A Letter to My Congressional Representatives on War in Iraq and Syria

Sen. Ron Wyden, Sen. Jeff Merkley, Rep. Suzanne Bonamici,

In a September 10, 2014 speech President Obama outlined his strategy for combating ISIL which involves expanding airstrikes within Iraq and into Syria and providing military assistance to the Syrian opposition. I urge you to fight for a Congressional authorization vote on military action and then to vote against such authorization. Further military involvement in Iraq and Syria will only provide more fuel for death and destruction in the Middle East. The President must not be allowed wage war without the approval of Congress.

Further airstrikes within Iraq will serve only to embolden ISIL. It is important to note that ISIL’s rapid expansion within Iraq is a poisonous byproduct of our foreign policy. In a July 17, 2014 TomDispatch/Truthout blogpost, for instance, reporter Dahr Jamail recalled how the group’s ominous black flags were flown during a March 2013 protest against the sectarian Maliki administration that we supported until August of this year. The Maliki administration has been accused of using its security forces to crush democratic protests and arbitrarily arrest innocent Sunnis who are then tortured and raped repeatedly. ISIL was able to expand so rapidly within Iraq because it exploited the anger of Sunnis who saw Maliki’s government, our client regime, as an enemy of their faith. Further airstrikes within Iraq will only allow ISIL to claim in its propaganda that we have declared war on the Sunni sect.

Airstrikes within Syria and support for the so-called “moderate” opposition is unwise as well as it will only prolong the country’s bloody civil war. It is important to note that the rebels we are currently arming are not “moderate” at all. The beheading of Steven Sotloff, which Obama has exploited to rally more support for the “moderate” rebels, only occurred because those same “moderate” rebels sold information about his whereabouts to ISIL. The Free Syrian Army has also been documented openly cooperating with ISIL in Lebanon. Furthermore, Joshua Landis’ analysis of propaganda released by the Army of Islam, cited as a “moderate” group by US ambassador Robert Ford, revealed that the group uses extremely racist and sectarian rhetoric that deflates any pretensions of being moderate. Assad has maintained support among Syria’s ruling Alawite minority by exploiting the fear of genocide should Islamic rebels overthrow the government. Providing support for the radical Islamists and expanding air strikes into Syria will only allow Assad to further exploit external threats when arguing for his legitimacy as head of state.

Regardless of whether we defeat ISIL, the seeds of the next insurgency are already being sown through our support for the mislabeled “moderates.” The way to prevent the spread of militancy in the Middle East can be found in the following words by Noam Chomsky: “Everyone’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s really an easy way. Stop participating in it.” Funneling arms into conflict regions serves only to give militant groups the capacity to grow. Weapons that we have provided to the Free Syrian Army, for instance, have ended up in the hands of ISIL. The flow of arms is under our control as the world’s largest weapons supplier and, by stymieing that flow, we can stop the growth of militancy. We also need to reconsider the alliances that we forge in the region, particularly with Saudi Arabia. Congressmen who are familiar with the “Finding, Discussion and Narrative Regarding Certain Sensitive National Security Matters” chapter that was excised from the Congressional Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks have claimed that it suggests the Saudi government’s complicity in the attacks. The Saudi government is also responsible for the spread of Wahhabism, the extremely socially conservative Islamic sect that breeds much of the militancy in the Middle East.

I understand that you may be compelled by humanitarian impulses to allow for military intervention in Iraq and Syria. But there is no shame in doing nothing if doing “something” only creates more chaos. 

A Letter to My Congressional Representatives on the Syrian War Resolution

Sen. Ron Wyden, Sen. Jeff Merkley, Rep. Suzanne Bonamici,

In the coming days, you will be presented with a resolution proposing military action against Syria. I urge you to vote against it. The matter of who was responsible for the recent chemical weapons attacks is still unresolved, and, even if it is firmly established that the Syrian government was responsible, a military strike will not reduce the level of violence in the region.

Concerning responsibility for the chemical weapons attacks, no ironclad evidence has been presented indicating that the Syrian government carried them out. All of the evidence presented by the Obama administration has been strictly circumstantial in nature (or, worse yet, rooted in “social media reports”), and the administration has withheld from scrutiny the evidence behind its most extraordinary claims. The unclassified intelligence report released on August 30^th, for instance, claims that communications involving a senior Syrian official were intercepted, but no transcripts are provided.

