One of the biggest problems facing America today is Senate Minority leader Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell. Speaker of the House John Boehner is also a problem, but he legitimately has a Republican majority in the House. McConnell does not have a majority but through misuse of the the filibuster, he has been able to require 60 votes to pass any meaningful legislation, and since the Democrats do not have 60 votes, he has been able to block any meaningful work by the Senate. McConnell was a draft dodger during the Vietnam War, apparently escaping service because his mentor, Sen. John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky, intervened on his behalf with his draft board or with the Army. If McConnell loved America he would have answered his country's call during war, and he would be willing to work to salvage his country's dire fiscal situation.
The Republicans' veto power in the Senate has been particularly harmful in dealing with the country's financial crisis, and is a major concern in the run-up to the "fiscal cliff" of automatic budget cuts at the end of the year. On fiscal issues, the Republicans and the Democrats are at loggerheads, and there appears to be no path to a bipartisan solution or to one-party rule. Meanwhile, the country continues to run up huge budget deficits. Clinton's balanced budgets were due in large part to pressure from Newt Gingrich and his Republican majority, but today a similar scenario seems impossible. The Republicans blame Obama, and he deserves some of it, but I think the main responsibility for the deadlock lies with the Republicans.
McConnell famously said in October 2010, "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for Obama to be a one-term president." It would appear that the Republicans are ready to allow terrible things to happen to the US in order to defeat Obama. Partisanship trumps patriotism In that case, the Republicans appear to unlikely to act responsibly when we hit the "fiscal cliff." Even now, by refusing to compromise on raising taxes along with budget cuts, the deficit and the national debt just get bigger.
A starting point for a solution already exists in the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles report. Obama is partly responsible for not pushing harder to do something with the report, but the House and the Senate are also responsible. The most intransigent position is the Republican opposition to any tax increases. It has made negotiation impossible.
I don't personally know how to handle total intransigence. I encountered it at the State Department in dealing with Reagan's Defense Department. Richard Perle and his office were usually opposed to whatever we at State were trying to do regarding stopping missile proliferation. They wanted an absolute guarantee from other nations on the issue, i.e., the US had to be absolutely sure that other nations would not violate the agreement, but this is impossible when dealing with human beings or other nations. We have laws against murder, but people still commit murder. We have laws against speeding, but people still speed. Refusing to outlaw murder because murder will still happen seems silly to me, but that was the Republican position. I couldn't figure out how to deal with it. Although some other people eventually got a Missile Technology Control Regime agreement after I quit working on it because I was assigned to the embassy in Bangkok, Thailand. I'm guessing they somehow figured out how to cut Richard Perle out of the loop. But he showed how successful complete intransigence can be in stopping the government from working.
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Tour at US Embassy in Rome
My short tour as head of the Science Section at the American Embassy in Rome was not very pleasant.
My previous tour as Science Counselor at the embassy in Warsaw was under a cloud because Washington under the Gingrich Republican Congress had cut off funding for science cooperation that was supposed to go on for several more years. An unexpected call from Washington offered me the job in Rome.
When I arrived in Rome, the State Department was being sued by several environmental groups upset at how the Italians were fishing for swordfish. The United Nations had put a limit on how long Italian driftnets could be, and these groups sued the State Department to force it to enforce the UN mandate. The Justice Department argued the case that the State Department did not need court oversight, but lost. At the time I was not clear what leverage the environmental groups had on the State Department, but as this court decision shows, the leverage was Italian exports to the US. The environmental groups would force the Commerce Department to withdraw its certification of Italian exports of fish to the US unless Italy was in compliance with the UN resolution. As a result, a Federal judge ended up in charge of US fishery policy in Italy.
Who really ended up in charge of American fishery policy toward Italy was Greenpeace Italy. The environmental groups could decide whether any US agreement with Italy on driftnets warranted allowing the Commerce Department decision to stand. Any US proposal would be run by the US environmental groups; they would then ask Greenpeace Italy for its recommendation before replying to the court. The Greenpeace Italy swordfish staff was basically one person who spent full time monitoring swordfish fishing boat, and who always smelled strongly of fish when we met with him. The court decision cites Greenpeace reports in several places in its decision.
