The View from Right Field

Iraq: The Murtha Way – Too Clever By Half

A week ago I asked whether John Murtha’s plan to stop the surge in Iraq, by tying the President’s hands on how and when he could send reinforcements and replacements to Iraq, was clever or too clever by half.

An article in Sunday’s Washington Post answers my question: The plan was too clever by half. According to the article, "a botched launch [of Murtha’s plan] has united Republicans and divided Democrats, sending the latter back to the drawing board just a week before scheduled legislative action."

A comment: If the Democrats think we should get out of Iraq, then they need to say so and vote for it. If they think things would be better, for both us and the Iraqi people, if we were out of Iraq, then they should pass a law and cut the appropriations. I don’t think that is the right thing to do. In fact, I think it would be a terrible thing to do. (Just ask the boat people of Vietnam and those who survived the killing fields of Cambodia whether the fighting and dying really end just because we leave.) But at least it wouldn’t be playing games with our troops.

Chicago's Oldest Voter Dies

An article in Saturday’s Chicago Tribune said that the oldest voter in Chicago had died. The article did not say when she was expected to stop voting.

Choice in Education – #2: Adam Smith

In the 1700s choice in education meant something different than it does today. At that time choice was not a matter of which school to go to but whether to go to school at all.

In 1696 Scotland passed an act in 1696 providing for the establishment of a school in every parish that did not already have one.* But how to make sure the education provided was a good one.

Adam Smith understood the need for government to play a major role in providing and paying for education. However, he did not think that government should pay the entire cost. Rather, he said this:

"For a very small expence the publick can facilitate, can encourage, and can even impose upon almost the whole body of the people, the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of education.

The publick can facilitate this acquisition by establishing in every parish or district a little school, where children may be taught for a reward so moderate, that even a common labourer may afford it; the master being partly, but not wholly paid by the publick; because if he was wholly, or even principally paid by it, he would soon learn to neglect his business." **

Smith worried that, if the teachers were totally paid by the public, they would not try as hard. He wanted a part of their compensation to be paid by the parents because, if the parents did not think the teacher was doing a good job, they would send their children to another school and another teacher. That would be an incentive to teachers to do a good job.

Smith’s own experience at Oxford, where the teachers were paid by the college’s endowment, as opposed to colleges in Scotland, where teachers were paid in part by fees they received from their students, was not a happy one:

"The endowments of schools and colleges have necessarily diminished more or less the necessity of application in the teachers. Their subsistence, so far as it arises from their salaries, is evidently derived from a fund altogether independent of their success and reputation in their particular professions. …

In the university of Oxford, the greater part of the publick professors have, for these many years, given up altogether even the pretence of teaching." ***

While Adam Smith’s idea of parents directly paying part of the teacher’s salary would not work today, the reasoning behind Smith’s idea is still true. As E. G. West said of Smith:

"Smith believed that the average parent could detect when his child was receiving an inefficient education. The possibility of his withdrawing his child and transferring the fees to another school enabled the parent to exercise sanctions upon a potentially inefficient school." ****

This reasoning is still true today, and it is a key part of the argument for choice in education. Parents know when their children are not getting a good education, and the best way to make sure children get a good education is for parents to have the ability to withdraw their children from a school that is not doing a good job and to transfer their children and the money to educate them to another school that will do a better job.

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* Arthur Herman, How the Scots Invented the Modern World, p. 19 (2001).
** Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Volume II, p. 785.
*** The Wealth of Nations, Volume II, pp. 760, 761.
**** E. G. West, Adam Smith: The Man and His Works, p. 37 (1976).

Iraq: The Murtha Way

Jack Murtha and Nancy Pelosi have come up with a new way to stop the surge in Iraq. Worried about being accused of not supporting the troops, Murtha has a plan he thinks will get around this problem. Murtha’s plan would prohibit the redeployment of units that have been at home for less than a year, it would stop the extension of tours beyond 12 months, and it would prohibit units from going to Iraq if they do not train with all of their equipment. By limiting the number and length of deployments to Iraq, Murtha is trying to make it harder for the Pentagon to come up with troops to replace units that have to leave Iraq.

