The Politics of War

This Memorial Day the nation remembers all those people who died while serving in the American armed forces.  More than 1,316,000 military personnel have died during military conflicts in this nation's history.  

The mission of the U.S. military is to fight and win our nation's wars.  The U.S. has the most powerful military in the history of the world, but it should not be utilized as a political tool, or for retribution.  The government and its leaders must do their best to make the right decisions, to be truthful with the American public, and to provide all the necessary support needed to fulfill the military's mission.  Unfortunately, this has not always been the case. 

Following the al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on New York and Washington DC on September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush began to plan a response.  Vice President Dick Cheney and neo-con members of the administration, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, immediately set their sites on Saddam Hussein, Iraq's tyrannical ruler.  They were disappointed that Hussein had not been toppled during the first Gulf War in 1991.  Soon the administration made the claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, and that Hussein was linked to the terrorist group al-Qaeda. 

But the Bush administration was cherry picking raw intelligence, much of which was unverified.  The "evidence" against Hussein was presented to Congress, which on October 11, 2002, passed the Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Forces Against Iraq.  In early 2003, the British and Spanish governments proposed a U.N. resolution that gave Iraq a deadline for compliance with previous resolutions on WMDs or face military actions.  The resolution was withdrawn because France, Germany, Canada and Russia were opposed to military action; instead they called for further diplomacy.  In early March, Chief U.N. Weapons Inspector Hans Blix said that progress had been made with the inspections and no WMD's had been found in Iraq.

The administration, which had rejected Blix's assessment, began making the case for war to the American people.  In February, President Bush conducted a series of interviews with news organizations, including the Spanish language channel Telemundo.  I was the head of news for Telemundo at that time, and I was present for our session.  The president told Telemundo's Pedro Sevcec that he had not made a decision to go to war.  Following the interview, I asked the president, "What about Jacques Chirac," referring to the French president.  President Bush swatted me on the shoulder with the back of his hand and said dismissively, "Oh, he'll come around."   "We're going to war," I thought.  

White House Photo

The American invasion of Iraq began on March 20.  Vice President Cheney had predicted we would be greeted as liberators.  He was wrong.  The Iraqi forces were quickly defeated but the administration mismanaged the occupation.  The Ba'athist government had collapsed, Hussein's military was disarmed, and a power vacuum ensued.  Sectarian violence broke out between the Shias and the Sunnis.  U.S. backed Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, became Prime Minister in 2006, but his government alienated the country's Sunni minority.   

 

In 2007, President Bush implemented a troop surge in Iraq.  By adding 20,000 additional U.S. troops, primarily in capital city Baghdad, the president hoped to buy time for reconciliation among the factions.  The situation on the ground stabilized, but Sunnis still distrusted the Maliki government. 

In 2008, the Bush administration negotiated a Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq granting U.S. troops in the country legal immunities with the understanding they would be withdrawn by 2012.  When negotiations began to extend U.S. military presence, only a smaller number, Maliki and various Iraqi party leaders agreed to the extended troop deployment, but did not want to continue the legal immunities.  These immunities are a condition everywhere U.S. troops are based.   

Some critics said President Barack Obama could have done more to secure the legal immunities, but that is debatable.  In an interview on CBS News' Face the Nation Sunday, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) once again claimed an agreement could have been reached with Maliki through negotiations.  Nonetheless, President Obama withdrew American combat troops and fulfilled a campaign promise.

The Maliki government collapsed in 2014.  In the summer of 2014, ISIS, an Islamic terrorist group that had been incubating for more than a decade in Syria, launched a military offensive in Northern Iraq and declared an Islamic caliphate.  ISIS, which is Sunni, has slaughtered thousands of people in its expansion in the region.  Many Iraqi Sunnis find it preferable to the Shiite government in Baghdad.

Iraq under Hussein had served as a counter balance against Iran, its bitter enemy.  With Hussein gone Iran, a Shiite country, was working closely with the Shiites in Iraq.  Iran's influence in the region had grown, especially with the spread of ISIS.   Iraq is in turmoil and it is unlikely all of the factions, including the Kurds in the north, will come together again.

The Iraq War has been costly.  More than 4,500 members of the U.S military have been killed since the invasion.  Hundreds of thousands of casualties have been suffered by Iraqis.  Two years ago the "Costs of Wars" project, part of the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, estimated that the Iraq War had already cost America more than $2 trillion.  And many veterans of Iraq, who have returned home, are unemployed, suffering from postraumatic stress disorder, or have committed suicide.  

