Democracy on the Rise

From The Washington Post January 31,2006 by Tom Toles

Right to Life?

Today’s Washington Post reports on growing state legislative trends affecting the provision of health care.

More than a dozen states are considering new laws to protect health workers who do not want to provide care that conflicts with their personal beliefs, a surge of legislation that reflects the intensifying tension between asserting individual religious values and defending patients' rights.
About half of the proposals would shield pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control and "morning-after" pills because they believe the drugs cause abortions. But many are far broader measures that would shelter a doctor, nurse, aide, technician or other employee who objects to any therapy. That might include in-vitro fertilization, physician-assisted suicide, embryonic stem cells and perhaps even providing treatment to gays and lesbians.
The issue is gaining new prominence this year because of a confluence of factors. They include the heightened attention to pharmacists amid a host of controversial medical issues, such as the possible over-the-counter sale of the Plan B morning-after pill, embryonic research and testing, and debates over physician-assisted suicide and end-of-life care after the Terri Schiavo right-to-die case.
"The so-called right-to-life movement in the United States has expanded its agenda way beyond the original focus on abortion," Lois Uttley of the Merger Watch project said. "Given the political power of religious conservatives, the impact of a whole range of patient services could be in danger."
Doctors opposed to fetal tissue research, for example, could refuse to notify parents that their child was due for a chicken pox inoculation because the vaccine was originally produced using fetal tissue cell cultures, said R. Alto Charo, a bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin. "That physician would be immunized from medical malpractice claims and state disciplinary action," Charo said.

If these people cannot perform their duties as public health providers they need to change professions. They have every right to their own beliefs but no right to foist those beliefs on people who differ from their world view. This drive to make everyone conform to their ideas is an expression of doubt at the heart of their own beliefs. If someone thinks differently from them, they see it as a threat to what they believe, which somehow must invalidate their position; not as an instance of a diverse world that is complex enough to harbor differences.

They couch their actions as a philosophy that believes in the “Right to Life”. It is time for that movement to admit candidly what its underlying motives are and change its name. The only “life” they care about is from the moment of inception to the moment of birth. Anti-abortion, although referred to and publicized as pro-life, should really be called anti-sex; in particular when it is sex performed outside marriage. A pro-life position that cares about life in its entirety would not favor reduction in Medicaid a month after the devastation of Katrina and Rita. It would not reduce social spending for health needs or to mitigate poverty, while leaving the tax cut untouched, nor would it countenance 45 million Americans without health insurance. It would not propose eliminating food stamps for 300,000 people.

Once birth occurs the concern for the newborn's remaining life disappears. Birth is the penalty conservatives want “undisciplined” people to pay for not being abstinent, for not following the standards that “right-to-lifers” believe should govern all lives. Getting pregnant was a mistake and the perpetrators should not be allowed to escape the consequences of their acts. It doesn’t matter that newborn children will also pay that price. And certainly no taxpayer money should be available to help people who get themselves into such a position. If people cannot succeed economically, conservatives believe that it is their fault and government should not be available to provide a safety net.

The most blatant example of this is the news last year that a recently developed cervical cancer vaccine, which promises to eliminate 10,000 cervical cancers and 3,700 deaths of women per year, is seen by conservatives as a problem, for they fear it will be a message to teenagers that pre-marital sex is now safe. They are considering mobilizing to stop the distribution of this vaccine, preferring death to the possibility of increased sexual activity.

Budget Deficit

According to Administration estimates the budget deficit, currently at $337 billion, will be cut in half by 2009 and will become a surplus in 2012. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), however, takes a more realistic view of the next decade. It adds in some items that are obviously in our future but which the Administration treats as if they are in a parallel universe not worthy of being considered in budget discussions. These include our continued presence in Iraq and Afghanistan; fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax so that it does not hit the middle class; and extending the Bush tax cuts. When these three are added to the existing budget in the CBO analysis, the deficit never falls under $300 billion during the next decade and rises to $400 billion by 2016; not the $67 billion dollar surplus projected by the Administration

Setting the Stage for the Next Iraq?

At yesterday's news conference, while endorsing the plan for Russia to help Iran produce nuclear energy, President Bush said:

The Iranians have said, 'We want a weapon.'