The Obama administration also denies the possibility of rebels having carried out the attack despite evidence to the contrary. A recent MintPress article by Dale Gavlak and Yahya Ababneh, for instance, compiles interviews with rebels, their family members, and residents of Ghouta indicating that the attacks may have been carried out by rebels who used weapons provided by the intelligence chief of Saudi Arabia, Prince Bandar bin Sultan.

Carla Del Ponte, a leading member of the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, has also been on record saying that there were “strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof” that the rebels had carried out previous chemical weapons attacks.

We have yet to be presented with incontrovertible evidence indicating the Syrian government’s responsibility for the attacks, and we have not fully considered evidence indicating that the rebels may have been responsible. Even if evidence were to arise firmly establishing the government’s responsibility, however, we should not respond with military action because doing so will not help resolve the situation in any way.

A strike carried out with the intent of limiting the Syrian government’s ability to carry out chemical attacks will prove to be highly problematic. Jonathan Marcus, a BBC diplomatic correspondent, has observed that much of Syria’s chemical weapons complex is “reasonably close to populated areas,” and that attacking such sites could “open up chemical weapons stocks to the air, disperse them over a large area, and potentially cause large numbers of civilian casualties.”

If the strike is to be carried out with the intent of turning the tide of war against the Assad regime, that too will prove highly problematic because the civil war in Syria is a bloody and protracted conflict with many outside players casting their influence. If we influence the conflict more overtly through a military strike, powers favoring Assad will follow suit, leading only to a further escalation of violence in the region.

Instead of pursuing a military strike, we should encourage a diplomatic settlement between the Syrian government and the rebels. Allies of both sides in the international community should withdraw arms support and then focus on bringing the rebels and the government to the negotiating table via a ceasefire agreement. Any other course of action will only lead to more death and destruction in Syria. 

The Ultimate Exercise in Masochism: Jimbo Watches The Second Presidential Debate

I would like to preface this post by saying that before you read this or any other post discussing the presidential debates, you should read this brief Gawker post about the leaked 21-page memo revealing the agreement between the two parties over the rules of the debates. It’s quite revealing.

The purpose of this post is to examine the similarities between Obama and Romney on some of the core systemic issues that will define the US’ future course. There are, of course, notable differences between the two on social issues such as gay marriage, abortion, and gun control, but I believe that differences on those issues are amplified to distract voters from the two parties’ similarities on core systemic issues..

A Different Set of Rules for Folks at the Top

Obama tries to differentiate himself from Romney early on in the debate by saying the following:

Governor Romney doesn't have a five-point plan. He has a one-point plan. And that plan is to make sure that folks at the top play by a different set of rules. That's been his philosophy in the private sector, that's been his philosophy as governor, that's been his philosophy as a presidential candidate.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Romney is exactly what Obama claims him to be. Romney is a corporatist stooge who will make sure that “folks at the top play by a different set of rules.” The point, however, is only worth making if Obama can demonstrate that he, in contrast to Romney, won’t allow folks at the top to play by a different set of rules. When you examine Obama’s record, the facts are plainly not in his favor.

A May Newsweek article titled, “Why Can't Obama Bring Wall Street to Justice?” notes that financial-fraud prosecutions under Obama’s Department of Justice are at 20-year lows despite the fact that Wall Street executives had just recently perpetrated the most massive and widespread fraud in human history. Prosecutions, in fact, are “just one third of what they were during the Clinton administration.” An ex-government regulator observes in an interview for the article, “There hasn't been any serious investigation of any of the large financial entities by the Justice Department, which includes the FBI.”

Wall Street executives acting in violation of the law and not being punished for it sounds an awful lot like “folks at the top [playing] by a different set of rules” to me. Under Obama, the folks at Wall Street have been able to craft the rules in their favor. The 1% helped finance Obama’s 2008 campaign and in return, Obama appointed Eric Holder as the head of the Department of Justice. As the Newsweek article mentioned above notes, Holder is a former partner at the law firm Covington & Burling. Covington has “an elite white-collar defense unit” and some of its major clients include names such as Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Deutsche Bank.

