Lula, Celso Amorim and Me

Actually there's nothing about Lula and me, but I did have a run-in with his Foreign Minister, Celso Amorim. While I was the science officer at the US embassy in Brasilia, the US proposed a high level science exchange. At that time, Celso Amorim was the foreign policy advisor assigned to the Science Ministry. The Science Minister and I actually had a good working relationship. Things were going along relatively smoothly until Celso Amorim got involved. He was a real Brazilian nationalist, and was very suspicious that the US had some nefarious intention for promoting the cooperation. Brazil has been suspicious of US scientific cooperation for many years, since an American discovered the huge mountain of iron ore in Brazil that became Vale do Rio Doce, now one of the world's biggest iron producers.

When Celso Amorim became involved, the negotiations for the joint scientific meeting went from being cordial to adversarial. I finally felt that I had hit a dead end and asked the ambassador's office for some help. Presumably somebody from high up in Itamaraty, the Foreign Ministry, told Celso to be more cooperative, and we eventually reached agreement on the meeting. Celso and Lula probably share a Brazilian nationalism which was probably a factor in Brazil's recent involvement in Iran's offer to ship some enriched uranium to Turkey in return for more highly enriched uranium for its research reactor.

Brazil no doubt sympathizes with Iran because it faced a similar problem created by the United States. Back in the 1970s, Brazil bought a nuclear reactor from Westinghouse in the US. Just before the reactor was finished, then Senator John Glenn passed a law that prevented the US from supplying fuel for the reactor unless Brazil agreed to "full scope safeguards" under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which had not been part of the original agreement. Brazil was then a party to the Tlatelolco Treaty on peaceful uses of nuclear energy in Latin America, but not the NPT, which it considered discriminatory because of the different ways it treated nuclear and non-nuclear countries. When the US changed the terms of the sale, Brazil balked. It then had a billion dollar reactor, and no fuel for it. It embarked on a program to develop a fuel cycle to produce its own reactor fuel, which could have enabled it to produce weapons grade uranium, placing it in much the same situation Iran is today. The Brazilian situation was defused (I would like to think) partly due to my efforts while science officer there. But no doubt the Brazilians, including Celso Amorim who was in Itamarty at the time, have a keen appreciation for Iran's situation.

Draft Coming Back?

Today on "Morning Joe" both Joe Scarborough and John Meacham said they thought it might be worthwhile bringing back the draft because the people in power have no concern about sending people about whom they know nothing to Afghanistan. Hooray! The other side of it is that the military needs some people who would not otherwise serve in it. The military likes the current volunteer military, because by and large they are all "lifers," and thus tend to think alike. We need some people in the military who don't think like soldiers.

Elena Kagan is getting critized for keeping military recruiters out of Harvard Law School, but nobody at Harvard, much less Harvard Law School, is really interested in serving in the military. Probably nobody from a family with an income of more that $100,000 or maybe $200,000 is interested, except for a few individuals who will always want some excitement, and a very few who will feel some call of patriotism. It's not Kagan, it's America. How many of Sen. Sessions' affluent constituents have served in battle zones in the last ten years? Probably a lot of Alabamians, but probably not very many middle class and up Alabamians.

Supreme Court Doesn't Believe in Rule of Law

The Supreme Court decision striking down Chicago's restrictions on handguns shows that it lacks confidence in the rule of law. It believes that the legal system of police and courts cannot protect citizens from bodily harm. Thus, each person needs to have a gun. It's sad when a court doesn't believe that the law functions.

McChrystal's Firing Not Black or White

As usual, a Financial Times columnist has one of the best insights into the news. Christopher Caldwell correctly says that the McChrystal episode is more like Gen. Patton's press problems than McArthur's. McChrystal was not insubordinate or disloyal. He was too much soldier and not enough politician.

I'm unhappy with McChrystal for his role in the Pat Tillman friendly fire cover-up. But I suspect that his special forces were largely responsible for eliminating much of al-Qaeda in Iraq and producing whatever "victory" we had there. He was just a good man doing his job. Perhaps given his "black" background, he got promoted beyond his competency level. Maybe he should never have been more than a colonel or brigadier general running relatively small teams of exceptionally brave men. And it's not clear that his "black" tactics would have worked as a strategy in Afghanistan. But he was loyal to his country and his superiors. His staff may have spoken improperly, but he was not insubordinate. He did not refuse to carry out any order that I'm aware of. As a veteran, not a particularly brave one but one nevertheless, I am worried that a lot of cowardly wusses in the press screamed for his head, and they got it. They, like most Americans today, have little idea what it means to serve this country. We should restore the draft.