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Keep Pressure on the Taliban
President Obama is justifiably proud of having fulfilled his campaign vow to settle accounts with Osama bin Laden. But he might want to dial back the euphoric White House claims that killing al Qaeda’s chief marks a turning point in Afghanistan.
The Washington Post today quotes an unnamed administration official as saying bin Laden’s demise “changes everything” and begins the “endgame” in Afghanistan. In this view, it will make the Taliban more tractable and ready to negotiate an end to the fighting in return for a share in the Afghan government.
I’d love to be proved wrong, but this assessment seems wildly optimistic. The theory that the Taliban will now be eager for talks is based on two premises.
First, that America’s surgical strike on bin Laden’s compound deep into Pakistan shows Taliban leaders who have taken refuge in Quetta that we can reach them too. No doubt we could, but there must be a reason why we haven’t yet struck at Taliban chief Mohammad Omar and the Quetta Shura. Maybe it’s because there will be no one left with the authority to enforce a truce if we decimate the high command. More likely it’s because Pakistani intelligence, which helped create the Taliban, is protecting its leaders.
Second, bin Laden’s death relieves Omar of any obligation to continue protecting al Qaeda or allow it to entrench itself again in Afghanistan. After all, the Taliban suffered greatly when Omar, after 9-11, refused to expel al Qaeda. U.S. and Afghan forces routed the Taliban and sent its leaders scurrying into exile in Pakistan. Now that al Qaeda is a spent force, there’s no longer any reason for Afghans to suffer on its behalf.
There’s only one thing wrong with this theory, but it’s a big one: It overlooks the role of ideology. Omar and the Taliban, after all, are Islamist fundamentalists who imposed precisely the kind of puritanical rule on Afghanistan that bin Laden and his ilk prescribe for the whole Muslim umma. They enforced Sharia law with fanatical zeal, banned music and dancing, had women accused of adultery stoned to death in stadiums, barred girls from school, and destroyed ancient Buddhist carvings they considered idolatrous.
As Peter Bergen and other terrorist analysts have noted, al Qaeda and the Taliban have essentially experienced a kind of ideological mind-meld in recent years. Bin Laden swore allegiance to Omar, who likewise seems himself leading a jihad against foreign infidels. The assumption that Omar and his claque in Quetta are Afghan nationalists who will compromise their religious beliefs for a slice of power seems naïve.
What might induce them to sue for peace, however, is the military battering they’ve received at the hands of the United States and NATO forces. The U.S. surge has severely depleted the Taliban’s ranks and driven it out of wide swaths of the country, especially its Pashtun heartland in the south. Drone strikes in Pakistan have killed hundreds of its leaders. Sustained military pressure could crack the Taliban’s resolve, and the Obama administration ought to have a blunt talk with Pakistan about Omar and the Quetta shura. Until they decide to make peace, they, not less than bin Laden, are legitimate targets for U.S. strikes.
If, on the other hand, the United States, having killed the 9-11 mastermind, now seems over-eager to withdraw from Afghanistan, we’ll give the Taliban incentives to wait us out. The Obama administration is not wrong to seek negotiations with Taliban leaders at various levels, but we need to be persistent and patient, and not start declaring premature victory. The death of bin Laden doesn’t change the reality that the Taliban, not al Qaeda, pose the greatest threat we face in Afghanistan.
Egypt’s Errant Diplomacy
Although the fall of Arab dictators is in general a healthy development for America, it could also pose some tricky, short-term challenges to U.S. interests in the Middle East. Egypt’s post-Mubarak diplomacy is an unsettling case in point.
Long our most reliable ally in the region, Egypt has struck a more independent course since a popular uprising forced Hosni Mubarak to relinquish power. To the consternation of Washington and Jerusalem, it brokered the April 27 power-sharing agreement between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas apparently sought the reconciliation with Hamas because he thinks a unified front bolsters the chance for Palestinian statehood. A new interim government will ask the United Nations in September to recognize a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. But since Hamas did not renounce terrorism or accept Israel’s right to exist, the accord would seem to foreclose any possibility of jump-starting stalled peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
Israel’s relatively dovish President, Shimon Peres, minced no words in calling the unity pact a “fatal mistake that will prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and will sabotage chances of peace and stability in the region.”
Unfortunately, Hamas’s intransigence reflects a tragic Palestinian tendency to indulge in fantasies of redemptive violence and rally behind “strong men” who call for Israel’s destruction and defy the United States. Virtually alone in the region, Palestinians cheered Saddam Hussein during the 1991 Gulf War. A recent poll shows that a majority of Palestinians approve of Osama bin Laden, the only place in the region where that is true.
In fact, in stark contrast to the reaction of most Middle East leaders, Hamas deplored America’s killing of Osama bin Laden. “We condemn the assassination of a Muslim and Arab warrior and we pray to God that his soul rests in peace,” declared Ismail Haniya, “prime minister” of the Gaza strip. “We regard this as the continuation of the American oppression and shedding of blood of Muslims and Arabs.”
In any case, Egypt’s initiative has sharpened tensions between Palestinians and Israelis. Over the weekend, Israel froze Palestinian custom revenue to prevent it from being used to fund Hamas missile strikes, which have been escalating. Cairo has further deepened Israeli anxieties by lifting an electoral ban on the Muslim Brotherhood and reestablishing diplomatic ties with Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to address Congress later this month, but is reportedly recoiling from proposing new peace initiatives.
Egypt’s foreign minister also is urging the United States to back U.N. recognition of a Palestinian state. But the Obama administration is holding firm to its position that peace can only be achieved through direct negotiations between Israel and Palestinians.
The Death of a Terrorist
President Obama’s dramatic announcement last night that U.S. intelligence and security forces finally caught up with Osama bin Laden was deeply satisfying. Bin Laden picked a fight with America, slaughtered thousands of our citizens, and has been called to account for his crimes. That’s a huge victory for the United States in its fight against terrorism, but it’s also a vindication of universal human values.
