The View from Right Field

Where Do We Get Our Purposes From? Business, Government – Or Ourselves

The following letter to the editor, which appears in the Financial Times on May 16, 2022, relates to a column by Brooke Masters in the FT of May 12, 2022, entitled “Profits not purpose still dominate at Volkswagen”:

Brooke Masters notes that Herbert Diess, Volkswagen chief executive, has called for a quick end to the Russian war against Ukraine (not that he calls it that), in order to “get back to trying to open up the world again”.  As Ms. Masters says, “[p]rofit not purpose is his priority”.

Break

I'll be back the middle of May.  See you then.  In the meantime, Go Cubs!

Victims – and Real Victims

From Jemima Kelly’s column in today’s Financial Times:

“There might be another lesson to be drawn from all this as well.  In recent years many on both the right and left have become embroiled in a culture of ‘competitive victimhood’.  Ukraine has shown the world not only what genuine victimhood looks like, but also the value of true heroism.” ¹

----------
¹ Jemima Kelly, “How Ukraine has created a rate moment of consensus,” Financial Times, April 8, 2022.

The Great Georgia 2021 Senate “What If?”

November of 2020, there were 50 Republican senators and 48 Democrats.  But there were two races in Georgia where there had to be run-off elections because no candidate had gotten 50%+1 of the votes cast on election day (as required by Georgia law).  In both races, the Republican candidate got more votes than the Democratic candidate on election day, but the Republican had not gotten 50%+1.  So there were going to be two run-off elections on January 5, 2021.  The Democrats won run-offs, thus giving the Democrats a 50-50 “majority” in the Senate because of Vice President Kamala Harris.

But what if Donald Trump, instead of going down to Georgia in December of 2020 in a snit and complaining he had been cheated out of the election and saying there was no way any Republican would be allowed to win anywhere, even in Georgia¹; what if President Trump had gone to Georgia in December of 2020 and tried to rally Republicans to vote for the Republican Senate candidates, telling his supporters that they needed to get out and vote so we could keep the Democrats from controlling the Senate?²  And what if, therefore, even one of the Republicans had won?  The Republicans would have controlled the Senate.  But what more might have happened?

Ukraine: What Is the US Doing; Is It Enough; How Do We Know?

I try to follow what is going on in Ukraine, including what the United States is doing to help Ukraine and whether we need to do more.  I read articles.  I listen to panel discussions and podcasts.  And I get confused.

Consider whether the US is providing enough military aid to Ukraine and whether we are providing the right military aid.  In a panel discussion Friday morning sponsored by the Atlantic Council, Gen. Philip Breedlove (ret.), former Supreme Allied Commander Europe, said this about what we are providing (these are my words, not direct quotes):

Gaffes, Red Lines, and Credibility

[This is a follow up and elaboration on my post of March 26, 2022.¹ ]

In the 2020 presidential election, I didn’t vote for Joe Biden even though I wanted Donald Trump to lose.  I couldn’t bring myself to vote for President Biden because, as Robert Gates said in 2014, “I think he's been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”^2,3  Fortunately, I live in Illinois, so my vote was not necessary for President Biden to win Illinois’s electoral votes. 

Which brings me to President Biden’s recent “gaffe tour” of Europe.  Michel Kinsley famously defined a gaffe as “when a politician tells the truth – some obvious truth he isn't supposed to say."  President Biden gave us two great examples of this on his trip.  First, he said, apparently unscripted, that Vladimir Putin was a “war criminal.”  That is probably true, but how is it helpful?  We need to get the war in Ukraine over.  How does making Vladimir Putin think he might be prosecuted as a war criminal help do that?⁴

What’s Wrong With Chicago?

A couple of weeks ago, we were on Michigan Avenue.  We went into a store to buy a baptismal present for our granddaughter, and we found a wonderful little necklace.  The clerk boxed it up and put it in a bag.  But then she put the store’s bag in another bag, a plain white bag.  The store has a trademark color for its boxes and bags.  If you see that color, you know where it’s from.  But the clerk understood, and we understood when she did it, that you don’t walk on Michigan Avenue with a bag that color. 

The next day, our son was standing on an El platform, a busy one, when somebody came up and just punched him in the face at 9:00 am for no reason at all.  Nobody came to help him, and when our son took the person’s picture, the person punched him again.  The police were able to apprehend the person, which was great.  But whether there will be any consequences for him, who knows.

In 2013, John Kerry Said Assad “Has to Go.” In 2022, Joe Biden Said Putin “Cannot Remain in Power.”

On February 25, 2013, then-Secretary of State John Kerry said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad ‘has to go.”  Nine years later, John Kerry is gone, but President Assad is still in power.  Today, President Biden said, “For God’s sake, this man [i.e., Vladimir Putin] cannot remain in power.” 

Since President Biden said President Putin “cannot remain in power,” I hope he means it, and I hope he knows how he is going to get it done.  Because this is not something you say, unless you both mean it and know how you are going to accomplish it.

Covid-19. Ukraine. Do We Ever Learn Anything?

When Covid-19, then known as the coronavirus, hit in early 2020, we weren’t ready.  We didn’t have enough personal protective equipment, our medical systems were inadequate, the plans we had for pandemics didn’t work, etc.  Things were a mess.  On April 26, 2020, I wrote a long post entitled “Preparing for the ‘Next’ Coronavirus – Whatever It Is. But Will We?”  But the post was not talking about just the next virus.  It was asking about the next emergency, the next disaster, the next big problem, whatever it was.  In the conclusion of my post, I said this:

“Robustness.  Resiliency.  Nimbleness.  These are what we need if we are to be ready for the emergencies and disasters that will happen, though we don’t know which ones or when.  Most of all, however, we need leaders who understand the importance of these qualities and who can provide the leadership to help us secure them and maintain them.”

“I Need Ammunition, Not a Ride.” And Other Comments on America and Ukraine

If there is a contest for quote of the year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has already won it with his response to America’s offer to fly him out of the country (or maybe to Lviv, in far western Ukraine, I’m not sure) after the Russian invasion started.  Maybe we thought he would want to leave, like Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani did when we abandoned Afghanistan.  But President Zelensky didn’t.  Which leads to my first comment:

1. Just like in Afghanistan, our intelligence in Ukraine was really bad.  In Afghanistan, we thought the government could last for months after we left.  Instead, it collapsed before we were even gone.  It was a total intelligence failure.

     It was much the same in Ukraine, except in the opposite direction.  While we got it right that Russia was going to invade, we were totally wrong about how well the Russian army would do and we were totally wrong about how well the Ukrainian army would defend its country.  We saw the Russian army as experienced and well-equipped, and we thought they would roll over the Ukrainians.  We saw the Ukrainian army as weak and unprepared, and we thought they wouldn’t be able to stand up to the Russians.  Both of these were wrong, and that was important because those intelligence failures may have affected our policy choices.