Former Vice President Dick Cheney and many Republican presidential candidates blame President Obama for today's chaos in Iraq and the region.  Yet these candidates do not offer a plan or a solution.  In fact, former Senator Rick Santorum recently said, "If these folks (ISIS) want to return to a 7th-century version of Islam, then let's load up our bombers and bomb them back to the 7th century."   ISIS and Iraq have turned into political fodder for the Republican base.  

The 2003 invasion of Iraq, and subsequent mismanagement by the Bush administration, is the biggest mistake the U.S. has made since Vietnam.  It has led to a series of unintended and disastrous consequences.  And there is no light at the end of this tunnel for America.  

Perhaps the architects of the Iraq War should have heeded the counsel of their spiritual leader, President Ronald Reagan.  In a 1985 Veterans Day speech he said, "We endanger the peace and confuse all issues when we obscure the truth." 

Fix the Glitches

The government shutdown was a misguided and senseless tactic that cost American taxpayers at least $24 billion and damaged the Republican brand.  But the error-plagued rollout of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, has given the GOP a way to change the conversation.

Senator Ted Cruz's reckless strategy to defund Obamacare was never going to succeed.  But he knew that.  However, the ambitious Cruz saw it as tremendous opportunity to galvanize Tea Party members behind his leadership.   And, while moderate Republicans call his maneuvers a "fool's errand," there is no question Cruz has now won the loyal support of many on the right.

Yet many Republicans are shaking their heads in frustration because the Cruz shutdown has taken attention away from Obamacare's problems.  "The fiasco of rollout has been obscured because of this internecine strife that's been going on in the Republican Party," Senator John McCain (R-AZ) said Sunday on CNN.  "Keep up the fight against Obamacare, but don't shut down the government and have so much collateral damage to innocent Americans."

However, out of the GOP wreckage will quickly emerge an all out attack against the problem-plagued launch of Obamacare.  On CBS's Face the Nation Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called Obamacare,  "The worst piece of legislation passed in the last half century...we need to get rid of it." He claimed that even if one can get on the site, they will find fewer choices and higher costs.

Democrats recognize that the faulty rollout is an issue ripe for exploitation.   Last week on MSNBC, Former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs called it, "Excruciatingly embarrassing for the White House and for the Department of Health and Human Services." On ABC's This Week, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the problems "unacceptable."  She added, "This has to be fixed, but what doesn't have to be fixed is the fact the tens of millions of more people will have access to affordable healthcare, quality healthcare.  That no longer having a preexisting medical condition will bar you from getting affordable care." 

The White House and HHS have had years to prepare for the launch of Obamacare.  All along they have said that Republicans oppose it because Americans will fall in love with it once it is available.  But now the architects of President Obama's signature legislative achievement are vulnerable to attack and relentless scrutiny from Congressional Committees.  Republicans would like nothing more than to turn Obamacare against Democrats in the 2014-midterm elections.

Already Republican Chairmen Fred Upton, of the House Energy and Commerce Committee has announced he will investigate.  "It is well past time for the administration to be straight and transparent with the American people," he said in a statement last week.  For instance, how many millions of dollars were spent to design the error plagued software?  Whose fault is it that the program has failed?

President Obama is expected to address the health care glitches on Monday.  While making health care accessible for all remains a worthy goal, and millions of people have already tried to learn more about the offerings, the problems must be quickly remedied.  If the president fails to make that happen, Obamacare may damage his ability to achieve any further legislative successes.

Mr. Obama has already stated his intention to pivot onto the difficult and complex issue of immigration reform.  He has also indicated he is interested in achieving a budget deal with Republicans that will include infrastructure, tax and entitlement reform.   But the problems with Obamacare will weaken his position.

Republicans are mindful of the words once spoken by the president's former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."

Immigration Deal

"I think we've got a deal."  Those encouraging words about immigration reform legislation came from South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham who appeared on CNN Sunday.  "We've got to write the legislation," he said, "but 2013, I hope, will be the year that we pass bipartisan immigration reform." 

Senator Graham is a member of the bipartisan "gang of eight" that has been working to reach a deal on immigration reform.  Last week four members of that group, including John McCain of Arizona, traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border to get a closer look at the problem of illegal crossings.  While there, Senator McCain tweeted, "Just witnessed a woman successfully climb and 18-ft bollard fence a few yards from us in #Nogales...Border Patrol successfully apprehended her, but incident is another reminder that threats to our border security are real." 

In his televised appearances Sunday, Senator Graham emphasized border security while outlining the goals of the immigration agreement.  The goals include preventing a "third wave" of undocumented immigrants moving to the U.S., allowing employers to hire guest workers when they can't find American workers, and judging immigration decisions more on merit rather than family.