Terrorism experts have been quick to point out that al Qaeda will survive the demise of its leader. True, but for now at least, not terribly relevant. Operational control long ago passed to subordinates, and to the chiefs of offshoots in Yemen and Somalia. But in depriving al Qaeda of its most charismatic and inspirational figure, bin Laden’s death will likely demoralize aspiring jihadists and lead to a further splintering of the terrorist network.
As more details emerge, some other significant implications of bin Laden’s violent death are coming into clearer focus:
1. The United States is creating a credible deterrent to terrorist strikes.
In an age of suicide bombers, it’s obvious that not all terrorists can be deterred by the threat of retaliation. But the certainty that America will be relentless in hunting down those who organize to attack our citizens will likely dissuade more opportunistic jihadists. While recruiting young people for suicide missions, neither bin Laden nor other top al Qaeda leaders have been in any hurry to achieve martyrdom themselves.
In addition to bin Laden, U.S. forces and drones have killed scores of al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as the mastermind of al Qaeda’s 2000 attack on the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen. Much of bin Laden’s appeal stemmed from his messianic preaching that radical Islam represents an unstoppable moral force. In his narrative, Islam’s holy warriors toppled the haughty Soviet empire in Afghanistan and would soon drive the United States out of the Muslim world, if not bring it down altogether. But it’s hard to sustain a belief in inevitable victory when U.S. intelligence and armed forces are more deeply engaged in the region than ever, and are decimating the ranks of terrorist leaders.
For this, Americans owe a debt of gratitude to our much-maligned intelligence services. The CIA evidently tracked bin Laden down, and with the help of Navy Seal Unit 6, killed him in a firefight that claimed no U.S. lives. Thanks to the long arm of U.S. intelligence agencies, other terrorist chiefs, like Ayman al Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s number 2, and Anwar al-Aulaqi, a key leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, should sleep less easily at night.
2. Pakistani duplicity remains a huge problem.
Although President Obama was careful to underscore Pakistani cooperation with U.S. intelligence efforts, today’s reports suggest the killing of bin Laden was a wholly American affair. The obvious question is why Pakistani intelligence couldn’t find bin Laden. He was living in a highly fortified mansion apparently build specially for him in 2005, in a city just 35 miles north of the capital of Islamabad. That city also houses units of the Pakistani army, who apparently weren’t inquisitive about the mansion either.
Most damning are news reports that the United States didn’t notify Pakistani officials about the operation. Unfortunately, Washington has good reason to suspect that the country’s intelligence service is playing a double game on terrorism. While ostensibly cooperating with the United States, Pakistani intelligence has ties to jihadist groups that have launched terrorist attacks in Kashmir and India, as well as Taliban and affiliated groups, including the notorious Haqqani network, that launch vicious attacks on Afghan and NATO forces from its base just over the border in Pakistan’s North Waziristan province.
Bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan – despite official denials – should make Washington less defensive about launching drone missile strikes against terrorist targets there. U.S. officials should also ask why we are funneling large amounts of aid to a government that can’t seem to decide which side it’s on in the struggle against terrorism, even though Pakistan itself is increasingly the target of Islamist terrorists.
3. Freedom, not jihadism, is the wave of the future in the Muslim world.
The popular revolution sweeping the Middle East advances under the banner of freedom and self-government, not Islamist purity and strict enforcement of Sharia law. The Arab street isn’t burning American flags. It’s burning with indignation against homegrown tyrants and corruption, and asking America to back its demands for political and economic reform and representative government.
Meanwhile, al Qaeda’s stock has plummeted in the region. While Americans focus on the wounds of 9/11, Muslims have been the chief victims of al Qaeda’s gruesome tactics. Suicide bombings and indiscriminate attacks have claimed tens of thousands of civilian lives in Iraq alone, and the scourge has spread to Indonesia, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, and other Muslim countries. Opinion polls show a dramatic decline in sympathy for al Qaeda and strong condemnation of its methods. The carnage also has led Islamist and al Qaeda theorists to renounce indiscriminate attacks on non-combatants.
The Arab revolt, in fact, is the ultimate repudiation of bin Ladenism, which posits a remorseless and apocalyptic struggle between Muslims and the rest of the world. What most Arabs and Muslims want is not to recreate the Caliphate and wage endless jihad, but the freedom to join the modern world on their own terms. In this sense, bin Laden’s removal is a distraction from the main drama in the Middle East – but a welcome one nonetheless.
Wingnut Watch: Responding to the Death of bin Laden
Conservative reaction to the president’s announcement of the killing of Osama bin Laden has been relatively, perhaps even surprisingly, positive, given the standard view of Obama on the Right as an irresolute multilateralist afraid to use military force and always ready to apologize for American power.
Naturally, GOP congressional leaders and would-be presidents have been careful in their reactions. All gave credit to military and intelligence personnel with the event, but most (with the exception so far of Mitch McConnell, Rick Santorum, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann) also gave at least a small shout-out to the Obama administration, typically along with his predecessor.
Even some of the major right-wing opinionaters have been giving Obama grudging praise. RedState co-founder Ben Domenech made this rather strong statement at RealClearWorld:
Whatever you may think of Obama’s domestic policies or diplomatic decisions, his approach to national security has been largely wise and overwhelmingly vindicated thus far.
But there’s a very big undertow of conservative criticism of Obama for hypocrisy on grounds that the tactics that led to the discovery of Osama’s hiding-place were allegedly those that the president and other Democrats have deplored in the past. In fact, it’s being accepted at break-neck speed in the right-wing blogosphere that interrogations at Gitmo and/or the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed produced the critical intel. In other words, if Bush and Cheney can’t get the bulk of the credit for a big achievement that eluded them, the interrogation methods they defiantly championed were the real heroes.
There seems to be more than a little lefty-baiting going on in this line of conservative “reasoning,” in hopes of pouring gasoline on anti-war sentiment. Indeed, you can expect conservatives, initially at least, to leap to Obama’s defense if he visibly rejects the much-anticipated post-Osama advice to accelerate troop withdrawals in Afghanistan or announce an end to the Global War On Terror.