We had a huge meeting in Rome with many representatives of interested parties in the US and Italy. They came to a resolution, negotiated mainly by my assistant, who had handled fishery matters during a previous tour in Venezuela, and a staff assistant to the Italian director of the fishery office of the Italian Agriculture Ministry. Under the agreement, the Italian Agriculture Ministry agreed to toughen up its enforcement practices. A few months later, however, the Agriculture Minister requested a meeting with the Ambassador on the matter. He said that because his ministry's enforcement officers had stepped up their efforts against illegal driftnet use, the Italian fishermen in Sicily, where most of them were located, had taken out hit contracts with the Mafia on the ministry's enforcement personnel. The Minister felt that some of his employees were in genuine danger and requested that the agreement be watered down somewhat. Meanwhile, other fishermen were demonstrating outside the Agriculture Ministry in downtown Rome and creating huge traffic jams. My assistant who had negotiated the agreement was sick, and I had to go with the Ambassador to meet with the Minister. The Ambassador was very upset when I told him that he did not have much negotiating room because any change would have to be approved by a federal judge, which meant essentially that it would have to be approved by Greenpeace Italy. As a result, my last full day on the job in the Foreign Service was spent on the telephone negotiating some "happy-to-glad" changes in the language of the agreement and getting preliminary approval from Washington .
I had forgotten the terms of the agreement, but they were summarized in the court opinion as:
First, Italy announced its intention to submit a voluntary rationalization and conversion plan to provide for the cancellation of all driftnet fishing licenses, accompanied by a surrender of the driftnets, between 1997 and 1999.
Second, Italy committed to introduce a ban on the use of Sardinian ports by driftnet vessels from other ports. The Sardinian port ban subsequently passed.
Third, Italy announced its intention to pass a law with an escalation of sanctions for fishing with illegal driftnets.
This appears to be one of the decisions that affected our office's work; however, the date of the decision is well after I had already retired from the Foreign Service.
A 2008 study of the driftnet problem showed that not much had changed over the 10 years following my retirement.
My previous tour as Science Counselor at the embassy in Warsaw was under a cloud because Washington under the Gingrich Republican Congress had cut off funding for science cooperation that was supposed to go on for several more years. An unexpected call from Washington offered me the job in Rome.
When I arrived in Rome, the State Department was being sued by several environmental groups upset at how the Italians were fishing for swordfish. The United Nations had put a limit on how long Italian driftnets could be, and these groups sued the State Department to force it to enforce the UN mandate. The Justice Department argued the case that the State Department did not need court oversight, but lost. At the time I was not clear what leverage the environmental groups had on the State Department, but as this court decision shows, the leverage was Italian exports to the US. The environmental groups would force the Commerce Department to withdraw its certification of Italian exports of fish to the US unless Italy was in compliance with the UN resolution. As a result, a Federal judge ended up in charge of US fishery policy in Italy.
Who really ended up in charge of American fishery policy toward Italy was Greenpeace Italy. The environmental groups could decide whether any US agreement with Italy on driftnets warranted allowing the Commerce Department decision to stand. Any US proposal would be run by the US environmental groups; they would then ask Greenpeace Italy for its recommendation before replying to the court. The Greenpeace Italy swordfish staff was basically one person who spent full time monitoring swordfish fishing boat, and who always smelled strongly of fish when we met with him. The court decision cites Greenpeace reports in several places in its decision.
We had a huge meeting in Rome with many representatives of interested parties in the US and Italy. They came to a resolution, negotiated mainly by my assistant, who had handled fishery matters during a previous tour in Venezuela, and a staff assistant to the Italian director of the fishery office of the Italian Agriculture Ministry. Under the agreement, the Italian Agriculture Ministry agreed to toughen up its enforcement practices. A few months later, however, the Agriculture Minister requested a meeting with the Ambassador on the matter. He said that because his ministry's enforcement officers had stepped up their efforts against illegal driftnet use, the Italian fishermen in Sicily, where most of them were located, had taken out hit contracts with the Mafia on the ministry's enforcement personnel. The Minister felt that some of his employees were in genuine danger and requested that the agreement be watered down somewhat. Meanwhile, other fishermen were demonstrating outside the Agriculture Ministry in downtown Rome and creating huge traffic jams. My assistant who had negotiated the agreement was sick, and I had to go with the Ambassador to meet with the Minister. The Ambassador was very upset when I told him that he did not have much negotiating room because any change would have to be approved by a federal judge, which meant essentially that it would have to be approved by Greenpeace Italy. As a result, my last full day on the job in the Foreign Service was spent on the telephone negotiating some "happy-to-glad" changes in the language of the agreement and getting preliminary approval from Washington .
I had forgotten the terms of the agreement, but they were summarized in the court opinion as:
First, Italy announced its intention to submit a voluntary rationalization and conversion plan to provide for the cancellation of all driftnet fishing licenses, accompanied by a surrender of the driftnets, between 1997 and 1999.
Second, Italy committed to introduce a ban on the use of Sardinian ports by driftnet vessels from other ports. The Sardinian port ban subsequently passed.
