Monthly Archives: March 2011

“Shots that still ring out”

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Today, it’s 30 years since Ronald Reagan was shot right here in the middle of Washington. He was badly injured but survived, was re-elected, and remained president for eight years.

But another man, who was also shot at the same time. Reagan’s press spokesman Jim Brady, was injured so badly that he that he could never work again. But he and his wife Sarah became leading advocates and spokespeople for gun control in America.

And they were successful. After many years of struggle, Congress passed the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, in spite of the vehement opposition from the National Rifle Association.

I was reminded of all this in Sarah Brady’s op-ed in the Washington Post today, and about the time in the late 1980s, when I met Jim and Sarah for an interview.  We met in their home just outside Washington. Brady, paralyzed and with speech difficulties, showed off his famous fighting spirit and humor. You have to play with the cards you are dealt and I try to do the best I can, he said.

Today, Brady is still in a wheelchair. In America, Columbine happened, and then Tucson. New  tragedies. But on gun control, nothing has really happened.

”Some might find it hard to believe that anything will ever change when it comes to gun control in America”,  writes Sarah Brady, now chair of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. But she keeps fighting, “for a nation free of gun violence.”

On this issue, President Obama has been quiet, strangely quiet – even after tragedy in Tucson, as well as today.  The only time he has broken his silence was in a little noticed recent op-ed in the Arizona Daily Star. Gun control clearly is not a political priority, maybe because, sadly, it is a battle that Obama cannot win in today’s America.

Obama clear and convincing on Libya

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On the ninth day – maybe a little late – President Obama on Monday evening told the American people clearly and convincingly about the reasons for the military intervention in Libya and its results up to date.

He said that Libya was a unique situation, because Gaddafi threatened a massacre on his own people. And now the U.S. has done what we pledged to do.

“In just one month, the United States has worked with our international partners to mobilize a broad coalition, secure an international mandate to protect civilians, stop an advancing army, prevent a massacre, and establish a no-fly zone with our allies and partners. To lend some perspective on how rapidly this military and diplomatic response came together, when people were being brutalized in Bosnia in the 1990s, it took the international community more than a year to intervene with air power to protect civilians. It took us 31 days. “

“Moreover … I said that America’s role would be limited; that we would note put ground troops into Libya; that we would focus our unique capabilities on the front end of the operation and that we would transfer responsibility to our allies and partners.”

About the future, he said that of course the world would be better off without Gaddafi.

“I, along with many other world leaders, have embraced that goal, and will actively pursue it through non-military means. But broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake. “

It will not happen with U.S. ground forces in Libya, he said.

And with a reference to the war and regime change in Iraq:

“To be blunt, we went down that road in Iraq. Thanks to the extraordinary sacrifice of our troops and the determination of our diplomats, we are hopeful about Iraq’s future. But regime change there took eight years, thousands of American and Iraqi lives, and nearly a trillion dollars. That is not something we can afford to repeat in Libya. “

With reference to events in the Arab world, he stated that America stands side by side with the changes taking place there, but:

“The United States will not be able to dictate the pace and scope of this change. Only the people of the region can do that. But we can make a difference. … I believe that this movement of change cannot be turned back, and that we must stand alongside those who believe in the same core principles that have guided us through many storms.”

And about the U.S. role in the world at large, he said what might be called the Obama Doctrine:

“To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and – more profoundly – our responsibilities to our fellow human beings in such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are. Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as President, I refused to wait for the images of
slaughter and mass graves before taking action. “

And, he added:

“I’ve made it clear that I will never hesitate to use our military swiftly, decisively, and unilaterally when necessary to defend our people, our homeland, our allies and our core interests…. There will be times, though, when our safety is not directly threatened, but our interests and our values are.  Sometimes, the course of history poses challenges that threaten our common humanity and our common security -–responding to natural disasters, for example; or preventing genocide and keeping the peace; ensuring regional security, and maintaining the flow of commerce.  These may not be America’s problems alone, but they are important to us.”

It’s also about what Obama has not said

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It used to be – in the “good old days” – that in foreign policy crises, and especially when America went to war, they kept up in Washington, across party lines, and the president did not criticize.

It is, of course, no longer so. President Obama is criticized from the right but also from the left. In today’s Washington, the most important thing seems to be, as Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said after the election last fall, that the number one priority is to see to it that President Obama is not re-elected next year.

So, in the case of Libya, there is never a word of praise for the President, no matter what he says or does. He was criticized for not creating a no-fly zone fast enough over Libya, and when he did it he was criticized for going in without a goal other than protecting civilians and without articulating an ultimate goal of intervention. How far he is willing to go? Until Gaddafi  is deposed?

We do not know. But straight answers are not always easy to give in complex situations like now in Libya. However, in this case, the critics are also to some extent right, for it is not so much what Obama said as that he has not said much at all. In contrast to its predecessors in the White House ahead of impending military conflict, Obama has not spoken to the nation on television. Not until tonight, Monday evening.  Still, it will not be a speech from the Oval Office at the White House, according to tradition, but from the National Defense University at Fort McNair, just outside Washington.

