The Family Farm

Farm state politicians (Republican and Democratic) love to justify Federal farm subsidies by waxing poetic about the family farmer as the backbone of the country who needs support to maintain a bucolic and economically necessary way of life. Hope this is not too shocking to mention, but once again what politicians say in public has no relation to the truth.

Large businesses and absentee owners increasingly dominate farming in the US. According to the 12/21/06 Washington Post, 7% of the total farms in the US produce 60% of total farm production. But that 7% gets 54% of the Federal subsidies. While there are still small family farms that need the subsidy to survive, most of the farm recipients are profitable before the subsidy checks show up in the mail. (Whether small family farmers, as opposed to other small business owners or workers struggling on small salaries, should be subsidized is another issue).

The impact of this distribution actually hurts small farmers rather than providing help. The business farms use their subsidies, not for farming, but to expand their holdings by purchasing small farms, thereby driving the family farmer out of business.

How this system remains sacrosanct is a mystery of present day politics. Sufficient money from agribusiness to their farm state politicians coupled with the selling of “values” as the main issue for people to vote on rather than on their economic well being may have something to do with voters not seeing reality.

Our system is set up in a way that fosters this outcome. The Senate gives disproportionate weight to farm and rural constituencies. If each Senator is presumed to represent half the population in the State he or she represents, it turns out that the Democrats represent 40 million more people than do the equal number of Republicans. Following the 2006 election Republican strength is primarily in the South and the Mid West. The House meanwhile was gerrymandered to make defeat of incumbents virtually impossible. That the Democrats won 32 more seats starting from that disadvantage magnifies the intensity of the Republican loss.

Bush has supported attempts to reduce the amount of subsidies but once the pressure from farm lobbyists intensified with threats to withdraw support for other parts of his agenda, he stopped saying or doing anything to support change.

The More Things Change

The Decider is still mulling over his options in Iraq although reports seem to indicate that Baker/Hamilton has no chance of implementation, let alone consideration. He has announced that he wants to increase the size of the armed forces. The streamlined new Army championed by Rumsfeld apparently is not up to the task of securing Iraq, although there is no rumor that he plans to ask General Shineski to come out of retirement and do what he recommended doing in 2002. The irony is that Rumsfeld was right. A small fast army is needed to fight Al Qaeda terrorist cells. Too bad we chose to go to Iraq rather than addressing the forces that are our real enemy.

He seems to be listening to Fred Kagan and Elliot Cohen, of the leading right-wing think tank AEI, who argue that establishing security is the first order of business toward victory in Iraq. Kagan wants 35,000 more troops sent to Iraq and a change in mission from training Iraqis to establishing security. This sounds like the surge option, which was just tried this summer and fall in Baghdad and other than substantially increasing the number of Americans and Iraqis killed seems to have had little affect. How this experience translates into “lets try the same approach again” ought to be explained by the administration in great detail if this is what they choose to do.

The Joint Chiefs are opposed to this increase in troops and Bush is now saying he will “listen” to them but follow his own counsel. For five years he has publicly stated that the Generals on the ground make troop decisions. Somehow I doubt that that statement was true. At best Generals who followed the company line were allowed to make recommendations, which not amazingly supported the administration. When Shineski disagreed, he was removed. Now General Abazaid, one of the few Americans who can speak Arabic and has studied Middle Eastern culture is disagreeing, his retirement is announced. Bush did not listen to advice from the Generals, the State Department, or anyone else with a different view than his or Cheney’s leading up to the Iraq invasion decision. He does not appear to have changed his approach five disastrous years later.

Two-faced Republicans

The main accomplishment of the Republican Party, a dubious one at best, is that they mastered claiming to be something that they are not, and I suspect never intended to be. They were always about grabbing power and using it to reward their most faithful followers. Unfortunately it took too long before the American public realized the scam being perpetrated, and despite gerrymandered election districts, began to throw the rascals out. Brink Lindsey, Vice President for research at the libertarian Cato Institute writing in the 12/11//06 The New Republic described how the Republican Party’s rule over the past twelve years completely contradicted their claim as the party of conservatism.