Well they probably do but they have never said that publicly. In fact they constantly state that they only have peaceful purposes in mind. Is this just another misspeaking on Bush’s part, ignorance of the facts, or is he deliberately misleading the American public? Just remember the high percentages of people who believed that Iraq was behind 9/11 because that was continually reiterated by 2004 Republican Presidential campaigners.

Keeping Mum

At his news conference yesterday, President Bush explained why he would not let his aides testify on what The White House did about Hurricane Katrina.

If people give me advice and they're forced to disclose that advice, it means the next time an issue comes up I might not be able to get unvarnished advice from my advisers. And that's just the way it works.

He might have said – ‘If people give me advice and the advice is wrong and they are not held accountable, the next time I get advice from them, it will probably be wrong again.’ That is the way it works.

Mine Safety

Daniel Zwerdling on today’s NPR Morning Edition reported on mine safety and once again there is a clear example of how the Bush Administration favors industry at the expense of workers. As coal is mined it is placed in carts that are eventually moved out of the mine on rails. A great deal of coal dust is generated in the process. This is a known danger as the dust is similar to gunpowder and can easily explode. 30 years ago Congress passed the Mine Safety Act that required two tunnels in every mine: one for the coal and rails, the other for fresh air blown into the mine. This avoided the problem of air intensifying any fire that started. The Clinton Administration then added a provision that the rails be constructed with fire resistant material to further reduce the severity of fire.

Bush appointed an industry executive to head the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). He promulgated two rules: the first eliminated the need to change the rails and the second eliminated the need for separate tunnels. While MSHA admits that blowing forced air on a fire in a mine does exacerbate the situation, its defense is that they now insist on warning systems to alert the miners when a fire occurs. Why doesn’t this sound more reassuring if you are a miner 10,000 feet down the shaft?

Misunderstanding the Enemy

Iraq has always been more about what Administration strategists believed to be true, based on a pre-conceived agenda, rather than a policy based on a clear understanding of the geo-political facts about The Middle East. Most egregious is the failure to understand who our enemy is or what motivates it. Bush has reiterated for years that terrorists do what they do because they “hate our freedoms”. Other possible reasons such as our presence in Muslim lands is dismissed with no debate. Without knowing why your opponents act, it is impossible to formulate a strategy to defeat them.

The following is from The New York Times Op-Ed page January 25,2006 written by Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon co-authors of "The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting It Right."

Mr. bin Laden staked his claim to leadership of the Muslim world on 9/11, striking us as others only dreamed of doing. On the tape, he shows strength by taking credit for America's humiliation in Iraq and continues to do what we are not: fighting for the hearts and minds of the Muslim world.

It is too early to say how this tape will affect Muslim opinion, but there is no doubt that Mr. bin Laden's strategy has been paying off. According to a poll released last month by Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland and Zogby International, when Muslims in several countries were asked what aspect of Al Qaeda they "sympathize" with most, 39 percent said it was because the group confronted the United States. Nearly 20 percent more sympathized because it "stands up for Muslim causes," which is really just a polite way of saying the same thing.

Two other phenomena also show the movement to be strengthening. The first is the emerging breed of self-starter terrorists with few or no ties to Osama bin Laden, like the Madrid and London bombers, and others who have been arrested before they were able to carry out attacks in Pakistan, Australia and elsewhere. The second is the emergence of an indigenous jihad in Iraq. Much is said about the foreign fighters in Iraq, but the truly dramatic development is the radicalization of Iraqis who will continue the insurgency or travel abroad to kill, like those who bombed three Western hotels in Jordan in November.

Despite so much evidence that the jihadists are winning sympathy, America has provided no counter-story to their narrative. Rather, the president has repeatedly objected to the notion that the Iraq war is having a radicalizing effect by arguing that America was attacked before we ever stepped foot in Iraq.

Domestic Spying

The quote below made by President Bush in a speech in Kansas doesn’t do justice to seeing his delivery in person or on video. It lacks the sneers, the incongruous smile when discussing a serious topic, and the heh at the end of the sentence. He talks to his (usually) chosen audience as if they are insiders who know he is saying things that he has to say for public consumption but he knows neither he nor they believe.

