The View from Right Field

Vietnam and Iraq: 40 Years On From April 30, 1975

Forty years ago Thursday, the United States left Vietnam.  The pictures of people climbing up ladders to helicopters on the roof of the American embassy are iconic.  It was a triumph for some, and a disaster for others.  I am not going to get into that argument today.  Rather, I wanted to present a tentative thought on our approach to wars like Vietnam – and Iraq.

I think there is, arguably, some symmetry between our experiences in Vietnam and Iraq.  In Vietnam, the policies and strategy of President Johnson and General William Westmoreland did not work.  General Westmoreland thought we could beat the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese by firepower.  We could win a war of attrition against an enemy who didn’t seem to care about the number of its casualties.  (Sigh.)  President Johnson both exercised too much control over things like how we bombed of North Vietnam and didn’t pay enough attention to how things were going in South Vietnam.

When General Creighton Abrams took command in March of 1968, things changed.  General Abrams’ “One War” strategy started to work.  General Abrams understood that security of the population was the key and that going after the enemy’s supplies was an important part of winning this kind of war.  By 1972, the situation in South Vietnam had improved.  The North Vietnamese launched a three-pronged offensive in late March, the so-called Easter Offensive, but the South Vietnamese, with U.S. advisers and bombers, beat them back.  The South Vietnamese held.

Don’t You Wonder What Patrick Fitzgerald Would Find In the Clinton Foundation Contributions?

First, it was the emails that Hillary Clinton deleted from her own personal email server because she (or somebody she paid) decided that they were not related to her government work as Secretary of State.  Now, even The New York Times is reporting that the Clinton Foundation¹ received a substantial contribution from the family foundation of the owner of a company that was seeking, and getting, U.S. government, including State Department, approval of the sale of 51% of the company.  The approval was required because the company owned a uranium mine.  And the sale was to the Russia’s state nuclear agency.

David Axelrod assured us there was no problem:

“[T]he way the foundation raises money will continue to be an issue.  But there is absolutely no evidence, even in the stories that were written, that Secretary Clinton made an extraordinary decision influenced by this money, the Times acknowledged that.”

As did Lanny Davis:

“I don't know what fishy means.  If you have a fact to say why you feel fishy I can't control your feeling about that. I only speak to what the facts are. …

Let’s Bring Back Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment

Ronald Reagan famously proclaimed what he called the Eleventh Commandment: “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.”  While President Reagan did not come up with it (California Republican Party chairman Gaylord Parkinson did), he did popularize it.  And I think it’s time to bring it back.

With more candidates and potential candidates than the Chicago Cubs have relief pitchers, there is a real potential for Republicans presidential candidates to consider violating the rule this year.  They may feel the only way their candidacy can gain traction is criticize other Republicans.  But that is not what we need. 

After eight years of Barack Obama and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, we don’t need one Republican gaining traction against another.  We need to elect a Republican in 2016.  Discussion of solid policy differences are one thing.  Ad hominin attacks on fellow Republicans are another. 

Libya, Drownings In the Mediterranean, and Obama Administration Foreign Policy Successes

The New Republic published an article last week in which Joel Gillin argued that, pending an Iran nuclear agreement, President Obama’s greatest foreign policy achievement is the opening of relations with Cuba.  Ignoring the question of whether this is all that much of an achievement (we are talking about Cuba, after all, not China), it is perhaps interesting to consider what were previously considered some of President Obama’s foreign policy successes and to see how they look, several years down the road.

In the late summer of 2013, in response repeated crossings by Syria of President Obama’s redline with respect to the use of chemical weapons, President Obama threatened military action against Bashar al-Assad’s regime.  Before he had to follow through on his threat, which you got the impression he really did not want to do, Vladimir Putin saved him.  Picking up on a comment made by Secretary of State John Kerry, Russia proposed that, instead of attacking Syria, Syria would give up its chemical weapons and allow them to be destroyed.  President Obama proclaimed this a great result, saying it was our threat of force that forced Syria to agree to give up its chemical weapons.

Where are we now?  If Bashar al-Assad is not as firmly in power as ever, it is because of ISIS (also known as Islamic State or ISIL), not any of the moderate opponents of his regime.  In fact, our bombing of ISIS in Syria has enabled Assad’s forces to focus more of their attention on the moderate rebels who we supposedly support.  Not only that, but there are reports that chemical weapons, now chlorine gas, are still being used in Syria.¹  While it has not been proven for sure which side, or sides, is using them, the most logical candidate is the forces of Bashar al-Assad.  And what are we doing to preserve the supposed success of 2013 in getting Bashar al-Assad to give up his chemical weapons?  About what you would expect.