We’ll see what he says, but it seems unlikely to me that it will be very different from what he said in his traditional Saturday speech last week, when he said that a humanitarian catastrophe has been avoided and countless civilian lives have been saved. The international intervention is exactly the way in which the international community should act, he continued. The U.S. should not and cannot intervene wherever there is a crisis in the world, but it is our responsibility to act when innocent lives are at stake and when its leaders threaten bloodshed, as in Libya.

Not a word about the fate of Gaddafi. The resolution in the UN Security Council also says nothing about this, so Obama is sticking to the script. But Americans want more. They want clarity and they want to know how it will end.  Patience has never been America’s strong suit, especially in foreign policy, but they’ll probably have to wait a bit longer, also after tonight.

“Tattooed by Politics”

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Under the headline “Tattooed by Politics – Swedish detective fiction is highly profitable and intent on slaying the dragon of capitalism” in today’s Wall Street Journal, Michael C. Moynihan — senior editor at Reason Magazine – proposes (tongue-in-cheek, I would presume) the creation of a new price, “Bad Politics in Fiction,” where Swedish crime
writers, Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell et al, would come high up on the list.

In fact, writes Moynihan, Mankell’s “The Man from Beijing” would receive the 2010 first prize – if it existed.

This trend started already long ago with Sjowall and Wahloo and their Martin Beck-series, according to Moynihan, and they were followed by PO Enquist, Jan Guillou, Stieg Larsson, Liza Marklund, and all the rest.

It is a shame, seems Moynihan to say, referring to the “brilliant but often overlooked” Swedish authors like Hjalmar Soderberg, Vilhelm Moberg, August Strindberg,  and Selma Lagerlof, that today,  Sweden’s “literary reputation of being murdered, but there’s no mystery about the identity of the perpetrators.”

 

No quick solution like in Canada

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Sometimes, perhaps even often, Europeans bundle America and Canada together – two big North American countries – and judge the two all the same. Undoubtedly, there are many similarities between the two, and Canada, as little brother, is both strongly tied to and deeply influenced by the United States.

But yesterday, when I watched Canadian Broadcasting via C-Span, I was reminded in a powerful way how different America and Canada are, and how European Canada is.

The Canadian Parliament was in session, and the debate was fierce, in both English and French, ending with a vote of no confidence, by 156 to 145. The Conservative government fell. The parties had been unable to agree on the budget, even if the formal vote was one of the government’s “contempt” for Parliament.

Such a vote had never happened before in Canadian history. The decision came quickly. The result was clear. Already on Saturday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper handed in his resignation and Parliament was dissolved. New elections will take place on May 2, and the voters will decide.

Watching all this, the Canadian/European parliamentary system looked pretty attractive from my perspective here in Washington with its messy political situation that never quite seems to get solved.  This country does not even have a budget for
this fiscal year, which is already six months old. And the budget for the next fiscal year, which starts on October 1 and which President Obama already has presented to Congress, has not yet been discussed at all.

In today’s troubled economic situation with its high debt and huge budget deficit, big and broad action is required. For that, political courage is needed in order to deal with the large issues, like defense, Medicare, Medicaid, social security, and, maybe, new  taxes. Until now no one, including Obama, has displayed that political courage.

Instead we get to experience small and temporary compromises on minor budget cuts, and, by now, six temporary increases of the debt ceiling – the last to keep the government running until April 8. And then?

Negotiations go on between the White House and Congress behind closed doors, but no one seems to want to show his cards, and it all drags on in a process that is draining for all, not the least on the patience of the voters, who show ever less confidence for Washington. But, with a Democratic President and a Congress where Democrats control the Senate and
Republicans control the House of Representatives, there is little hope for a quick and clear solution.

43 percent more Hispanics and Asians in America

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The Hispanic and Asian populations grew the fastest of all ethnic groups in America, both with 43 percent, between 2000 and 2010. The country’s population, now 308 million people, did not increase as rapidly as before – only in the 1930s was the growth rate lower than now, according to the new figures from the U.S. Census Bureau made public on Thursday.

The white population is still the country’s largest, but its growth is the slowest. Hispanics now amount to 50.5 million, or 16 percent of America’s population, making them the country’s largest minority group, well ahead of the African-Americans,  who are 14 percent of the total population, or 42 million people.

Only the Asian population grew as fast as the Hispanics, from 10 million to 14.7 million, also 43 percent.

The white population declined relative to the other ethnic groups and now stands at 231 million, or two thirds of the total population. Between 2000 and 2010, the white population in Texas became a  minority group, just as it already had become
in California, New Mexico and Hawaii, plus in Washington, DC.

Of the country’s geographic regions southern and western United States grew the fastest, or with 84 percent, with the residents of Nevada increasing the most, or by 35 percent, followed by Arizona, Utah, Idaho and Texas. One state, Michigan, lost population.

The populations of the ten largest cities in the country all increased, except Chicago, which is still the third largest city.  Largest are New York and Los Angeles, where one in ten Americans reside, with Houston, now with over two million inhabitants, in fourth place.

“Ruins of Detroit”

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The U.S. Census Bureau earlier this week came out with new population figures on Detroit, “The Motor City,” or “Motown” — depending on whether you like the Cadillac or “The Supremes.”