Before leaving this subject, I’d like to give a special acknowledgement to Michele Bachmann for her reaction to the death of Osama, which is a minor masterpiece in message discipline:
Tonight’s news does not bring back the lives of the thousands of innocent people who were killed that day by Osama bin Laden’s horrific plan, and it does not end the threat posed by terrorists, but it is my hope that this is the beginning of the end of Sharia-compliant terrorism.
“Sharia-compliant terrorism?” Sounds an awful lot like those “Sharia-compliant mortgages” Tim Pawlenty’s been accused of promoting as governor of Bachmann’s home state.
OBL’s death has temporarily interrupted the build-up of conservative wrath over the debt limit and GOP spending cut demands, but only temporarily. This week’s meetings in Washington involving representatives of the White House and congressional Republicans, and separately, the Senate’s Gang of Six deliberations, will produce a quickly intensifying backlash if there is any sign whatsoever of agreement. The latest “idea” that you’ll hear more about is that of a series of short-term (say, two-month) debt limit increases, providing multiple bites at the ideological apple, or, depending on which metaphor you prefer, a planned series of hostage crises. This is supposedly Grover Norquist’s pet proposal, and it could become very popular, even though some Tea Folk will point out this tactic didn’t work as brilliantly as was advertised on the FY 2011 appropriations front.
On the presidential campaign front, the news from Pakistan may have partially obscured Mitch Daniels’ decision to sign legislation making Indiana the first state to formally ban public funding for Planned Parenthood, and the third to impose a constitutionally-suspect ban on abortions more than 20 weeks after conception. This step is being widely interpreted as a signal that Daniels is back-tracking from his famous proposal for a “truce” on divisive cultural issues like abortion until such time as the country’s fiscal crisis is resolved, and/or that he has decided to run for president.
I dunno about that. Clearly, if Daniels had vetoed this legislation, the outcry from social conservatives would have made any presidential run in the immediate future a highly dubious proposition. But it’s not as though he actively promoted the bill before it landed on his desk, so further demonstrations of fealty to the anti-abortion cause will probably be necessary, and in any event, no one seems to know if he actually wants to run.
Pressure is also building on Mike Huckabee to make a move towards a candidacy a bit earlier than his own summer timetable. His friends in South Carolina recently had to bat down rumors he’d put out the word that he was giving the contest a pass.
Wingnut Watch: What Now for the Birthers?
When I started doing this column back in February, I had this to say about the parameters of “wingnuttery” I considered sufficiently legitimate to address:
I’m not interested in conducting a carnival sideshow that cherry-picks and mocks radical conservatives who do not have any actual political power. I won’t follow the birthers and the white supremacists, won’t indulge in Nazi analogies, and won’t assume that every raving from the lips of Glenn Beck has been internalized as marching orders by Republican politicians. The degree of craziness in the conservative mainstream right now is large enough that exaggeration is unnecessary as well as unfair.
Guess I didn’t know how crazy “the crazy” could get, what with birtherism being a source of constant debate among all sorts of conservatives, and the signature issue of the guy currently leading most polls of Republicans to serve as their 2012 presidential candidate. But worse yet, today’s news indicates the evil genie of right-wing conspiracy theory will just move on to other toxic delusions about Barack Obama.
The White House got hold of and released the “long-form birth certificate” for the president that birthers have been claiming does not exist or has been destroyed or whisked away to one of those FEMA concentration camps or something.
Case closed, right? Well, the font of birtherism, the online publication WorldNetDaily, has “other questions” that remain about the circumstances of the president’s birth and upbringing. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is taking credit for forcing the White House to “resolve” the made-up “controversy.” Worse yet, he’s already moving on to other crazy conspiracy theories, notably the fable that Obama’s first book, Dreams From My Father, was actually written by ex-Weatherman William Ayers. This complete fabrication was emphatically endorsed by Trump on Sean Hannity’s show over a week ago. It’s a sign of the times that hardly anyone even noticed. And in an indication that this could be the next hallucinatory item to migrate from the fever swamps to “respectable” conservative opinion, Sarah Palin’s had this comment on Fox last night:
I think the media is loving this, because they want to make to make birthers, as they call people who are just curious about the president of the United States and his background and his associations and his consistency with what he says today versus what he said in both the memoirs that he wrote or Bill Ayers or whomever wrote.
I’m reasonably sure she was not just trying to be funny.
Conventional conservatives have a real obligation to stomp out this new/old forest fire of lies and lunacy before it spreads. The racial implications alone of the black-man-needs-white-radical-to-write-book meme are toxic enough to merit some active intervention instead of the sort of indulgent aren’t-they-cute attitude of Republicans towards birthers.
Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, the main development among conservative activists during the last week has been a steadily hardening position on a debt limit increase, with sentiment roughly divided between those claiming a delay in the measure would not alarm financial markets, and those arguing that the sky will fall if Congress does not enact Paul Ryan’s budget or something like it directly. Suffusing both points of view is the conviction that the administration and Senate Democrats will eventually cave and give them much of what they want if the play chicken on the debt limit. Underneath the surface is almost certainly the legitimate concern that 2012 voters will not give the GOP the decimation of Medicare and Medicaid that they are demanding in negotiations, though conservatives can now point to at least one poll (from Gallup) showing that if the Ryan and Obama positions on the budget are described in vague enough terms, opinion polarizes by party like it does on everything else.
The emerging party line on the ontological necessity of pushing Ryan-style “reforms” through come hell or high water was probably best expressed by John McCain’s top 2008 economic advisor, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, in National Review:
Entitlement reform is in the House budget because entitlement reforms have to be central to any plan. The large entitlement programs — Obamacare, Medicaid, and Medicare — are running red ink right now and are the major source of the growing debt that harms economic growth. The federal budget cannot come into balance and stay in balance unless the entitlement programs are reformed. Entitlement reform is an obligation for anyone who seeks to lead America to a more prosperous, responsible, and secure future.
All righty then. What’s left to negotiate? How much of a tax cut for “wealth producers” we need to wash down those benefit cuts?
On Syria, Speak Up Please
Let’s grant that Washington has limited leverage over Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad. Let’s further stipulate that Assad’s claim that it’s either him or the Islamists, while self-serving, could turn out to be true. Even so, the White House seems strangely tongue-tied when it comes to condemning the regime’s violence against its people.
