoid contact with them, every time we avert our eyes, every time we drop a quarter into an outstretched hand.

As the recession takes hold, more people will lose their homes, jobs, possessions and security. As I listen to each shelter guest tell his or her story, I wonder how I can best respond to them beyond their immediate need for a warm place to sleep and a meal. Is a severe weather shelter the best we can do? The needs of poor people are many and complex. They require a long-term commitment to outreach and continuing service; it is not enough to offer a meal, a willing ear, or some small change. Nationally, we have turned away from homeless people since at least the Reagan Administration. How well are we responding to homelessness, how compassionately are we responding to homeless individuals?

That question haunts me whenever the question of homelessness comes up and, as often as not, someone expresses fear or distaste. No wonder we offer severe weather emergency shelters but almost no housing options for poor people; no wonder we offer coffee and sandwiches when people are hungry for so much more. We give the bare minimum we can. Their need demands that we who have security and stability engage more fully, building relationships and advocating for housing, recovery programs, health coverage and their other needs.

One way to give more is through Project Homeless Connect, a one day event that aims to improve access to the resources and services available to homeless people and to encourage collaboration among all segments of your community to come up with solutions to homelessness.  Here in Bellingham, Project Homeless Connect is on January 29, and I plan to be there all day.

Truth in Advertising

This comment appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer today, November 17, 2008, under the heading:   Case for Nonviolent Action is Strong

This campaign season, we heard about everything from Alaskan independence to the return of the Cold War. The list includes diplomacy, economics, immigration, taxes, terrorism, values, war, you name it. One topic that was not mentioned, indeed is rarely mentioned in the course of mainstream discussions or news coverage, is nonviolence. Because I am committed to nonviolent action, I find its omission from public discourse both puzzling and troubling.

Of course, I mean practical, effective nonviolent action. Our blindness to it is astonishing since over the last 50 years, we have experienced the civil rights movement in this country and witnessed the triumph of nonviolence in ending apartheid in South Africa, the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines and the Soviet Union's hegemony over much of Eurasia.

Ironically, the stockpiles of nuclear weapons, ever-present throughout the Cold War, had little to do with ending 40 years of East-West confrontation. Civil society groups, labor unions and nonviolence training accomplished what "mutual assured destruction" could not.

Yet the nuclear stockpiles are still with us, while nonviolence remains invisible and discounted as a policy tool. Even the U.S. government discounts diplomacy, as evidenced by the declining resources the federal government devotes to it. There are several reasons for this, including perhaps the role violence played in our successful evolution from forest primates into the dominant species of our planet.

As a retired diplomat and current nonviolent activist, I wonder why we cling to war when the case for nonviolence has so often been demonstrated in recent decades.

Partly, it is the constellation of symbols and emotions with which we group war: patriotism, the flag, defense of our homes from threatening others, heroism. Another factor is the truths we choose not to remember:

When was the last time you saw a recruitment poster or television spot with the message, "Join the Army/Navy/Air Force/Marines to kill and be killed!"? All our images of war are sanitized, and validated by war's false positive associations with hearth, home, freedom. (The only freedoms war allows are the freedoms to fear, to frighten, to kill, to maim and to destroy the hearths and homes of others.)

In contrast, we mostly associate nonviolence with impractical idealism, weakness, and passivity. We remember that both Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated but conveniently forget that each had achieved ambitious goals through nonviolent action. Moreover, each was embarking on even more ambitious campaigns when he was killed. When we remember, we canonize them as if to say ordinary people like us could never accomplish what they did, forgetting that neither would have succeeded without the work of thousands of ordinary people.

In their recruiting efforts, groups like Peace Brigades International and Nonviolent Peaceforce stress the difficulty and danger of nonviolent action, yet have no difficulty finding people to join peace teams, who enter conflict zones unarmed and unarmored. If military recruiters were as honest about war, would they be as successful?

8 Issues We Are Not Tallking About

Listening to debates, reading blogs about the debates, watching satires of the candidates--my mind is bursting with campaign rhetoric.  Much of the satire takes off from the style of the candidate's speech, but their styles are not as important as their substance, and there is a disconnect between my experience and the content of the rhetoric.  Here are the things I encounter in my community and my life that the candidates are not addressing:

Defense Spending:  In 2009, over 700 billion dollars, over half the federal budget and still growing, most of it corporate welfare for weapons manufacturers and defense contractors.

Diplomacy:  Okay, Barack Obama talks about the need to negotiate with others but neither he nor John MCain mentions the dismal state of support for U.S. diplomacy--in terms of financing, numbers of diplomats, skills training, understanding of diplomacy by average elected officials much less average Americans.

Homelessness:   They talk about the mortgage crisis but what about those who have had no home for years?

Hunger:  Farm policy?  Development assistance?  People in this country and others are hungry.  It's a crisis for them, and rising food prices are a problem for average folk everywhere.

Infrastructure Enhancement:  Not repairing roads and bridges and tunnels, which the candidates have mentioned, but the sort of infrastructure we need for the future, for example, nationwide broadband wifi.

Overpopulation:  Almost no one, even in the environmental movement, talks about the single biggest problem driving wars, pollution, climate change, et cetera:  There are too many people!

Presidential Power:  Anyone heard either major party candidate outline how they will roll back the violations of the Constitution now justified by faulty Justice Department memos, Presidential signing statements and outright deceit?  We need whoever is our next President to restore the Constitution.

Torture: There has to be a clear repudiation of it and a policy of apology (which would be revolutionary for any national government) and restitution.

You can probably come up with more.   

What?