The figures pointed to the sad story of a once lively, even glamorous city — once the fourth largest city in America — and its disastrous economic decline.

The new census figures show that Detroit’s population declined by 25 percent in the last decade, from 951,270 in 2000 to 713,777 in 2010, and by 60 percent since 1950, when American cars ruled the world and Detroit had 1.85 million people.   

The flight from Detroit in ten years was larger than the 140,000 people who fled New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

In a new book, “Ruins of Detroit,” by two young French photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, their photos tell the tragic story better than any words of how Detroit’s decline has created a city of neglect and decay. The photos are heart-breaking – how could America let this happen?

Look for yourselves!

Libya and Japan dominate the news

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When both the president and Congress leave town, as this week with Obama in Latin America and with  Congress on spring recess, Washington becomes quiet, a bit empty, and, largely, void of any big news.  Not this week, because of two major international crises in Japan and Libya, which have completely overshadowed Obama’s important trip to Brazil, Chile and El Salvador.

After the Japanese nuclear disaster, it appears that American confidence in nuclear power has dropped dramatically. But the disaster has not led to an intensive debate in the country on the future of nuclear power. President Obama has so far maintained that nuclear power is, and remains, an important part of the new, greener, energy policies that he advocates. He has not been met with opposition on this point, despite an apparent growing concern among Americans for nuclear power.

On Libya it is different, where Washington is experiencing a vivid debate on the U.S. role and Obama’s leadership. The questions are many: about America’s future role in the multilateral military effort, about what multilateralism really means, and about the final goal of the intervention – is it to overthrow Gaddafi?

Leslie Gelb, for example, the former New York Times foreign affairs columnist and former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, is highly skeptical of the military intervention in Libya. In an article for the Daily Beast called “The horrible Libya hypocrisies”, Gelb writes that the U.S. has no vital interests in Libya but that Obama was “stampeded” into action by a combination of the neocons and liberal interventionists.  

Commentators on the right direction are criticizing Obama for not having taken the lead and acted strongly enough as it is deemed an American president. But in the country at large seems to approve strongly of Obama’s handling of the Libyan crisis. 68 percent of respondents in a new CBS News poll support the air attacks against Libya and the imposing of a no-fly zone there. And over half of those surveyed approve of Obama’s actions.

His support among Republicans on Libya is much larger than their support for his economic and budget policy. That could prove to be an advantage for Obama ahead of next year’s presidential election.

Support for nuclear power falls

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Americans’ confidence in nuclear power has declined dramatically, and fewer than half of all Americans now support the construction of new nuclear power plants, according to a new poll by CBS News.

Only 43 percent of all Americans now support the construction of new nuclear power plants. That is 14 percent fewer than two years ago and 26 percent fewer than in 1977, when support for nuclear power peaked. Exactly half of those surveyed oppose new nuclear power plants, an increase of 16 percent compared with 2008, when a similar survey was conducted.

After the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 46 percent of those surveyed supported new nuclear power plants, while only 34 percent – the lowest figure ever, supported the plants after the 1986 Chernobyl accident.

A little over half of the respondents said that the accident in Japan had not made them more fearful of a nuclear accident in America, while 44 percent said they now become more afraid. Over two thirds said that nuclear power is generally safe and nearly half said that the benefits of nuclear power outweigh the risks.

Still, 65 percent answered that they are “somewhat worried” about nuclear plant safety and on a question whether they would oppose a new nuclear power plant near their homes, 62 percent answered “yes “.  When asked if they believed that the government was prepared for an accident, only 35 percent said “yes”.

There are currently 104 nuclear power plants in America. The whole 23 of them are of the same type, General Electric Mark 1, as the damaged Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan.

Obama’s diplomatic victory on Libya

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The UN Security Council vote and the European-led imminent military action against Libya constitute a significant diplomatic victory for President Obama.

Only a week ago, no one really thought that the Western powers, the U.S., France, and Great Britain, would be able to get the Russians and Chinese to agree to anything when it came to Libya, let alone a yes-vote to impose a no-fly zone with its military consequences on that country. And although Russia and China in the end did not vote for military action, by abstaining they did not prevent one.

And by insisting on that a military intervention in Libya should be an international effort, and in this case actually led by the British and the French, Obama scored another diplomatic victory.

Obama, who campaigned for president in opposition to the Iraq and Afghan wars, now finds himself in a third war in the Middle East, albeit a limited one, without the prospect of American ground forces in Libya, as Obama has underlined.  

Does the Western intervention in the Libyan civil war come too late to rescue the rebels from final defeat? It is unclear. For those who argue that the U.S. administration moved too slowly, comparisons to previous cases in Bosnia or Iraq, prove those voices wrong. Obama has moved much quicker than any of his predecessors, in spite of his apparent deep reluctance to engage militarily in another Mideast conflict. The Arab League’s approval of a no-fly zone in Libya proved crucial in paving the way for Obama’s decision, but to a large extent, events on the ground in the Libya forced his hand. No one in the Administration wanted to risk a repeat of the Rwanda tragedy.

Now, the world is waiting for what will come next.