But later Sunday, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, an aspiring Tea Party presidential candidate, tried to lower expectations about a deal.  In a written statement he said, “Reports that the bipartisan group of eight senators have agreed on a legislative proposal are premature."  Senator Rubio has the most to lose if conservatives don't like the immigration deal, so he appears to be playing it safe.  Gang of eight member Senator Charles Schumer put it this way Sunday, "Now everyone, we've all agreed that we're not going to come to a final agreement until we see draft legislative language and we all agree on that. We've drafted some of it already; the rest will be drafted this week. So I'm very optimistic that we will have an agreement among the eight of us next week."

There are more than 11 million undocumented immigrants illegally in the U.S.  Immigration was a major issue during the last presidential election, and all of the Republican candidates took a tough stand on illegals.  The party's presidential nominee, former Governor Mitt Romney, coined the term "self deportation" when defining how he would solve the problem.   More than 70% of Latinos who voted in last November's election voted for President Barack Obama.

An "autopsy" report released last month by GOP Chairman Reince Priebus called for more positive out reach to Latinos and other minorities.   The report urged the party to, "embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform.”  But it will be hard for the party to overcome Congressional opposition to reform within its own party.  And it doesn't help when one of its members, Alaska Representative Don Young, says,  “My father had a ranch; we used to have 50-60 wetbacks to pick tomatoes.”   "Wetbacks" is an insulting racial slur against Latinos for which he apologized after some prodding from his leadership.

Immigration is just one of many issues for Latinos, who now number about 50 million in the U.S.  The economy, jobs, education, family and health care are all important.  Likely Republican presidential candidates, such as Kentucky's Senator Rand Paul, a Tea Party favorite, are now actively courting them.   But their message, for instance on social issues, is not in sync with a majority of Latinos.   

In a speech last month to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Senator Paul said, "Prudence, compassion and thrift all point us toward the same goal: bringing these workers out of the shadows and into becoming and being taxpaying members of society."   So all of the stars are aligned for some form of meaningful immigration reform this year.  

In his speech, Senator Paul also quoted Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez. "In Love in the Time of Cholera, Marquez gives some advice that Republicans might consider,  “. . . human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, . . . life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”

These are words to think about, especially coming from a Nobel Prize winner who was denied a U.S. immigration visa for years because of his outspoken views on U.S. imperialism.

Immigration Reform Now

Immigration is one of the great stories of America's history.  It is immortalized in the words penned by Emma Lazarus, and engraved on a bronze plaque that hangs on an inner wall of the Statue of Liberty, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."


The United States is a nation built on the blood and sweat of immigrants; it is a great melting pot of cultures that together have strengthened the country, and have broadened its horizons.  America, the land of opportunity, of immense freedom, and of a generous people, has attracted millions of people from all over the world.  Nonetheless, immigration has been politicized for decades, and reasonable reforms have eluded Washington.

But now is the time to do something meaningful.  President Barack Obama will announce an effort to overhaul immigration Tuesday in Las Vegas, Nevada, a critical state where he carried the Latino vote this past November.   Leading Republicans, like Florida Senator Marco Rubio, are also leading reform efforts within that party, which have become a priority because Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney received less than 30% of the Latino vote.   

Appearing on ABC's This Week Sunday, Senator Bob Menendez (D-N.J) said it is time for action.   “First, Americans support it in poll after poll. Secondly, Latino voters expect it. Thirdly Democrats want it. And fourth Republicans need it,” he said.  Senator John McCain (R-AZ) echoed that sentiment, “There’s a new appreciation on both sides of the aisle including, maybe more importantly on the Republican side of the aisle, that we have to enact comprehensive immigration reform.”


There are more that 50 million Latinos in the United States, and they are the fastest growing demographic in the country.  Every month, 50,000 Latinos reach the voting age.  But they also make up the largest portion of the 11 million illegals living in America's shadows.  And many Americans, especially Republicans, remain opposed to laws that would make it easier for illegal immigrants to stay in the country or obtain legal status.

According to the Washington Post, a bipartisan group of senators is nearing agreement that will normalize the status of illegals, allowing those with no criminal record to obtain work permits, and they will call for tighter border controls and verification procedures.   Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) told Fox News, “We’re at the talking points stage...we need to get to the legislation.”  So the devil is in the details.  

While there are huge Latino populations in California, Texas, New York and Florida, Latinos live in every state.  Latinos are successful small business owners; they work in homes and on assembly lines.  Illegal or not, they contribute to daily life in America.   Because of the recession, illegal immigration has slowed to a trickle.  Nonetheless, Pew Research projects that Latinos will make up nearly 30% of the U.S. population in 2050.  