An article in today's New York Times contains this paragraph:

One of the more contentious issues was how to limit the pay of executives whose firms seek government aid, a top priority for Democrats and even some Republican lawmakers. But it was a concern for Mr. Paulson, who worried about discouraging firms from participating in the rescue plan, which seeks to convince companies to sell potentially valuable assets to the government at relatively bargain prices.

Does anyone in Congress find this outrageous?  Do you?  People are losing homes, jobs and hope but our Treasury Secretary worries that multi-millionaire CEOs will persuade their companies not to join in a bailout (already quite advantageous to them since under it the federal government will essentially buy "assets" whose real current and future values are unknown) if they are forced to limit their own benefits.

Let's not put up with this cronyism and lack of leadership.  Let's all write Treasury Secretary Paulson telling him how we feel about this, and don't forget to copy your local newspaper.  Here's mine:

Dear Secretary Paulson:

Today I read news reports saying you are concerned that limiting the compensation of executives might limit their companies' participation in the proposed bail out plan.

Your concern is misplaced.  You ought rather to be thinking about the middle and working class American families who are losing ground in the current economic circumstances. 

If an executive chooses not to lead his company to seek badly needed government funds because to do so limits his or her compensation, that executive has placed self above company and ought not to continue in the job in any case.  Moreover, should not leaders who fail to lead wisely be somehow accountable?   

Please, through the remainder of your term of office, place the interests of the commonweal ahead of the interests of high-paid executives whose judgments about the market have been dubious.

Sincerely,

Nicholas Mele   

We Are All Liars

Earlier this week, a verse from the Hebrew Bible leaped out at me:

Whoever makes a fortune by a lying tongue
is chasing a bubble over deadly snares. (Proverbs 21: 6, New American Bible)

For several days before (and since), the top news stories concerned the financial crisis and the proposed 700 billion dollar bail out of financial institutions.  The day I read this verse from the Book of Proverbs, reactions to the bail out proposal ran to questioning why Wall Street financiers deserve a break while working people continue to suffer. 

The truth is, we are all trying to make a fortune by lying to ourselves.  We tell ourselves we will make those ballooning mortgage payments somehow, and sign to purchase a home we cannot afford.  We say we oppose the war in Iraq but we do nothing of consequence to stop it.  We give pennies to charity while poor people sicken and die at home and abroad because our elected government chooses and carries out for us policies that exploit poor people.  We are all chasing a bubble over deadly snares of willful ignorance, self-indulgence and complacency. 

Both political parties are culpable, but more so, each and every U.S. citizen is guilty of choosing comfort over awareness, charity over justice, distraction over action.  It is time to act.  What have you or I done lately to stand with poor people, whether they inhabit a refugee camp in Kurdistan, a village in Africa or a grate on the streets of Washington, DC?  Have we even written our Senators and Representatives to demand they stop funding the arms industry and start addressing the health needs of our own citizens?  Have we written letters to the editor?  Have we told our elected representatives, at the local, state and federal levels, that enough is enough?

The U.S., and with it the entire world, is in a parlous state, and it is up to each of us to do our part, whether it is something as small as writing (and sending) a letter or as large as physically moving to a refugee camp to live with poor people whom we have made poor.

The US presidential election, despite all the talk, will change nothing until each of us begins to put our bodies, our possessions, and our convictions on the line.  You know what needs to be done:  find the issue that evokes your passion and commitment, set achievable goals, and work toward them.  Some of us will demonstrate and perform acts of civil disobedience, some will get more engaged in politics at all levels, some will simply go where the poor people are and stand with them, not for an hour or two, but until there is no more poverty.

If we don't, there is another verse a bit later in Proverbs:

He who shuts his ear to the cry of the poor
will himself also call and not be heard.  (Proverbs 21: 13)

Spin and Weave and Duck

NOTE:  I wrote the following last week, but let it sit a few days.  Here it is:

The news this morning (June 27) is ominous.  A distinguished and principled senator, Richard Lugar, broke with President Bush over Iraq last night.  The White House response is at best disingenuous; Tony Snow told reporters “We take seriously his point of view because he is a serious guy. On the other hand, we also take seriously the efforts and the advice that the president has gotten from his commanders on the ground.”

Readers may recall that before the attack on Iraq in 2003, General Shinseki, Army Chief of Staff, was fired for suggesting more troops would be needed, and the troop levels called for in the initial war plans were pared down repeatedly by civilian officials (then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld prominent among them) with no military, much less combat command experience.  This is of a pattern with the distorted and false intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq in the first place.  Now, when a senior Republican senator with a distinguished track record in foreign policy breaks ranks--in a very restrained way, I might add—the White House response is to undercut him by implying it gives a higher priority to advice from military commanders on the ground when the Administration's record has been to ignore the opinions and information from intelligence and military professionals throughout.

The White House response to the Senate Judiciary Committee's subpoenas of Administration officials is similarly disingenuous.  "We're aware of the committee's action and will respond appropriately," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said. "It's unfortunate that congressional Democrats continue to choose the route of confrontation."  The Judiciary Committee's three most senior Republican members, including former Committee chair Sen. Orrin Hatch, voted to subpoena the Vice President, Attorney General and others. 

What I find so ominous is not merely the disregard of the facts in both cases but the loopy rationalizations for the Administration's course of ignoring the Constitution.  Let's recall that the Vice President has single-handedly determined that his office is not part of the executive branch of our government.  Reading the White House responses to Senator Lugar and the Judiciary Committee subpoenas, one might conclude that the Senate has no role in foreign relations or the conduct of war and no responsibility to check and balance executive branch decisions.  The very officials sworn to uphold the Constitution are ignoring it yet again.