And let’s not forget that under the Obama administration, no Bush-era officials have been prosecuted for their roles in starting a war based on lies, enacting a worldwide torture regime, and eavesdropping on Americans without warrants.

Given this set of facts, one can only conclude that President Obama’s philosophy as president has been to make sure that folks at the top play by a different set of rules. In that regard, both candidates are indistinguishable.

Balancing the Budget

Both candidates also stress the importance of balancing the federal budget throughout the debate. Obama describes it as “a moral obligation to the next generation” and Romney warns at one point that not doing so would “[put] us on the road to Greece.”

Their devotion to balancing the budget at this time is entirely wrongheaded. Job growth is sluggish at this time because the US is currently in the midst of a balance sheet recession, a typical by-product of financial crises. During the bubble years of the 00s, economic activity was primarily debt-fuelled, with the private sector (businesses and consumers) accumulating massive levels of debt with the help of easy access to credit. When the mortgage bubble finally popped in late 2007, the credit markets dried up, and the private sector could no longer fuel economic activity through borrowing. Since then, the private sector has been focused on deleveraging, i.e. relieving their balance sheets of their debt obligations.

Deleveraging is necessary, but it comes at the expense of economic activity. When consumers and businesses are paying off their loans, they are not spending or investing, which in turn reduces aggregate demand, the total amount of demand for goods and services in the economy. When total demand for goods and services is low, businesses have less incentive to provide those goods and services, so fewer people are hired, and thus recessions are perpetuated. But don’t just take my word for it.

From the Wall Street Journal:

The main reason U.S. companies are reluctant to step up hiring is scant demand, rather than uncertainty over government policies, according to a majority of economists in a new Wall Street Journal survey.

Aggregate demand is calculated as follows:

AD = C + I + G + NX

C = consumer spending

I = investment (what businesses spend to acquire land, buildings, or equipment, or to build up inventory)

G = government spending

NX = net exports

During times of deleveraging, C and I cannot fuel aggregate demand. NX obviously cannot fuel aggregate demand because the US has notoriously run large trade deficits for quite a while. The only option left for picking up the slack in aggregate demand is government spending. In other words, the federal government should be engaging in more deficit spending. When the government runs a deficit, the private sector can run a surplus, which accelerates the deleveraging process and will eventually bring back us the path to robust job growth fuelled by consumer spending and private investment. The charts don’t lie:

Source: MacroBusiness

When Obama and Romney say that they want to balance the budget through spending cuts, what they’re saying unwittingly is that they want to keep the recession going. Government lay-offs at the state and local level have been a huge drag on the recovery.

If balancing the budget is actually counterproductive to bringing about a recovery, what could be the true purpose of this deficit hysteria? The answer is that both parties want to tear apart the social contract that built a viable middle class in this country. Spreading fear about current deficits allows politicians from both parties to convince the public of the need to cut Social Security and Medicare today. Let’s not forget that during the first presidential debate, Obama had to admit, “on Social Security, we’ve got a somewhat similar position.” By the way, those two programs, contrary to conventional wisdom, are NOT going bankrupt and don’t face any problems with funding shortfalls for a long while.

A couple more points on this topic:

(1) Earlier, I said that Romney warned that not reducing our deficits would put us “on the road to Greece.” Romney, as a candidate who prides himself on being a businessman, should be ashamed of himself for not recognizing a fundamental economic difference between the US and EU nations such as Greece. Greece, as a member of the Eurozone, has its public debt denominated in Euros, a currency that it does not control. Paying off the national debt, therefore, is a concern for Greece. The US federal government, on the other hand, is a currency sovereign, meaning that it issues its own currency. For debts denominated in their own currency, currency sovereign states have an unlimited borrowing capacity. They cannot default except for political reasons, such as last year’s debt ceiling debate. Beyond Republicans and Democrats engaging in political theater, the US doesn’t have to worry about paying off the national debt because it can literally create money. Of course, this isn’t without consequence. Inflation can become a concern for irresponsible currency sovereigns. But the important point to be made here is that the reality of currency sovereignty means that the federal government has much more policy flexibility than Romney lets on.