Tom Mazzie of Americans Against Escalation of the War in Iraq, says, "What we have staked out is a campaign to stop the war without cutting off funding" for the troops. An editorial in The Washington Post says Murtha’s plan "would stop the surge by crudely hamstringing the ability of military commanders to deploy troops."

Obviously, those who support President’s new strategy, or at least what he is trying to achieve in Iraq, will oppose this plan. On the other hand, Democrats who did not want to go into Iraq originally or who have changed their minds since Iraq has been a harder fight than they originally thought, will probably support it.

The question then is how this plan will look to the people in the middle, the average Americans who don’t like how things are going in Iraq but do support our troops and appreciate the job they do for our country. When it comes to people such as this, is John Murtha’s plan clever – or is it too clever by half?

The Americans in the middle really do support our troops. Maybe they know somebody in the Army or Marines, or maybe they remember what it was like when they had a relative or a friend in the Armed Forces. They don’t like what is going on in Iraq, but they want to make sure our troops are equipped and ready and supported. How will these people feel about John Murtha’s plan?

Will they see this plan as an effort to make sure our troops are properly trained and outfitted when they go to Iraq? Will they see this plan as an effort to make sure our troops don’t have to stay extra in Iraq and to make sure they get a chance to rest when they get home?

Or will they see a plan that, by limiting the number of troops the President can send to Iraq, makes the job harder for those that are still there? Will they see a plan that makes it more dangerous for the men and women in Iraq by not letting the President send the number of troops he thinks we need to do the job? Will they see a plan that masquerades as a "readiness strategy" but is really aimed at trying the President’s hands while our troops are in harm’s way.

At a time when our soldiers and Marines in Iraq are putting their lives on the line for us every day they are there, will the Americans in the middle see John Murtha’s plan as a principled stand to do what’s right for our country, regardless of the cost to one’s own political future? Or will they see a cynical bunch of politicians putting our troops at unnecessary risk because they have don’t have the political courage to take an honest stand?

Do They Want Us to Fail?

The Democrats in Congress have made it clear that they are opposed to President Bush’s new strategy in Iraq and that they do not think it will work. Whether they are right or not, it is legitimate for them to think the President’s strategy will not work. With the way things have gone so far, and with all of the mistakes the Bush Administration has made, their doubts may be understandable.

However, given what some of them are saying and proposing, what I am wondering about some of the Democrats (not all of them, just certain of them) is this: Regardless of whether they think Bush’s plan will work, how would they feel it if actually succeeded? I realize that, in good faith, they do not think Bush’s plan will work. That is fine. People can disagree on what is the best policy. But how would they feel if, in spite of what they think, Bush’s plan actually did work. How would they feel if the Iraqi people got more security? If there were fewer killings and if life got better for the Iraqi people? How would they feel if Bush’s new plan started working?

If things started getting better, would they stop demanding that the troops come home now? Would they call off their attempts to hamstring Bush’s new plan? If the new strategy was starting to work and it needed just a little more time, would they let it have the time? Would they be willing to admit things were getting better and let the new strategy have a chance? Or have they so decided we cannot win, have they so decided we cannot succeed, have they so decided the Iraqi people do not matter, that they could never admit the plan was actually working? In other words, do they want us to fail?

Choice in Education

Too many of our schools are not doing a good job. The number of children who have not gotten a fair chance in life because of the schools they have had to attend and the education they did not get is a disgrace.

The teachers unions and many well-meaning people say the answer is more money. Others are not so sure.

A growing number of people think that one part of the answer is "choice". I am not talking about limited programs which allow parents to try to choose which public school their child can attend. I am talking about giving parents money or credits that they can use to send their child to whatever school they choose, public or private.