Opposing Free Trade Agreements: How and Why

Last week Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee reached agreement on a trade bill that, if passed, would enable President Obama to conclude the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.  According to Reuters, the bill will

“give the White House ‘fast track’ authority to negotiate a trade pact with 11 other Pacific nations ….

… The pact would connect a dozen economies by cutting trade barriers and harmonizing standards covering two-fifths of the world economy and a third of global trade.”

Like similar trade legislation in the past, the bill allows Congress a vote on the deal, but it limits the vote to a simple yes-or-no, instead of allowing for votes on amendments and procedural delays.

The problem in passing the bill, however, is going to be finding enough Democrats to vote for it.  Sandor Levin, the top Democrat on the House committee dealing with trade legislation, said, if the vote was today, only “a handful of Democrats” would vote for it.

A Different New Zealand

I have started a new blog/website.  It is called “A Different New Zealand” and, perhaps not surprisingly, it can be found at www.adifferentnewzealand.com.

I have been interested in New Zealand for twenty years.  Once I retired, we went there for six weeks.  We saw a lot of things not on the usual tourist itinerary.  This blog talks about them.  Several posts are already up.  More will be coming in the next few months.  I hope you enjoy it.

I Saw Ryne Sandberg's First Major League Hit; Maybe I'll See Kris Bryant's on Friday

To prove it, here is the scorecard.  You just have to remember he was playing for the Phillies.  It was his only major league hit for a team other than the Cubs.  Also, while you are looking at the scorecard, look at the number of Phillies players who wound up playing for the Cubs.

April 15, 2015: 150 Years Into the Ages To Which Abraham Lincoln Belongs

Edwin Stanton, Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of War, famously said, upon Lincoln’s death: “Now he belongs to the ages.”  Tomorrow is the 150th anniversary of that day, and it seems appropriate to note it.

In the media today, numerous people are writing about Lincoln’s death, many of them claiming Lincoln for one side or the other of our political debates.  On that question, let me just repeat what I said on the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth, on February 12, 2009:

“While those questions [i.e., whose side Lincoln would be on today] may be interesting for a little while, let me suggest a better question, a question that is, perhaps, in the spirit of Lincoln’s alleged response to the question of whether God was on the side of the Union.  Lincoln said he was more concerned about whether the Union was on God’s side.

And so, my response to the question of whether Lincoln would be on my side if he were alive today is this: It is more important to ask whether I would have been on Lincoln’s side if I were alive then.”

Social Security Is Paying More Than It Takes In; Let’s Increase Benefits

In the 1980s, there was bipartisan concern about the future solvency of Social Security.  The solution they came up with was to increase Social Security taxes.  The idea was to take the extra money, above and beyond the amount of benefits that the government was paying out, and put it into an account, which could be used later, when benefits to be paid out were projected to be more than the amounts coming in.  And they did it.

The only problem was that, while the government put all that extra money into a separate account, it actually just turned around and used the money to cover deficits (and, during the end of Bill Clinton’s second term, pay down some of the national debt).

Now, we need money from that account.  The Great Recession has meant that the amount of Social Security benefits paid out has increased faster than expected (as people who lost their jobs started collecting benefits earlier than they otherwise would have) and the Social Security taxes collected was less than expected (because fewer people were working).  Overall, that meant the point at which Social Security was paying out more than it was taking in came earlier than expected.

The Iran Nuclear “Agreement”

I have not written about the “agreement” with Iran regarding its nuclear program for a couple of reasons.  First, I have written about the subject before¹, and the agreement that was announced last week really doesn’t change much of what I wrote before.

Second, from what I have read about the agreement in the media, I am not sure how much of a real agreement it is.  Being a lawyer (or, at least, a former lawyer), I think of an agreement as something that is written down, with detailed terms and, hopefully, a clear understanding by both parties as to what their respective rights and obligations are. 

This is not what we have in the case of the so-called agreement with Iran.  Rather, it seems the parties talked long enough that they think they have some common understanding on a series of general ideas.  But there was no “term sheet” or “letter of intent” as to what the parties agreed.  Rather, there were dueling press releases, which were, to some extent, not in accord with each other.