This is a -- I repeat to you, even though you hear words, "domestic spying," these are not phone calls within the United States. It's a phone call of an al Qaeda, known al Qaeda suspect, making a phone call into the United States. I'm mindful of your civil liberties, and so I had all kinds of lawyers review the process.

Beyond the facial tics, however, are the words. The justification that “lawyers” reviewed his decision to allow NSA to listen to conversations of American citizens is quite disingenuous following the two recent Supreme Court nominee hearings. In both the Rogers and Alito hearings, the nominees went to great lengths to state that the work they did as US Government attorneys should not be represented as bearing on their future judgments as justices. Their reason for this position was that they were just doing their jobs as lawyerly advocates and giving their bosses what they wanted. This position was trumpeted by the White House to counter Democratic opposition. But a few weeks later that position is reversed and we are now asked to believe that if Justice Department lawyers approved a spying policy, no other review is necessary.

The Administration hides behind National Security and refuses to explain the key question about this issue: why did they have to circumvent FISA? If it is a matter of technology and the number of intercepts is so large that the FISA system would be overwhelmed, than that is a passable argument that would probably have led Congress to change the law. But both Attorney General Gonzales and Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the former NSA chief who is now Deputy Director of National Intelligence said yesterday that the use of this policy has been limited. If that is not an outright lie than why isn’t FISA adequate? It contains the option to wiretap with no need for prior approval (subsequent notification is all that is required).

This Administration continues to arrogantly do what it wants and justify its actions by saying whatever it thinks it can get away with. It claims that if they had this policy in effect prior to 9/11, they would have prevented it, conveniently forgetting that they had data pointing to 9/11 in advance but were unable to use it effectively.

Iraq Brain Drain

Further evidence that all is not progressing toward democracy and stability in Iraq as claimed by the Bush Administration can be found in today's Washington Post in an article by Doug Struck.

Iraq's top professionals -- doctors, lawyers, professors -- and businessmen have been targeted by shadowy political groups for kidnapping and ransom, as well as murder, some of them say. So many have fled the country that Iraq is in danger of losing the core of skilled people it needs most just as it is trying to build a newly independent society. "It's creating a brain drain," said Amer Hassan Fayed, assistant dean of political science at Baghdad University. "We could end up with a society without knowledge. How can such a society make progress?"

An official at the Interior Ministry's statistics office said the number of Iraqis traveling overland to Jordan held steady at about 200 to 250 a day from July 2004 to June 2005. Since last July, however, the number crossing the border -- excluding truckers and traders -- has ballooned to 1,100 a day, according to the official.

Anyone displaying signs of wealth, often professionals and businessmen, are particular targets of kidnappers in search of high ransoms. That danger is overlaid by the activities of an insurgency that aims to terrify the society by means of bombings, murder and abduction -- or threats. In addition, the death toll from sectarian violence among Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds has climbed steadily.

The lack of planning by the Administration before we invaded Iraq apparently coupled with a lack of knowledge about Iraqi culture and politics has lead to this situation. It is inexcusable in that the potential problems were known, not just by liberal critics, but also by close friends. George Bush's father chose not to overthrow Saddam at the end of the Gulf War for fear of creating instability in the region. Aren't conservatives supposed to remember the past. Dick Cheney in an April 29, 1991 speech to the Washington Institute's Soref Symposium defending the first President Bush's decision said:

I think that the proposition of going to Baghdad is also fallacious. I think if we were going to remove Saddam Hussein we would have had to go all the way to Baghdad, we would have to commit a lot of force because I do not believe he would wait in the Presidential Palace for us to arrive. I think we'd have had to hunt him down. And once we'd done that and we'd gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and his government, then we'd have had to put another government in its place.

What kind of government? Should it be a Sunni government or Shi'i government or a Kurdish government or Ba'athist regime? Or maybe we want to bring in some of the Islamic fundamentalists? How long would we have had to stay in Baghdad to keep that government in place? What would happen to the government once U.S. forces withdrew? How many casualties should the United States accept in that effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable?

I think it is vitally important for a President to know when to use military force. I think it is also very important for him to know when not to commit U.S. military force. And it's my view that the President got it right both times, that it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq.