Despite the GOP's rhetorical commitment to limited government, the actual record of unified Republican rule in Washington has been an unmitigated disaster from a libertarian perspective: runaway federal spending at a clip unmatched since Lyndon Johnson; the creation of a massive new prescription-drug entitlement with hardly any thought as to how to pay for it; expansion of federal control over education through the No Child Left Behind Act; a big run-up in farm subsidies; extremist assertions of executive power under cover of fighting terrorism; and, to top it all off, an atrociously bungled war in Iraq.

This woeful record cannot simply be blamed on politicians failing to live up to their conservative principles. Conservatism itself has changed markedly in recent years, forsaking the old fusionist synthesis in favor of a new and altogether unattractive species of populism. The old formulation defined conservatism as the desire to protect traditional values from the intrusion of big government; the new one seeks to promote traditional values through the intrusion of big government. Just look at the causes that have been generating the real energy in the conservative movement of late: building walls to keep out immigrants, amending the Constitution to keep gays from marrying, and imposing sectarian beliefs on medical researchers and families struggling with end-of-life decisions.

A Day Late and a Dollar Short

That is, to be more accurate, actually four years late and $300 billion short (or whatever the unpublished cost of the Iraq adventure actually is). President Bush is now talking to experts outside his small circle of believers trying to find a policy that will improve conditions (oops sorry, win the War in Iraq.) He actually went to the State Department to talk to diplomats, who of course were frozen out of pre-invasion discussions in 2002. Now he is talking to retired generals and, gasp, academics to see if they have any ideas. However, the only thing the experts agree on is that our options, thanks to Bush’s misguided decisions, lie somewhere between bad and worse. Meanwhile, he has delayed his decision until January, despite the daily increase in American deaths (now approaching 3,000)and the unconscionable decimation of Iraqis. The supposed evaluation going on now should have been done before we started into Iraq and should have been constantly reexamined over the past four years. Based on his actions of the past six years, I believe he is still incapable of admitting how disastrously wrong his administration has been in both making decisions and carrying them out. Until that happens we are faced with two more years of the same poorly thought out ideas and horrendously executed action.

Baker-Hamilton Report

The report is published and noteworthy for its complete condemnation of Bush policy. Only Bush and Cheney continue to cling to a public posture that refuses to admit the reality of conditions in Iraq today and the foolhardiness of attacking Iraq in the first place.

The report calls for opening discussion with Iran and Syria, but Bush is reluctant to do so. How discussions could be worse then the current situation is unexplained. Alan Simpson, the former Republican Senator from Wyoming said that we talked to the Russians throughout the Cold War (remember the Hot Line on the President’s desk) so why not to our opponents today?

The main problem with the report’s conclusions is that it is centered on an Iraq army that is supposed to secure the peace. The basic reality about Iraq is that it never was a coherent country. Tired diplomats put it together in 1919 after a lengthy and lethal world war and a peace conference that tried to settle enormous European and Asian problems. No one really thought through how the disparate groups making up Iraq could coexist.

The sectarian violence that increases daily and is a civil war in all but name is the central crisis preventing success in Iraq. The Army has to be made up of groups of people who hate each other: the Shiite majority who want the power denied to it for years; the Sunni minority who don’t want to lose the power they had under Saddam; and the Kurds who prefer to be left alone managing their own affairs as they have been doing for the past 15 years. No one documents how this is ever going to work. Bush’s father understood this at the end of the Gulf War and decided that disposing Saddam would be considerably worse than keeping his brutal dictatorship in existence. Now mix in religious passion and fanaticism and just look at each day’s headlines to see the chaos that prevails.

The New Republic’s Iraq issue was filled with short articles that addressed the situation more realistically than the Hamilton-Baker report. The Anne Marie Slaughter article discussed in the last post suggests an aggressive diplomatic approach. Two other articles provide succinct proposals recommending courses of action. They are both very logical and believable – the only problem is that they absolutely contradict each other. And that is the problem. The Bush administration has created a problem that is not solvable by the American can do spirit and it is time we realize that is the case.

James Kurth, a professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College, in his New Republic article “Crush the Sunnis” argues that before leaving Iraq we must “inflict a dramatic and decisive defeat” on the Sunni insurgents or they will be encouraged to increase their attacks on us throughout the world. Iraq should be divided in two with the Kurds in the north, the Shia in the south, and the Sunnis stateless in the middle.