(2) Obama at one point, pines for the days of the Clinton administration when higher tax rates “took us from deficits to surplus.” In reality, the budget surpluses of the final Clinton years were awful for the US economy. Look back at the chart I showed earlier. There is an inverse relationship between public and private sector balances. When the public sector runs a surplus, the private sector will likely run a deficit. What the Clinton surpluses really signaled was the beginning of the household debt crisis from which our economy is still reeling.

Policies Focused on the Top Doing Very Well

Later in the debate, Obama tries again to differentiate himself from Bush (and, by party association, Romney) by saying:

“[W]e had been digging our way out of policies that were misplaced and focused on the top doing very well and middle class folks not doing well.”

Again, Obama is right to describe the Republican mindset in this manner. But, again, the point is only worth being made if Obama can demonstrate that he is different. And, again, when you examine Obama’s record, the facts are not in his favor.

Let’s briefly examine who Obama has left in charge of our government:

·         Attorney General – Eric Holder, who as I mentioned earlier, was a former partner at a law firm that had major Wall Street clients

·         Treasury Secretary - Timothy Geithner, who was quite passive when LIBOR manipulations were brought to his attention during his tenure as head of the New York Fed, who facilitated a secretive bailout program that benefits Wall Street at Main Street’s expense, and who keeps Wall Street on speed dial.

·         Fed Chairman – Ben Bernanke (a Bush appointee, yes, but he was re-nominated by Obama in 2010), who in his academic career helped soothe worries about the financial market’s risk-taking behavior, claiming in a 2004 speech that we had achieved a “Great Moderation” in business cycle volatility.

·         Director of National Economic Council (2009-10) – Larry Summers, Clinton-era Treasury Secretary who pushed for the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and who killed efforts to regulate derivatives markets during the late 90s.

·         Chief of Staff (2009-10) – Rahm Emmanuel, a corporatist Blue Dog Democrat who recently made headlines for his efforts as Chicago mayor to screw over the teachers union.  

·         Chief of Staff (2011-January 2012) – Bill Daley, former Midwest chairman of JPMorgan Chase

That’s a pretty damning list to me. Obama appears to have appointed a bunch of people who have dedicated their careers to making sure that folks on the top do very well. And those appointments have resulted in a policy archictecutre that works toward that exact goal.

As Amir Sufi, an economist at the University of Chicago, pointed out recently in the Washington Post, “The policy bias has been toward supporting financial institutions as opposed to targeting what I think is the central problem. And that is the household debt problem.”

The Obama administration has dedicated itself to propping up Wall Street to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. How much has it spent on helping struggling homeowners? Comparatively very little. A fund meant to support homeowners as part of the administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) was allotted a paltry $7.6 billion, of which only $217 million was spent at the end of 2011. Neil Barofsky, former TARP inspector general, points out in his book Bailout, that the primary purpose of these paltry housing programs was just to “foam the runway” for banks, allowing them to extract extra payments from homeowners before inevitably foreclosing on them when the time was right. Housing programs allowed banks to spread foreclosures out over time so that the housing market wasn’t flooded with delinquent properties all at once, which would’ve caused prices to plummet.

Over the last four years, Obama has been presented with clear options for helping homeowners deleverage and thus bringing about a robust recovery, but he has deliberately chosen to ignore them. Mortgage servicers have clearly violated the law numerous times over the last decade and various legal mechanisms were at the administration’s disposal for forcing them to modify people’s mortgages. Obama never took advantage of those. Bush’s outgoing Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson offered Obama a deal to divert TARP funds to a legal entity that would write down mortgages. Obama ignored his offer.

Over the last four years, Obama has put in place a policy architecture that focuses on reinflating the value of elites’ financial assets while leaving the middle class to suffer. The result of this framework is that under Obama, the growth of income inequality is worse than under Bush. Again, in the respect that policy favors “the top doing very well and middle class folks not doing well,” Obama is indistinguishable from Romney and Bush.

Conclusion/tl;dr

In conclusion, neither Obama nor Romney cares about you. Both favor letting folks at the top play by a different set of rules and both favor the top’s prosperity at the expense of everyone else. The real purpose of these debates is to keep you distracted from those basic truths. By leaving voters to fight over scraps on social issues, the two parties can feel safe knowing that the transfer of wealth, and, by extension, power, from the middle and lower classes to their friends in the 1% continues unabated.