Third, Italy announced its intention to pass a law with an escalation of sanctions for fishing with illegal driftnets.
This appears to be one of the decisions that affected our office's work; however, the date of the decision is well after I had already retired from the Foreign Service.
A 2008 study of the driftnet problem showed that not much had changed over the 10 years following my retirement.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Punishing America for Fareed's Mistake
I saw on the CNN summary for Fareed Zakaria's GPS show last Sunday that he had planned to have Gen. Colin Powell talk about Syria and other international issues. The NRA and the Republicans succeeded in muffling a reasonable voice on foreign policy by putting Fareed off the air for one paragraph that may have accidentally been plagiarized. The show was dropped and apparently will be off the air for at least a month. Cancelling his show is sort of like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Candy Crowley is not bad, but by focusing on politics, she is caught up in a bunch of nasty people calling each other nasty names, while important stuff is going on overseas -- Syria, Iran, the Euro crisis -- but is not being covered by anybody, now that Fareed is barred from TV. I hope CNN gets whatever it was they wanted from Karl Rove, maybe $100 million more in campaign ads for the Republicans. Is Time-Warner's grovelling to the Republican establishment less culpable than Fareed's paragraph?
Swift Boats Are Back
The Republicans have a new anti-Obama attack group, the Special Operations Opsec Education Fund, according to Reuters and the New York Times. This is basically the same idea as the Swift Boat campaign waged by George W. Bush against Sen. John Kerry during his Presidential campaign. The Swift Boat campaign vilified all Vietnam veterans by vilifying Kerry's military service, while the new Opsec campaign is aimed more specifically at Obama as Commander-in-Chief because he managed to kill Osama bin Laden, which the incompetent, cowardly Republicans had failed to do while George W. Bush was Commander-in-Chief.
If the Republicans wanted to make sure that I, a Vietnam veteran, do not support Romney (or any other Republican) this is the way to do it. It's probably coincidental, but both groups are primarily Navy veterans, the Swift boat veterans from Vietnam, and now the Navy seals from the bin Laden attack. It makes me inclined to think that Navy officers are less patriotic than officers from other services, although that is probably not justified on the basis of the political actions of a handful of Navy personnel. However, Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall set the standard during World War II and the years following it when he served as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense, when he would not vote for any candidate because it might make it more difficult for him to serve the man he had not supported if he was elected. Certainly soldiers should be allowed to vote, and retired officers should be allowed to campaign, but I think it is questionable when they attack the leadership of the country for being unpatriotic. I think that makes them unpatriotic. It's okay to attack the policies, but not to attack the Commander-in-Chief for disloyalty. Do they want to try him for treason?
The Republicans pursued two disastrous wars, Iraq and Afghanistan, during which they failed to capture or kill bin Laden. Now they try to turn Obama's success in doing what they failed to do, against him. Go back and look at what George W. Bush said and did when we found Saddam Hussein, who was not nearly as important an enemy of the United States as Osama bin Laden. Republicans can brag, too. What about "Mission Accomplished" blazoned across an aircraft carrier when the real Iraq war was just starting. Was George W. Bush a traitor? I think not; he was trying his best, but as a cowardly Vietnam draft dodger, he just didn't have it in him to fight a war well.
If the Republicans wanted to make sure that I, a Vietnam veteran, do not support Romney (or any other Republican) this is the way to do it. It's probably coincidental, but both groups are primarily Navy veterans, the Swift boat veterans from Vietnam, and now the Navy seals from the bin Laden attack. It makes me inclined to think that Navy officers are less patriotic than officers from other services, although that is probably not justified on the basis of the political actions of a handful of Navy personnel. However, Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall set the standard during World War II and the years following it when he served as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense, when he would not vote for any candidate because it might make it more difficult for him to serve the man he had not supported if he was elected. Certainly soldiers should be allowed to vote, and retired officers should be allowed to campaign, but I think it is questionable when they attack the leadership of the country for being unpatriotic. I think that makes them unpatriotic. It's okay to attack the policies, but not to attack the Commander-in-Chief for disloyalty. Do they want to try him for treason?
The Republicans pursued two disastrous wars, Iraq and Afghanistan, during which they failed to capture or kill bin Laden. Now they try to turn Obama's success in doing what they failed to do, against him. Go back and look at what George W. Bush said and did when we found Saddam Hussein, who was not nearly as important an enemy of the United States as Osama bin Laden. Republicans can brag, too. What about "Mission Accomplished" blazoned across an aircraft carrier when the real Iraq war was just starting. Was George W. Bush a traitor? I think not; he was trying his best, but as a cowardly Vietnam draft dodger, he just didn't have it in him to fight a war well.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)