Kurth states the Sunni Arabs have to pay for both the dictatorship they promulgated and the insurgency they initiated. Even with Shia militias exacting vengeance, a recent poll of Sunnis showed that 90 percent of Sunnis approve of insurgent attacks on U.S. troops despite the US presence serving to mitigate the militias.

Kurth argues that in a three state solution, the Sunnis would claim they had defeated the U.S. military and would continue fighting their neighbors in the other two regions. With only two states we would provide support to them and thwart any tendency over time for the Shias to align with Iran or the Kurds to differ with Turkey.

Josef Joffe, a professor of Political Science at Stanford and the Hoover Institution, in his New Republic article “Ally With the Sunnis," argues the opposite of Kurth. The gist of his article is that our hardcore interests are menaced by Iran; it is they who have sponsored Hamas and Hezbollah, are building nuclear capacity, and have the most powerful army east of Israel. The ironic result of the Bush policy is that in eliminating Saddam, Bush eliminated the major detriment to Iran’s Middle East ambitions. Iran as a Shia state is now poised to become the great friend and protector to the majority Iraq Shiites. By threatening Syria we have pushed them into a marriage of convenience with Iran so that now both dangerous countries are aligned against the U.S.

With Iran seen as our real foe, Joffe argues that we should contain them by strengthening the Sunnis so that there is a standoff between the Sunnis, the Shia, and the Kurds. Offering the Sunnis protection splits the indigenous insurgents from the foreign ones who are only interested in contesting the U.S. This will free our troops from combating the insurgency and allow them to be positioned along the Iran and Syria borders, signaling to those two counties that they would have to attack the U.S. if they wanted to influence Iraq. This would be a fight away from urban centers where our military strength could be used in full. We could dig in for the long term, but at a cost much lower then our present turmoil.

So there it is. Two reasonably argued diametrically opposed positions. What a mess. Thomas Friedman in today’s NY Times may have the best solution, which mirrors Anne Marie Slaughter. Right now Iran and Syria have little at stake and can just watch the U.S. in its troubles, contributing as much or as little as they can get away with. But if we leave, things change dramatically for them. Refugees departing the civil war cross their borders. Money to support their Iraqi friends needs to be spent. Iran aligning with the Shiites and Syria with the Sunnis puts the two nations at odds with each other. The U.S. is not around to blame. Spillover of the chaos in Iraq is now their problem. Sounds a bit better then “stay the course.”

Iraq Strategy Change

With the Baker-Hamilton report due tomorrow, the Rumsfeld memo (21 options, no analysis, no recommendation – I guess he figured if one of them was adopted he could claim credit), and everyone else chiming in with recommendations, this seems to be the time to assess the alternatives available in Iraq. The failed policy foisted on us by the Bush administration and the outright weakening of this country are enormous problems. Even though I believe the decision to invade Iraq borders on the criminal we are now there and need to start from that fact and its impact on us today. The essential question is whether our continued presence mitigates the present civil war or contributes to the violence.

The New Republic devoted its Nov. 27, 2006 to a series of articles suggesting policy changes. The dean of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and co-director of the Princeton Project on National Security, Anne Marie Slaughter, wrote a practical essay that ought to be factored into the deliberations to come. Of course the Decider keeps making public statements about how he will not consider changes that prevent our "winning" and completing the “mission” (without defining either term) so who knows if any change will be made.

Force Everyone to the Table

It's time to make a virtue of necessity in Iraq. The country is sliding into full-blown civil war. The government is weak and getting weaker by the day; it also shows little willingness to make the minimum commitments necessary for stability--amending the constitution to guarantee Sunnis their share of national oil revenue, allowing lower-level Baathist officials to be rehabilitated, and disarming the militias.

The Bush administration and many Democrats have been strenuously resisting these conclusions. But they may, in fact, be our most valuable diplomatic asset. If we accept this reality and plan accordingly, suddenly the tables turn. If we pull out, Iran has a civil war on its borders, as do Syria and Saudi Arabia. All have good reasons to fear this scenario. Suddenly, instead of the United States being tied down in Iraq and thus unable to play a broader role in the region, Iran would find itself tied down in Iraq and thus unable to play a broader role in the region, while the United States could go back to being a regional power broker. Syria would likely see an increased flow of refugees as chaos in Iraq worsened. Saudi Arabia would need to contend with the threat posed by Iranian influence among Iraqi Shia. And all three would have to worry about the possibility of Al Qaeda gaining a permanent foothold in Iraq.