Milton Friedman is one of the most famous and long-standing proponents of this kind of choice in education. (I am not sure how far back his support for choice goes, but he wrote about it in Capitalism and Freedom, which was published in 1962 {see chapter VI}.)

What I would like to do, from time to time, is to present comments from other people about choice in education. These people may not be as famous as Milton Friedman, but perhaps what they say or how they say it will be of interest.

The following is by Jim Hopkins, a columnist in The New Zealand Herald. It is from February 9, 2007:

"Six or seven weeks off at the height of summer (ha! ha!) may have been appropriate 100 years ago when 80 per cent of us worked on the land and the kids had to help with the harvest, but it's nonsense now.

It doesn't fit how we live. Blimey, if schools were restaurants, they'd be closed all weekend and only open Monday to Thursday from 11pm.

And woe betide any customer foolish enough to ask for something that wasn't on the menu. They'd very quickly be told to learn what was put in front of them and be grateful.

See, it's not just when schools operate that's beyond our control, it's everything about them.

We're told when we must send our children to school, we're told how long they must stay there, we're told where they'll be taught and what they'll be taught and how they'll be assessed.

And should any plaintive parent dare to ask if their child is on the Pill or having an abortion, they'll promptly be told, "That's none of your business! But don't forget, you're breaking the law if your child isn't schooled!"

So that's the deal. CMT (Compulsory Military Training) may be gone but CET (Compulsory Educational Training) certainly isn't.

We have no choice about sending the kids into barracks or which barracks they attend and if, after 11 years of CET, 25 per cent of them can't read or write then that's the luck of the educational draw, sunshine.

Factories with an equally dismal record might have to close – or change – but the good folk in the learning workshops simply get more money.

And those obliged to supply their conscripts get no say in the matter at all. We can choose our doctor, our lawyer, our supermarket, our partner and our job.

In fact, just about the only things we can't choose are which side of the road to drive on, whether we pay taxes and the school we send our kids to – unless we want to make some real estate agent very, very wealthy.

Anyone seeking a system perfectly designed to perpetuate incompetence, a system where the customer is always wrong and the retailer can supply what they wish, need look no further than the nearest school."

(The entire column can be found here.)

Iraq: Four Comments

These comments are mostly unrelated, except for a frustration with both those who would condemn the Iraqi people to a future likely to be worse than the present and those who say the right things but so far have not been able to do them right.

1. Why did it take so long to get started on the surge and the new strategy and tactics? These things are the last hope we have in Iraq. Why did it take so long to start them? You should not announce a new strategy and then wait a month or more to begin implementing it. That just gives the enemy (enemies) time to get ready. In fact, it lets them start first. I feel sorry for General Petraeus. Good generals need good support. .

2. Does Bush’s new strategy have a chance of success? The ideas seem right, but will that be enough? More importantly, will what happens outside of Iraq make what happens in Iraq irrelevant? Amir Taheri, an Iranian-born journalist based in Europe, says this in the New York Post:

"[General] Petraeus still faces a number of major problems - the most important one being uncertainty in Washington.

There is little doubt that many elements within America's political elite want the United States to fail, for a variety of motives. …

Portraying Iraq as a failure isn't hard. To pronounce Petraeus' mission a failure, all that defeat-mongers in Washington need is one car bomb a day and one suicide attack a week.

Uncertainty in Washington will encourage the Iraqi protagonists to hedge their bets, rather than throw all their weight behind Petraeus' mission. …

When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says that she does not consider Iraq to be ‘a war to win, but a situation to manage,’ Iraqis otherwise likely to side with Petraeus will think twice. …

The insurgents, the al Qaeda terrorists and the Shiite militias know that they can't win in military terms. What they hope for is to win politically – that is to say, ensuring defeat and humiliation for the United States. …

With a combination of intelligence, patience and determination, Petraeus can win in Baghdad.