Sure, various administration mouthpieces have issued perfunctory condemnations. But even as regime tanks and snipers fire indiscriminately on civilians in Deraa and other cities, President Obama has yet to speak out forcefully against the killings, or to mobilize international efforts to bring pressure on Assad to stop.
Trotting well behind the galloping pace of the Arab revolt, the administration is just now getting around to imposing mild sanctions on Syria. Whether you come at the issue from a humanitarian or realpolitik standpoint, this lack of urgency is puzzling.
Around 400 Syrians already have been killed, and the regime has escalated attacks on protesters. The Guardian reports desperate conditions in Deraa, where people lack electricity, food and water, yet can’t leave their homes for fear of being picked off by snipers. Security forces go door to door, rounding up suspected rebels.
Already entangled in three Middle Eastern countries, the United States probably can’t intervene militarily to stop an incipient massacre in Syria. But the President can offer unequivocal moral support to Syrian demands to open up one of the region’s grimmer police states; he can dramatically stiffen sanctions against the Assad regime; and, he can challenge the international community to apply the “responsibility to protect” principle to Syrians.
Siding with the Syrian resistance also aligns with America’s strategic interests. The fall of the Assad dynasty would remove a determined foe of American purposes in the region, and likely deprive Iran of a loyal satrap in Damascus. But even a more open and pluralistic political order in Syria could moderate the regime’s rougish external conduct. For example, it might mean less Syrian meddling in Lebanon, and less clandestine support for Hezbollah and Hamas.
So why is the administration holding back? Why won’t Obama endorse the goal of regime change, as he has in Libya?
Perhaps he fears being dragged into another Libya-style intervention. Or maybe somewhere in the bowels of the State Department there are still people who think the United States should pursue “engagement” with the Syrian dictator.
But hopes that the Western-educated Assad would turn out to be some kind of closet modernizer were dashed long ago. Since inheriting the regime in 2000, Assad has made Syria a client state of Iran. His regime also has been implicated in the assassination of Lebanese democrats who oppose Syrian domination of their country. To vaunt his credentials as a leader of the rejectionist camp, Assad funnels arms to Hezbollah and Hamas. At the height of the sectarian carnage in Iraq, Syria also was a key transit point for foreign suicide terrorists who flocked to the country to kill U.S. troops as well as Iraqi civilians.
In short, Assad is a thoroughly nasty piece of work. His links to Iran and regional terrorism make him more dangerous by far than Muammar Qaddafi. Yet you don’t hear anyone in Washington (or Europe) demanding a no fly zone over Syria.
That’s probably a perverse sort of tribute to Syria’s brutally competent machinery of repression. It’s also true, though, that Assad enjoys support from other minority groups in Syria, such as Christians. Accurately or not, they accept Assad’s description of himself as their only bulwark against Sunni Islamists.
Yet Assad’s brutality is doubtless a reflection of his basic political insecurity. As a member of the Alawite minority, a Shia offshoot which comprises about a tenth of Syria’s mostly Sunni population, Assad’s hold on power is intrinsically precarious and can only be sustained by intimidation and violence.
Syrians nonetheless seem increasingly willing to risk their lives to pry Assad’s grip on their country lose. They deserve America’s unqualified support.
Why One Critic of Going Exponential is Misguided
Writers usually do not respond to critiques from the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) because they are so one-sided and predictable, especially if a report suggests any potential benefits to charter schools. But since their review of our report for the Progressive Policy Institute on growing the best charter schools, seriously mischaracterizes the research base of our findings – and our claims about that base – we decided we needed to reply briefly.
As we explain clearly in the report, our findings are based on a review of existing literature about rapidly growing organizations in the business and nonprofit sectors. We did not conduct, or claim to have conducted, original research in the vein of the multi-year Jim Collins research effort that produced Good to Great. The Collins book did not focus on the extreme rapid growth period of interest to us in this paper, so it was not the proper base for this particular paper. Luckily, the phenomenon of rapid growth has already been studied by others, and therefore we drew on that literature in our report.
Though the NEPC review suggests that our “research section” contains “only three references,” in fact the report cites dozens of books, journal articles, and case studies in support of our conclusions. The review also states that we do not discuss the nature of the studies, but readers will find just such discussion in the endnotes included in the report, available here. As we explain in an endnote, for example, one the primary studies we used to form our conclusions, David Thomson’s Blueprint to a Billion, compared 387 sustained, rapid growth firms that achieved a billion dollars in revenue to over 5,000 peer companies that fell short of this mark.
Notably, the NEPC review does not challenge any of the lessons that we drew from this literature review, or suggest any alternate findings that would explain why some organizations manage to grow rapidly while others do not. Nor does it challenge our main point, which is that millions of children could benefit if even a subset of the best charter schools grew at high rates like the best growth organizations in other sectors. Instead, the review questions the applicability of lessons from other kinds of organizations to charter schools, asking what relevance the interaction between a barista and a customer has to the interaction between a teacher and a student.
But here’s what’s interesting. You could just as easily ask what relevance do barista-customer interactions have to the activities of Habitat for Humanity, networking-hardware giant Cisco, or a software firm like Microsoft. And yet these disparate organizations used similar tactics to grow rapidly, most of which have little to do with the specific industries in which they work. The real question is why educational organizations couldn’t use similar tactics in their effort to reach more students with high-quality teaching and learning. Too many children simply are not reached by teaching excellence today, and the teachers and other staff in the best charter schools have figured out how to deliver that excellence.
Of course, rapid growers in any sector would be thrilled not to have to use analogies. Ideally, numerous excellent charter organizations will work over the next few years to grow rapidly. They will use a variety of approaches, some of which will be more successful than others. Primary researchers will then be able to learn a great deal from that experience, while many more children benefit meanwhile. For anyone who would like to see more kids served by excellent schools, that’s the kind of action and follow-up research we need.