Rove Strategy for 2006

Karl Rove speaking at the winter meeting of the Republican National Committee spelled out the strategy for Republicans to use in the 2006 campaign. It will emphasize national security and the campaign against terrorism, while criticizing Democrats for being weak liberals who will cut and run in Iraq if they come into power.

"At the core, we are dealing with two parties that have fundamentally different views on national security," Rove said. "Republicans have a post-9/11 worldview and many Democrats have a pre-9/11 worldview. That doesn't make them unpatriotic -- not at all. But it does make them wrong -- deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong."

This is the same false theme used in the 2004 Presidential campaign. The Democrats cannot allow this to be the issue again. They need to confront it directly and turn it against the Republicans. The Administration's decision to invade Iraq rather than being a response to 9/11 terrorism has actually imperiled our position in the world. We squandered the goodwill that existed after the World Trade Center attack by trying to link Iraq to terrorism. We turned friendly countries into opponents and inflamed countries that may not have liked us into mortal enemies. We used US resources totaling over $200 billion dollars and 2,200 American lives fighting the wrong war. We could have used that money to make Afghanistan a success, to capture Al Qaeda members, and to pursue terrorists. Imagine if we had invested a portion of those resources in aid to the Muslim third world, limiting the rush to suicide bombing and martyrdom.

The Democratic response needs to continually charge that Republican efforts have increased terrorism rather than stemming it, that invading Iraq and fumbling almost all efforts after the initial military success make them incapable of insuring the security of the United States.

Suicide Bombers

David Bromwich reviewed two books on terrorism in the 1-23-06 New Republic. While dismissing "Holy Terror" by Terry Eagleton, he praised "Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism" by Robert A. Pape. Pape's purpose "is to work out a strategy for eliminating the present generation of terrorists without supplying the political and imaginative soil for another generation to grow." His study of terrorist acts concludes that occupation by foreigners rather than religious zealotry is the main motivation for suicide bombers.

Terrorism, the murder of the innocent to achieve a political end, goes back at least to the Shia assassins of the twelfth century, and probably further back than that. It may occur wherever a religious or political ideal takes hold that has the power to absolve its believers of the wrong that they commit in its name. Suicide bombing is a more desperate and in some settings a more cunning adaptation of terrorism; but any terrorist is a hunted man who knows that his death may not lag far behind the deaths of his latest victims. Only a messianic politician, at the mercy of his own wildness and simplicity, could suppose it possible to conduct a worldwide purge of terrorism until one by one the guilty are subtracted and "all of the terrorists are dead."

The motives for suicide terror may be roughly divided into (1) religious fulfillment; (2) revenge; (3) founding a state; and (4) resistance to occupation. Among the seventy-one who killed themselves in the years 1995-2003, twice as many came from Muslim countries with a significant fundamentalist population as from those without it, but an Al Qaeda suicide bomber was ten times more likely to come from a country occupied by the United States than from an unoccupied country. A coercive foreign presence intensifies the injured pride, rage, and indignation that lead to suicide attacks.

President Bush believes that democracy is something every people wants, because the God of all has put a wish for democracy into every person on earth. The documentary testimony of Pape's killers suggests that what everybody wants is something cruder and less definite: a nation.

Improving Language Study in the US

As with so many Bush initiatives, what is described in glowing terms turns out to be considerably less if not the opposite of what is claimed. The following is from the 1-23-06 New Republic.

At a conference of American university presidents on January 5, Bush unveiled his National Security Language Initiative, a much-needed scheme to attract more American students to the study of "critical languages" like Arabic, Farsi, and Korean. To gauge the likely impact of the plan, let's play a little numbers game. Number of additional students who will study foreign languages on Gilman and Fulbright scholarships under the new initiative: about 350. Number of military linguists sacked between fiscal years 1994 and 2003 for being gay: 322 (see Nathaniel Frank, "Stonewalled," January 24, 2005). Amount of money designated to support critical language study in K-12 schools through the Department of Education's Foreign Language Assistance Program under the new initiative: $24 million. Amount of money requested for fiscal year 2006 to fund abstinence-only education in those same schools: $206 million--$39 million more than the year before.