The battleground where his chances do not appear as good is Washington. The United States today has become home to a veritable industry of defeat – producing books, TV documentaries, research papers, intelligence analyses and feature movies destined for a growing market. Almost every day, some article assuming that the United States has already been defeated in Iraq, and recommend measures to deal with the consequences of defeat."

3. Democrats and liberals have been trying to portray Iraq as Vietnam since before the United States and its allies went into Iraq. They may eventually succeed. Laws passed by the Democratic-controlled Congress in 1973 and 1974 stopped President Ford from keeping the promises the United States made to help the South Vietnamese in the event of a North Vietnamese attack. Hillary Clinton is now suggesting that we "take money away from [the Iraqi] troops" to threaten the Iraqi government.

4. Finally, what would happen if the United States and its allies withdraw precipitously from Iraq? Edward Luttwak in Tuesday’s New York Times, says our "disengagement should actually reduce the violence":

"Were the United States to disengage, both Arab Sunnis and Shiites would have to take responsibility for their own security (as the Kurds have doing been all along). Where these three groups are not naturally separated by geography, they would be forced to find ways to stabilize relations with each other. …

In any case, it is time for the Iraqis to make their own history."

In 1971, during his debate with John O’Neill on the Dick Cavett show, John Kerry said this:

"What we say is the troops can be withdrawn faster. What we say is the killing can stop tomorrow, and it can stop if the president of the United States will set a date certain for the withdrawal for all United States combat and advisory troops form South Vietnam."

Five days before the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh in April of 1975, New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg wrote that for the ordinary people of Cambodia "it is difficult to imagine how their lives could be anything but better with the Americans gone." *

And then came the reeducation camps, the boat people, and the killing fields. The liberals and the Democrats were so wrong about Vietnam and Cambodia. Do they really think Iraq will be better with us gone? Or is it just something they have to believe, or at least say they believe, to justify their policy of leaving?

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* Quoted in Carl Gershman, "Indochina & Left-Wing Escapism," The American Spectator, September 1979, p. 7.

The News Doesn’t Need Background

An article in last Wednesday’s Chicago Tribune reported on Senate Judiciary committee hearings on the Bush Administration’s removal, in recent weeks, of seven out of 94 US Attorneys. The article says that the dismissals "prompted several Democratic senators to accuse the White House of taking undue aim at U.S. prosecutors, either to make way for up-and-coming Republicans or to punish those who aggressively prosecuted friends of the administration."

Of course, neither the article nor the Democratic senators mentioned that in March of 1993, Bill Clinton had Janet Reno fire all 93 U.S. attorneys and replace them with Democratic appointments. The most unusual part of Clinton’s action was that, instead of waiting, in at least some cases, for the new prosecutors to be confirmed before removing the old prosecutors, Clinton removed all of the old prosecutors immediately. It was the first and only time in our history that a president ever did this. *

It is too bad that neither the article nor the Democratic senators provided this historical background.

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* See Safire, William, "Clinton is manipulating justice system," Chicago Tribune, August 11, 1994

Tyrannies, Bad and Worse

In today’s New Zealand Herald, there is the following description of the Labour government "Vulnerable Families" program:

"Some 41 ‘at risk’ families have … been getting extensive ‘wrap around’ services after being identified as needing intensive support.

The move reflects the increasing trend in Labour's welfare policy - more intensive, no-nonsense intervention in beneficiary households to ensure they get what they need …."

Now that is a scary thought: a government bureaucracy "ensuring" that a family "gets what [the bureaucrats think] they need."

This program reminds me of two other quotes. The first is from C. S. Lewis:

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busy-bodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

The second is from a different philosopher, Linus Van Pelt, who says this when Charlie Brown, whose team has finally won a baseball game, is called to league headquarters and told that a group of parents has gotten together:

"In all this world, Charlie Brown, there is nothing more frightening than the getting together of a group of parents."

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* Schulz, Charles M., Sandlot Peanuts (1977).