P-Fix Celebrates Earth Day
Friday, April 22 was Earth Day. We put together five great pieces to celebrate:
Like Tax Day, Earth Day Calls for a Full Accounting by Scott Thomasson
Thomasson writes: “If environmentalists, clean energy advocates, and climate hawks of different feathers want voters to judge the president and members of Congress for their record on these issues, like their failure to pass energy and climate legislation, then they should take advantage of the visibility of Earth Day to demand an accounting from our officials. If there is any time when you can get the attention of the media and voters for five minutes to remind them that there is a lot of work left to do, today is the day.”
The Wrong Tools for the Job by Nathan Richardson
Richardson writes: “A better way to take stock of environmental progress is to look at the tools we are using. And unfortunately doing that leaves me profoundly depressed. For almost every environmental problem, the best, most cost-effective solutions are rejected in favor of second-bests, hopeful handouts, or inaction.”
Why the U.S. is No Longer a Leader in Environmental Policy, by Jason Scorse
Scorse writes: “The bottom line is that people are much more willing to support environmental policies that come with large risks and disruptions to their way of life when other policies are in place to shield them from excessive risk and instability. Progressive environmental policies must rest on a foundation of broader investments in social safety nets. One of the primary reasons that the U.S. has fallen behind the world on environmental policy is because we have fallen behind on virtually all measures of economic security; the two are intimately linked.”
Wingnut Watch: Earth Day is Lenin’s Birthday, by Ed Kilgore
Kilgore writes: “I can’t pinpoint the moment of total devolution of conservative opinion on the environment, although Al Gore’s Nobel Prize might have been the tipping point. Before you knew it, Fox News personalities were regularly greeting every blizzard as definitive proof that global warming was a hoax. A tempest-in-a-teapot leak of emails from a British research institute became “Climategate,” exposing a vast global socialist conspiracy to suppress clear evidence against climate change. And old, fringe arguments against environmentalism generally as “pagan” or anti-Western had a very big renaissance.”
The Environment: What the Public Thinks, by Lee Drutman
Drutman writes: “It’s Earth Day, but as far as problems go, the environment now ranks last among 15 issues that the public thinks Congress and the President should deal with this year. Only 24 percent of Americans think the environment is an “extremely important” issue. On this score, the environment comes in behind “the situation in Iraq” (27 percent), “taxes” (27 percent), and “illegal immigration” (30 percent) and “gas and home heating prices” (31 percent).”
Wingnut Watch: Earth Day is Lenin’s Birthday
It’s almost universally understood that the sudden withdrawal of nearly the entire Republican Party from any significant interest in environmental protection has had and will continue to have a calamitous effect on the ability of public institutions to do anything about such challenges as global climate change. The speed with which this has happened, though, can induce whiplash, not least among Republican pols who are being forced to repudiate their own records (notably John McCain in 2008, and in the current presidential cycle, Tim Pawlenty, soon to be followed, I am sure, by Jon Huntsman if he decides to run). My personal favorite example of this phenomenon occurred in 2010, when Rep. Mark Kirk, who had voted for the administration-supported climate change bill in the House, promised to vote against it if elected to the Senate.
In part this development can be understood as simply a subset of the final conquest of the GOP by a conservative movement that’s been struggling to regain control ever since it briefly held it in 1964. It’s also, as many commentators have noted, a byproduct of partisan and ideological polarization: if Barack Obama is for climate change legislation, then, by God, no respectable conservative can come within miles of supporting it!
But something else is going on, too. Even within the conservative movement, hostility to environmentalism has recently morphed from a prejudice to a core belief. Until quite recently, conservative pols and opinion-leaders gave grudging lip service to environmental protection. EPA was viewed as a bureaucratic nuisance, but not as a fundamentally illegitimate menace to free enterprise. Conservatives favored “balanced” energy development, including nuclear energy and expanded exploitation of domestic oil and coal, but didn’t, until 2008, become the “drill baby drill!” fossil-fuel-o-maniacs they appear to be today. They were climate-change “skeptics,” but not, by and large, climate-change deniers.
I can’t pinpoint the moment of total devolution of conservative opinion on the environment, although Al Gore’s Nobel Prize might have been the tipping point. Before you knew it, Fox News personalities were regularly greeting every blizzard as definitive proof that global warming was a hoax. A tempest-in-a-teapot leak of emails from a British research institute became “Climategate,” exposing a vast global socialist conspiracy to suppress clear evidence against climate change. And old, fringe arguments against environmentalism generally as “pagan” or anti-Western had a very big renaissance.
On this last note, it’s almost been forgotten that just a few years ago “creation care” was the hottest topic around for evangelical theologians. And this was an ecumenical trend, too, and not just within Protestantism: Pope Benedict XVI sponsored a Vatican Conference on Climate Change in 2007. Even outspoken critics of “creation care” activism (e.g., the Southern Baptist Convention’s Richard Land) were urging caution in the advocacy of climate change action, not abandonment of the environment altogether.
More recently, though, the idea of environmentalism representing fundamentally anti-Christian values is back with a vengeance. A Washington Times editorial yesterday mocked Earth Day as “The Hippie Holiday” celebrated by “humanity haters” who were defying God’s direct command to subdue and exploit nature. And here’s what was posted at the top of the influential Red State blog site this morning:
This year, the anniversary of our Lord’s crucifixion falls on the anniversary of Vladimir Lenin’s birthday, which is also Earth Day. Some will choose to worship creation today. We choose to worship our Creator.
Wow. I hadn’t read the Earth Day = Lenin’s Birthday meme since the original Earth Day, when a Republican candidate for governor of my home of Georgia used it and then had to backtrack in considerable embarrassment.
My, how we’ve grown.
Like Tax Day, Earth Day Calls for a Full Accounting
The greatest irony of Earth Day is that it has become a yearly event that is almost ignored by environmentalists and celebrated mostly by politicians and businesses with green products or PR campaigns. The reason for this is probably best understood by florists, card shops, and restaurants on Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day: it is a day for symbolic gestures, taken most advantage of by those who aren’t doing enough the rest of the year but know they should be.