Now is the time for immigration reform.  Let history be the guide for politicians in Washington because immigration has always enriched the fabric of America.  Think of the Statue of Liberty, in New York Harbor, and the words displayed on the bronze plaque, "From her beacon-hand glows a world-wide welcome."

Romney's Secrets

With little more than 100 days remaining before the 2012 presidential election the race is too close to call.  President Barack Obama, despite his high personal approval ratings, may pay the price for not being able to overcome the disastrous Bush recession, a global economic meltdown and four years of Republican obstructionism.  

But it appears many Americans are very reluctant to support presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney.  The likely reason for their hesitancy is they are uncertain whether they can trust Romney.   And Romney has given even supporters reason for pause.  

Most recently Romney has been unwilling to release more than two years of his tax returns.  “We just laid out exactly what is required by law, which is all of our financial statements, and then in addition two years of tax reports, just like (Senator) John McCain put out,” Romney told NBC's Today Show.  His justification for this position,  “my guess is if you decide to do more and more and more, you just give the opposition the chance to distort and twist and be dishonest about more material.”   

So far, Romney has only released his 2010 return and just an estimate for his 2011 return.  His campaign says the full 2011 returns will be released once they are complete, but the election is barely three months away.  Further, Senator John McCain released his returns seven months before the 2008 election.  And Romney's father, George Romney, released 12 years of returns when he ran for president in 1968.  The elder Romney paid an effective tax rate of 37% in 1967, while his son's returns show he paid an effective rate of about 15%.

Of course, there are already many questions being asked by experts, reporters and the opposition about Romney's earlier returns.  For instance, his Swiss bank account raises tax compliance questions.  Why would a presidential candidate, wealthy or not, have so much money in offshore accounts?  What was the effective tax rate for earlier years?  Did he pay no taxes at any time?  Romney's strategy is to endure harsh criticism for another 100 days, even from Republicans, for not releasing his returns rather than have to answer detailed questions about his returns and his investments.  

Romney's claims that he saved the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in 2002 as its chief executive.   Romney promised "complete transparency," the Boston Globe reported. "Some who worked with Romney describe a close-to-the-vest chief executive unwilling to share so much as a budget with a state board responsible for spending oversight," said the newspaper, "Archivists now say most key records about the Games’ internal workings were destroyed under the supervision of a staffer shortly after the flame was extinguished..." 

Of course, Romney's success was in part due to more than $300 million in federal and $40 million in local government funding.  No, he didn't build it himself.  And the Olympics is a private organization not required to disclose financial information.  But, since Romney is claiming that his Olympic experience is an example of how he will turn the U.S. economy around, don't voters deserve to know about how he did it?  Why were the key records destroyed so quickly?  Did any vendors, subcontractors or even family members get sweetheart deals? 

The Boston Globe has also reported that when Romney completed his term as Governor of Massachusetts in 2006, members of his administration destroyed emails, purchased hard drives, and otherwise all digital records of his time as governor.  In a November 2011 editorial board interview with the Nashua Telegraph in New Hampshire, Romney said, "Well, I think in government we should follow the law. And there has never been an administration that has provided to the opposition research team, or to the public, electronic communications." 

During his term, Governor Romney enacted spending cuts and increases in fees that helped wipe out the state deficit.  He also signed Romneycare, which provides universal health care in the state and for individual mandates to purchase insurance.  Of course, Romneycare was the blueprint for Obamacare, President Obama's healthcare law that Romney has vowed to repeal.  Digital records of key meetings may have shed light on Romney's views at the time on mandates, tax increases, budget cuts, abortion and gun laws.  But, once again, detailed records about how Romney conducted himself in a leadership role were destroyed. 

Romney's tenure at Bain Capital has been cited by his campaign as an example of how the governor can turn the U.S. economy around.  Bain's business was to make money for its investors.  It did so by taking over troubled companies and turning them into successful businesses or shutting them down and selling off their assets.  Just how many jobs Bain added during Romney's tenure varies, but the campaign claims as many as 100,000.  

Bain began offshoring jobs around 2000 as part of its strategy to drive labor costs down in some businesses.  The Obama campaign has hammered Romney as the "outsourcer and chief." Romney supporters insist he had left Bain in February 1999 to run the Olympics and had no role in offshoring jobs.  But the AP reported that Romney stayed in "regular contact" with Bain after he left, "personally signing or approving a series of corporate and legal documents through the spring of 2001."  And other sources say Romney attended meetings at Bain Capital after February 1999. Romney has no problem for claiming credit for jobs created by Bain after February 1999, but he takes no responsibility for sending American jobs overseas. 