As for the warring parties within Iraq, they, too, have plenty of reason to fear a U.S. withdrawal. If we leave, the Shia will have to engage in all-out civil war without the protection of 150,000 U.S. troops. That is a decidedly worse situation than waging a covert civil war under the protection of U.S. forces--which is what the Shia are doing now. The Sunni insurgents will lose the propaganda value of attacking a foreign occupier and will have to recognize that, with U.S. troops gone, Iran would be free to use its oil riches to back the Shia to the hilt. As a result, Sunni forces would face the equivalent of Hezbollah on steroids. And the Kurds, much as they would like formal partition granting them statehood in everything but name, will understand that, without U.S. troops, places like Kirkuk will become bloody battlefields. Equally important, Turkey will no longer be deterred from sending in troops to chase alleged Kurdish terrorists.

In other words, the terrible conditions in Iraq--and the likelihood these conditions would worsen if we left--ultimately could be what allows us to save the country. The United States should announce that we are pulling out unless all parties within and outside Iraq come to the table and hammer out an enforceable peace settlement. Our commitment to withdrawing is newly credible, thanks to the recent midterm elections and the installation of a new secretary of defense. Whatever positive recommendations come out of the Baker-Hamilton Commission, the administration should make clear that phased withdrawal is the alternative--and be prepared to follow through.

Against this backdrop, we and the European Union--and possibly the Russians, although Russia has a strong incentive to keep the entire Middle East on a low boil in order to maintain high oil prices--should organize an Iraqi peace conference, inviting representatives of the Shia, Kurdish, and Sunni communities within Iraq, as well as Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and some of the Gulf states. Plenty of diplomatic ground will have to be plowed first, but we should be able to convene a conference by January. The most important task for the United States is to make unequivocally clear that this is the last chance for all parties to negotiate while U.S. troops are still in Iraq.

An agreement that will stick, however, requires more than undesirable alternatives. We need real carrots, big enough to convince armed camps to disarm and to cooperate in the long, slow slog of rebuilding Iraq. The first could be a Saudi-financed public-works and jobs program for Iraqi civilians. The militia bosses who are offering protection today could be handing out jobs and construction contracts instead. Second would be an amended constitution that guarantees more regional autonomy for different areas within Iraq, combined with a strong enough central government to secure and disburse oil revenue. Third is a regional security forum that would be sponsored by the United States and the European Union to provide a structured and ongoing opportunity for all participants, including Iran and Syria, to negotiate mutual security assurances. Fourth is an EU offer to Iran to help develop its gas fields as an alternative to Russian energy supplies. And fifth would be an offer of more U.S. troops to secure and reconstruct Baghdad--for a defined time period and only if the peace agreement holds.

At the same time, the United States should engage other actors within Iraq who have been largely ignored, such as leaders of tribes with many mixed Sunni-Shia marriages and professional associations of doctors and lawyers that could unite Iraqis based on common careers rather than creeds. As American political scientists have long known, a large part of the stability of any representative government depends on cross-cutting cleavages, hampering the formation of extremist blocs. If we can somehow stop the violence, Iraq still, even now, has the building blocks of a diverse, law-abiding, prosperous society.

And if it doesn't work? If Iraq's various communities and neighbors refuse to cooperate with such a conference? Then we must follow through on our threat to withdraw--more or less. A humanitarian option just short of immediate withdrawal would be to allow as many Iraqi civilians as possible to move to safety behind U.S. troops--neighborhood by neighborhood in Baghdad and province by province in other parts of the country. This would require some U.S. troops to stay in Iraq, at least until the Iraqi army is strong enough to protect these areas. We might also leave enough troops on the borders of Kurdistan and any other area we can realistically protect to create safe routes for fleeing civilians.

This is a strategically unattractive and morally wrenching scenario. But it need not come to pass. Instead of insisting that U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces are making progress, we might try acknowledging just how bad things are. Iraqis and their neighbors would then take seriously our threat to leave. Perhaps by recognizing reality in Iraq, we will manage to avoid making things worse--and with luck, humility, and hard work, we might just manage to make them better.