Boycotting the empty gestures is certainly understandable for those who “make every day Earth Day.” A quick visit to a half dozen or so websites of environmental groups this morning found almost no mention whatsoever of Earth Day, but there was a consistent focus on the one-year anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon gulf oil spill. That’s probably for the best, because if people who normally wouldn’t visit these sites are inspired to do so today, they are better off being met with substance than feel-good window dressing.
On the other hand, I’m not sure any of our politicians deserve to get a pass for running silent on environmental symbolism today. Just because it’s okay that Greenpeace chooses not to acknowledge Earth Day on its homepage today doesn’t make it okay for President Obama, Harry Reid, and John Boehner to do the same (they did, by the way—no mention of it whatsoever as of 9:30 am this morning, even on Obama’s now famous Facebook page).
Here’s why: for a lot of Americans, Earth Day may be the one day of the year when they decide to go hunting for information about what kind of progress we have made as a nation on environmental and energy issues, and elected officials ought to be accountable at exactly that moment for their positions on those issues. The White House gets this concept for taxes: Tax Day was this past Monday, and whitehouse.gov still has the new “taxpayer receipt” feature splashed across its main page so people can see where their money went while the question is fresh in their mind. Voters deserve a similar accounting for the environment on the day when they are most likely to be looking for it.
I understand the cynicism about what Earth Day has become, but the problem with that cynicism is one that has all-too-often plagued the environmental movement: it allows condescending moralism to undermine efforts for political accountability. If environmentalists, clean energy advocates, and climate hawks of different feathers want voters to judge the president and members of Congress for their record on these issues, like their failure to pass energy and climate legislation, then they should take advantage of the visibility of Earth Day to demand an accounting from our officials. If there is any time when you can get the attention of the media and voters for five minutes to remind them that there is a lot of work left to do, today is the day.
The Wrong Tools for the Job
Whatever you read today, you’ll find writers marking Earth Day by taking stock of environmental progress. Some will celebrate how far we have come in the last 41 years: no burning rivers, bald eagles are back, etc. Others will stress how far we have to go, citing biodiversity loss, water crises, and above all climate change. (And if your reading habits are sufficiently diverse, others will argue we’ve gone too far, and that environmental rules are hurting our economy). All of these (yes, even sometimes the third) are partly right, but arguing over which frame is “right,” if any can be, is not that illuminating.
A better way to take stock of environmental progress is to look at the tools we are using. And unfortunately doing that leaves me profoundly depressed. For almost every environmental problem, the best, most cost-effective solutions are rejected in favor of second-bests, hopeful handouts, or inaction. To give just a few examples:
Transportation: With vehicle emissions dirtying city air and contributing to climate change, inadequate investment in road infrastructure, and a strategically costly dependence on foreign oil, the US could increase gas taxes, which are lower than those in almost every other developed economy. Instead, we use some policies that give no incentive to reduce driving while at the same time restricting consumers’ choice of cars (CAFE standards) and others that cost billions while driving up global food prices (ethanol subsidies).
Smog and Acid Rain: For a beautiful moment, from 1990 through 2010, we did it right: we had a nationwide cap-and-trade program for sulfur dioxide emissions that caused smog and acid rain. The program resulted in huge health benefits at far less cost than even EPA estimated. But that program is or will soon be dead. New EPA rules are set to end interstate trading for most of the country and will impose other restrictions that mean allowances now have almost no value. EPA doesn’t deserve all the blame—courts rejection of flexible tools and Congress’ failure to act are the true sources of this problem. But it’s just crazy to kill the best environmental program this country has ever had.
Climate: Despite the Senate’s failure to even consider a single climate bill last year, we do (to the surprise of some) have an American climate policy. States and EPA are leading the way, but even if they are both bold and smart, the patchwork of carbon markets, emissions standards, and energy subsidies that emerges will surely be less efficient overall. Emissions reductions will be less, and those we do get will cost more. How is that a good deal?
I could go on. Everywhere you look, even when we deal with environmental problems, we consistently choose ways to deal with them that are costly, ineffective, or even counterproductive. It would be one thing if the best ways to solve these problems—cap-and-trade, taxing externalities—were untested ideas. But of course they are not. They are well understood, and as close to dogma as is possible among economists. Most damning of all, we used to understand this, across the political spectrum. As the sulfur dioxide story illustrates, even if we are making some environmental progress we are getting worse as a country at dealing with these issues effectively.
There is a political story here, of course. There was a time when many on the left rejected efficiency as a goal of environmental policy. The right pushed for a role for markets, and eventually a grand compromise emerged in the 1990s. Efficiency was understood to be a universally valuable goal: more effective policies meant lower costs or more environmental benefits at the same cost. Politics was about making this tradeoff, as it should be.
But somehow cap-and-trade became cap-and-tax, and a large section of the right seems opposed to any environmental policy, whether efficient or not. They’ve moved the goalposts. This about-face is particularly ironic since it leaves government handouts like nuclear subsidies and inflexible restrictions like renewable portfolio standards as the only politically plausible energy policies. How is that pro-market or anti-big government? (The left is not without some blame too: to see that, just look at how fringe groups have recently derailed California’s cap-and-trade program).
But there’s more to this story than just party politics. Efficient environmental policy simply has not caught on with the American public. Sticker shock (like gas taxes) trumps long-term efficiency every time. Hiding costs through subsidies (like ethanol or nuclear) is always more popular than showing them up front by pricing externalities. Defending or securing benefits to the few is always easier than minimizing costs to the many. With environmental problems, costs are often distant in time or diffuse, or benefits are small but widespread. This exacerbates all these problems—that’s what makes them hard.
To some extent our failure to make good policy is a failure of leadership: hiding costs is classic politics, and tearing down those who ask us to make hard choices is easy. We see this in almost all issues, not just environmental policy. But leaders can’t carry all the blame, not least because we choose them.
So is there anything to be hopeful about on Earth Day? If so, it’s hard to find. The trend is in the wrong direction—it is as if we are forgetting everything we’ve learned about dealing with environmental problems. But eventually the biggest such problems—among them water, energy, and climate—will become too large to ignore (arguably, they are already there). When they do, efficient policies for dealing with them will be available. When we are ready, we can do this.