Romney wants the 2012 election to be a referendum on President Obama's handling of the economy.  He has offered few specifics about what he would do to jump start the U.S. economy and where he would cut the deficit.  It's a secret, just like his taxes, his offshore accounts, his Olympic work, his term as governor and his time at Bain Capital. 

In his 2004 book Romney wrote, "We instituted a rule at Bain Capital that every meeting had to begin with a joke. I love jokes and I love laughing."  Well, come November Mitt Romney may very well have plenty to laugh about!

2012: A Political Cacophony

"What am I doing here," asked President Barack Obama from back stage.  "I'm opening for Jimmy Kimmel and telling knock-knock jokes to Kim Kardashian."  The audience at the White House Correspondents Dinner laughed at the president's play on the "open mic" incident with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last month.  It was another example of why President Obama is personally so popular.  

But America is evenly divided politically, and the country is ideologically very polarized.  Recent polls show the race for the White House is a dead heat.  So this November's presidential election will come down to which party can win the independents, numbering less than 10% of the electorate, and which party does the best job of mobilizing its base.  

While the president's campaign team debates whether to attack their apparent opponent, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, as an untrustworthy serial flip-flopper or a severe conservative, Republicans have decided to go after President Obama's strengths.

Republican strategist Karl Rove and his American Crossroads group launched a 30-second online ad late last week attacking the "Celebrity President."  The ad includes President Obama "slow-jamming" the news with late night show host Jimmy Fallon, and singing an Al Green song at the White House.  The ad then asks, "After four years of a celebrity president, is your life any better?"  It is a slick effort to undermine the president's personal popularity. 

Republican spokespersons and columnists have piled on, decrying the president's actions as unpresidential, desperate and aggravating, even to many Democrats. Really?  Where was their outrage when President George Bush appeared on Late Night with David Letterman?  Just who is desperate?

One year ago next Wednesday, a Navy SEAL team shot and killed al-Qaeda leader and 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden in his home in Abbottabad, Pakistan.  The raid was made following a daring decision by President Obama to make the attempt against the advice of many of his key advisers.  But Republicans are undermining any mention of this success by the Obama campaign.

Senator John McCain was most critical, "This is the same President who said, after bin Laden was dead, that we shouldn't 'spike the ball' after the touchdown. And now Barack Obama is not only trying to score political points by invoking Osama bin Laden, he is doing a shameless end-zone dance to help himself get reelected."  

There has been a consistent pattern by Republicans, since the president's first moment in office, of obstructing, obfuscating and undermining anything the president proposes.  They have divided the country and accused the president of being the great divider.  They have questioned his place of birth, his religion and have called his agenda "socialist."  They have leveraged the rules of Congress to grind to a halt or water down many of the president's proposals.  They know that political chaos reflects badly most on the man at the top.

On the very day the president was being sworn in a group of leading Republicans began plotting their tactics.  This has been confirmed in two recent books.  One of the books was written by Carl Cannon and Tom Bevan of Real Clear Politics, the other by author and reporter Robert Draper.  

Draper quotes Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California as saying, "“We’ve gotta challenge them on every single bill and challenge them on every single campaign.”  The Cannon-Bevan book says of participant and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, “Gingrich encouraged Republican members to go on the offensive against the ascendant Democrats, stressing his view that it was less important for them to have a specific alternative legislative agenda to the Democrats’ than an alternative vision — and a compelling way of communicating it."   

So here they were, in the midst of the greatest economic crisis this country has faced since the Great Depression, largely brought on by the policies of Republican President George Bush, placing their highest priority on defeating President Barack Obama.  And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell repeatedly said his top priority was to make President Obama a one-term president.  

For sure, the rough and tumble of politics is played on both sides of the aisle.  But the Right seems to be consistently the most mean-spirited and personal.  It was a Republican Congressman who yelled out to the president "liar" from the floor of the House.  It was a Republican Congressman who recently said he believes, “There’s about 78 to 81 members of the Democratic Party that are members of the Communist Party.”  Nonsense!  Yet no Republican leader has denounced the charge.

The 2012 Republican primary is yet more evidence how disrespectful that party can be, only in this case it was to their own party members!  And a flood of Super PAC money has fueled this year's cacophony of harshly critical attack ads to decibel levels never before achieved.

The stage is set in 2012 for the dirtiest, most negative and deeply intense presidential campaign ever.  In fact, the campaigns have already gone to the dogs, so to speak.