Why the U.S. is No Longer a Leader in Environmental Policy
The past decade has been extremely depressing for the U.S. environmental community. Rather than lead the world on climate and energy policy, the U.S. has fallen further behind our developed-world allies, and now even lags behind rising powers such as China and Brazil.
The question arises: Why has America not been able to muster the political will to usher in a clean energy future and join forces with the other rich (and not so rich) nations of the world to combat climate change?
The answer is, of course, complex. Institutional barriers in the American political system favor rural states over urban ones and demand super-majorities that are almost impossible to muster; powerful industrial interests continue to disproportionately sway politicians while funding vast networks of misinformation; and one of our two major parties has embraced a virulently anti-science position that is unprecedented in modern history.
But there is something even more fundamental that the environmental community has failed to grasp. It’s not that Germans, Canadians, Norwegians, and French have a greater love for the environment, or that these countries lack parochial and special interests and powerful corporations. Above all else, what differentiates Americans from these other wealthy nations is our much greater degree of economic insecurity.
The reality is that a bold new energy and climate change policy would inevitably result in dislocations in certain industries and upset long-established ways of life in many regions; in addition, it would lead to higher prices for basic commodities such as gas, home heating oil, and food.
In societies where there are strong social safety nets―universal healthcare, universal preschool, strong support for new parents, significant investments in public transportation, and sustained support for higher education ―the changes wrought by a paradigm shift in energy will tend not to result in hugely destabilizing effects across whole towns and communities. In fact, with good planning and investments in critical infrastructure, strong environmental policies can result in overall improvements in the quality of life for nearly everyone.
Throughout much of the developed world, citizens are willing to pay prices for gasoline that would lead to riots in American streets, because they know that the government revenue raised by high gas taxes is used for programs that directly benefit them. In other words, ten-dollar a gallon gas isn’t such a big deal when everyone has great healthcare, great public transportation, and free high-quality schooling.
Many environmentalists criticized President Obama for using virtually all of his political capital to pass healthcare legislation before a comprehensive energy bill. Though many of the benefits of that healthcare bill won’t go into effect until years from now, and support for the legislation still suffers from the copious amounts of misinformation peddled by the bill’s detractors, the goal of universal healthcare will ultimately serve the environmental community. The question is whether it will be too late to matter.
The bottom line is that people are much more willing to support environmental policies that come with large risks and disruptions to their way of life when other policies are in place to shield them from excessive risk and instability. Progressive environmental policies must rest on a foundation of broader investments in social safety nets. One of the primary reasons that the U.S. has fallen behind the world on environmental policy is because we have fallen behind on virtually all measures of economic security; the two are intimately linked.
The Environment: What the Public Thinks
It’s Earth Day, but as far as problems go, the environment now ranks last among 15 issues that the public thinks Congress and the President should deal with this year. Only 24 percent of Americans think the environment is an “extremely important” issue. On this score, the environment comes in behind “the situation in Iraq” (27 percent), “taxes” (27 percent), and “illegal immigration” (30 percent) and “gas and home heating prices” (31 percent).
Moreover, when it comes to the trade-off between the economy and the environment, meanwhile, the economy now wins hands down: 54 percent to 36 percent. This is actually a relatively new development. Prior to 2008, the public had never prioritized the economy over the environment. As recently as 2007, the public supported giving the environment priority over the economy 55 percent to 37 percent, and throughout the 1980s and 1990s public opinion was consistently 65-to-25 in favor of environment over the economy, with slight dips in environmental friendliness during recessions.
Not surprisingly, the changes have been most pronounced among Republicans and conservatives. In 2000, conservatives prioritized the environment over the economy 62-to-33 percent; Now they prioritize the economy 70-to-22 percent – a remarkable 38 point shift. Similarly, Republicans overall went from 60-to-34 percent environment first to 55-to-35 economy first.
But even liberals have become less environment first. In 2000, they supported the environment over the economy 74 percent to 22 percent; now it’s 55 percent to 35 percent economy over environment. Same with Democrats overall: In 2000, they favored the environment 69 percent to 27 percent; now it’s just barely: 46 percent to 42 percent.
Certainly, a sluggish economy has something to do with things. When unemployment flirts with double-digits and the economy is in recession, it’s much easier to see the top priority as creating jobs. Moreover, the visible environment is in pretty decent shape these days. The skies and rivers are not brown, thanks to environmental regulations passed in the 1970s. Whatever environmental disasters might exist lurk in the hypotheticals of global warming.
As for the environmental problems that people care about, drinking water comes out first (51 percent care a great deal about it), followed closely by soil (48 percent), and rivers, lakes and reservoirs (46 percent).
But even on the these issues, the public is a lot less worried. In 1989, 72 percent of Americans cared a great deal about the pollution of rivers lakes and reservoirs, as opposed to 46 percent today. Similarly, in 1989, 63 percent cared a great deal about air pollution; today it’s 36 percent. This is a success story, because public opinion reflects the fact that these issues just aren’t the big deal they used to be.
What’s troubling, however, is the extent to which public opinion is becoming less concerned about global warming. Only one quarter of respondents care a great deal about global warming, ranking it last among eight environmental issues. That’s down from 41 percent as recently as 2007.
Similarly, as recently as July 2006, 79 percent of respondents thought that there was solid evidence that the earth is warming, and 50 percent believed it was because of human activity. Now only 59 percent believe the earth is warming, and just 32 percent think it’s because of human activity.
What’s emerged is a partisan divide on the issue. Whereas Democrats have been largely consistent in believing the earth is warming, Republicans have increasingly become convinced that global warming is not a problem.
All of this, however, is too bad for Obama, because environmental stewardship is one of the issues the President polls best on: 55 percent of Americans think he is doing a good job “protecting the nation’s environment” as compared to 33 percent who think he is doing a poor job.
Why Budget Line Items Don’t Die
In today’s Washington Post, David A. Fahrentold marvels at what he calls the “Line Items That Won’t Die” – federal programs that benefit narrow interests, but somehow manage to keep getting funded: “One spends federal money to store cotton bales. Another offers scholars a chance to study Asian-American relations. Two others pay to market U.S. oranges in Asia and clean up abandoned coal mines.”
Fahrenthold attributes their success to having Congressional champions. The study of Asian-American relations, for example, takes place at a Honolulu nonprofit called the East-West Center, and enjoys the support of Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), who also happens to be chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
But there’s also a broader story: the simple fact that when a government program benefits a narrow constituency, it’s very easy for that constituency to organize and make demands on legislators about why this program is worth keeping. The larger public, meanwhile is rarely aware, and even if it were aware, is unlikely to do anything.
Take the Market Access Program discussed in the article, which helps promote U.S. agricultural products abroad. A coalition of agricultural interests benefit greatly from this, and they are organized to advocate fiercely for its continuance and threaten to punish any Senator or Congressman who would vote against the program by withdrawing votes and campaign contributions. Nobody in the general public, however, is likely to care about or vote based solely on this single issue.
This is the difference in what congressional scholar R. Douglas Arnold has called “attentive publics” and “inattentive publics.” Attentive publics are the small groups that care deeply about particular policies, and as a result, are likely to be more influential because they care so intensely about that one issue. Inattentive publics are everyone else. The public might be outraged after reading about the Market Access Program, but the likelihood of most people following up are small. Think of it this way: If 1,000 people want money from you, but only one bothers to keep calling you up telling you why he’s so deserving and threatens to punch you in the face if you don’t give him the money, you’re probably going to give that one person money, especially if it’s likely the other 999 will not even notice or if they do, won’t remember.
Another way to think about it (borrowing from James Q. Wilson) is in terms of distributed costs and concentrated benefits. The benefits of a program that pays peanut and cotton farmers to store their bales and bushels in warehouses are solidly concentrated among peanut and cotton farmers. The costs are distributed to everybody else. But the cost per taxpayer is so small that it’s hard to imagine any group getting organized to fight this particular program. Whereas the farmers – well, they’re damn certain to do fight any cuts to the program. What results is what Wilson calls “client politics” – where small narrow interests work with the relevant congressional committee and executive agency staff to build a usually impenetrable consensus around the importance of a single program.
The challenge for governing is that the federal budget and tax code and regulatory apparatus are filled with thousands upon thousands of these programs, each protected by a small consensus, and without any public coverage. One only need to scroll through the Federal Register to see all the small issues that could potentially benefit small attentive publics at the expense of everyone else. Or better yet, look through the tax code to find all the little credits and deductions for very narrow benefits. It’s enough to make your head spin round and round and round. Jonathan Rauch has pessimistically called this condition “Government’s End.”
I don’t really have a solution. In part, this is the nature of our current system of government and the size and complexity of our economy. But the point is, these programs are very difficult to kill, and Fahrenthold’s story is just the tip of the iceberg.
Ken Adelman’s Foreign Aid Myopia
To say Ken Adelman – Ronald Reagan’s UN ambassador – takes thin appreciation for the benefits of foreign assistance would be an understatement. Writing in response to Joe Nye’s article on the importance of “smart power,” his rebuttal piece in Foreign Policy paints is a myopic view of American foreign aid, and in Adelman’s rush to end the practice, manages to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Here’s Adelman’s conclusion:
For decades now, the United States has been the No. 1 foreign-aid donor … but this hasn’t translated in making America the most popular or most influential country around the world. …
Four of the largest U.S. foreign-aid recipients today — Egypt, Israel, Pakistan, and Afghanistan — all take contrary positions on issues of critical importance to the White House. South Vietnam once got gobs — gobs upon gobs — of U.S. foreign aid. That didn’t help much. Likewise with Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Zaire (now the “Democratic” Republic of the Congo), and other “friendly” (read: graciously willing to take U.S. money) countries. …
Put bluntly, this aspect of soft power — foreign aid, by far the biggest in dollar terms, amounting to some $30 billion* a year — may not constitute much power at all.
In Adleman’s world, the only reason America should give to impoverished countries is to buy quid pro quo support in the UN, or to compel local governments and populations to unambiguous pro-American stances.
So a thought exercise, let’s enter Adelman’s world and imagine what would happen if we distributed foreign aid on his terms. Actually, we don’t have to imagine very hard, because there’s already a glowing exemplar of Adelman’s approach: North Korea.
In America’s dealing with Pyongyang, we only dole out aid only when there’s an immediate quid pro quo. Certainly the depths of North Korea’s poverty and recalcitrance of its leadership create a truly unique situation, but the basic premise holds: America is rich, North Korea is poor, and important strategic issues must be discussed between them.
Here’s what happens: Without regular American aid, North Korea throws a two-year-old style temper tantrum by testing (or threatening to test) a nuclear warhead; the United States and Europe scramble to put together an assistance package; Pyongyang temporarily calms down… until the next time they need something. In other words, we’re negotiating with the DPRK on its terms. American- and European-led efforts to engage North Korea have only been fleetingly successful: the regime will sit down with us when it pleases and then stall without giving much up until it needs something.
The converse case is how America deals with pretty much the rest of the developing world: We provide the developing world money on a regular basis. Yes, a lot of it is skimmed off by corrupt local officials, and some is directed at narrow strategic objects that help tighten local despots’ grip on power. To fault aid for supporting individuals, rather than institutions, is perfectly valid, and has contributed to the Obama administration’s inconsistent policy across the Middle East.
But a good chunk gets to where it’s intended (to military, infrastructure, health, or civil society groups) that is appreciated for one reason or another. The sum total is that the “payoff”(if you want to be callous) of American foreign is helping to create stable, working relationships with countries the world over. Foreign governments and their populations aren’t going to side with the United States on every issue (or even most issues), but maintaining open channels of communication to the ruling class and opposition groups are critical to productive dialogue that shapes policy over the long arc. And yeah, it just may help build democratic and stable societies, which are inherently aligned with America’s values and interests.
The bottom line is that foreign aid, however imperfect, creates the contours for America’s role in the world. Take it away, and we’re left bribing everyone. Just ask Kim Jong Il.