Maggie's Farm

It’s time for Jimmy Carter to take on Barack Obama on the issue of human rights.  I don’t expect that to happen but it is clearly called for.  Even Jimmy Carter doesn’t deserve for Barack Obama to be called the most incompetent president since Jimmy Carter.  Barack Obama is worse.

I often surprise critics of Jimmy Carter’s presidency by reminding them he returned US foreign policy to an emphasis on human rights, and that laid a foundation for Ronald Reagan’s successes in reaffirming American dedication and actions to support those who  fought to stay freer and to ultimately dismantle the Soviet Union and its Iron Curtain.

Skipping Carter’s own excesses of idealism and grave mistakes in executing foreign policy, which led to many considering his presidency a disaster and voters rejecting him in 1980, and his descent into outright extremism since, read Jimmy Carter’s commencement speech at Notre Dame in 1977, for example.

I believe we can have a foreign policy that is democratic, that is based on fundamental values, and that uses power and influence, which we have, for humane purposes. We can also have a foreign policy that the American people both support and, for a change, know about and understand.

I have a quiet confidence in our own political system. Because we know that democracy works, we can reject the arguments of those rulers who deny human rights to their people….

First, we have reaffirmed America’s commitment to human rights as a fundamental tenet of our foreign policy. In ancestry, religion, color, place of origin, and cultural background, we Americans are as diverse a nation as the world has even seen. No common mystique of blood or soil unites us. What draws us together, perhaps more than anything else, is a belief in human freedom. We want the world to know that our Nation stands for more than financial prosperity….

In the life of the human spirit, words are action, much more so than many of us may realize who live in countries where freedom of expression is taken for granted. The leaders of totalitarian nations understand this very well. The proof is that words are precisely the action for which dissidents in those countries are being persecuted.

Nonetheless, we can already see dramatic, worldwide advances in the protection of the individual from the arbitrary power of the state. For us to ignore this trend would be to lose influence and moral authority in the world. To lead it will be to regain the moral stature that we once had.

The great democracies are not free because we are strong and prosperous. I believe we are strong and influential and prosperous because we are free.

Throughout the world today, in free nations and in totalitarian countries as well, there is a preoccupation with the subject of human freedom, human rights. And I believe it is incumbent on us in this country to keep that discussion, that debate, that contention alive. No other country is as well-qualified as we to set an example. We have our own shortcomings and faults, and we should strive constantly and with courage to make sure that we are legitimately proud of what we have.

Compare that to Barack Obama’s virtual abandonment of human rights and to any pride in a generation of costly and brave resistance to the Soviet Union, and at least to most others who trampled human rights who weren’t necessary to that primary mission during the Cold War.

Brett Stephens summarizes Barack Obama’s abandonments, in China, Sudan, Iran, Burma, and now not even attending Germany’s celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, “a high-water mark in the march of human freedom.”  Obama’s dwindling defenders say he looks forward, not back, or that his vision of a humble US in harmony with other nations will encourage those hostile to be more cooperative.  So far, there’s been exactly the opposite result, as those determined to preserve and extend their despotism and influence are encouraged by US reticence and retreat-after-retreat from Obama’s prior pledges to be firm and resolute.  Stephens concludes:

It also takes a remarkable degree of cynicism—or perhaps cowardice—to treat human rights as something that "interferes" with America's purposes in the world, rather than as the very thing that ought to define them. Yet that is exactly the record of Mr. Obama's time thus far in office.

In the early days of the Cold War it was the moral courage of stout liberals, indeed many being former allies of socialism or communism, who defined the stark difference between the West’s essential core virtue and worth against those who continued to defend or kowtow to its enemies.  These men and women of integrity and grit were my early mentors, and led the free world's resistance to tyranny and repression.

Again, it is time for those with a sincere belief in their primary humanist motivations to stand and dispute the wayward Obama and those who are misled.

An example is the founder and former 20-year president of Human Rights Watch, critical of HRW’s one-sided myopia regarding the Middle East, who writes:

At Human Rights Watch, we always recognized that open, democratic societies have faults and commit abuses. But we saw that they have the ability to correct them — through vigorous public debate, an adversarial press and many other mechanisms that encourage reform.

That is why we sought to draw a sharp line between the democratic and nondemocratic worlds, in an effort to create clarity in human rights. We wanted to prevent the Soviet Union and its followers from playing a moral equivalence game with the West and to encourage liberalization by drawing attention to dissidents like Andrei Sakharov, Natan Sharansky and those in the Soviet gulag — and the millions in China’s laogai, or labor camps.

When I stepped aside in 1998, Human Rights Watch was active in 70 countries, most of them closed societies. Now the organization, with increasing frequency, casts aside its important distinction between open and closed societies….

Only by returning to its founding mission and the spirit of humility that animated it can Human Rights Watch resurrect itself as a moral force in the Middle East and throughout the world. If it fails to do that, its credibility will be seriously undermined and its important role in the world significantly diminished.

Obama isn’t about to listen to conservative critics, indeed he seeks to stifle them.  Perhaps he and his acolytes inexperienced in the great moral battles and sacrifices of the Cold War might listen to allies who know better.  These former liberal leaders owe that to their own integrity and legacy, or else cooperate in its demise.

All the interest groups are trying to protect their piece of the national health care spending pie in the various legislative proposals.  Tort lawyers, the largest contributors to Democrats, have succeeded beyond all others.

Tort reforms that reduce the costs of defensive medicine are off the table in all the legislation.  Now, they want to increase their portion of the pie, by eliminating the right of insurers to recover from tort settlements the amount paid in claims.  Claimants, thus, have increased motivation to sue, the possibility of suits and the awards increasing defensive medicine costs, and tort lawyers gain increased business.

Aetna is the closest “fellow traveler” among insurers to the advocates of ObamaCare, playing a delicate game of seeking like other insurers to increase premiums flowing to it from a mandate to have insurance while avoiding excess claims impact on increasing premiums, reducing private insurance due to guaranteed coverage without a mandate, while increasing the enrollment in a taxpayer subsidized government-plan.

So, alone among insurers, Aetna emailed me today (an independent employee benefits broker and consultant), “Aetna participated (as the only invited insurer) in a discussion among a cross-section of key players in the health care debate: the trial bar, employers, unions, and an insurer.  The convening authority was the senior staff from all three key House Committees.”  The subject: “The issue is whether the House bill should include a trial bar-supported provision to deny insurers (and union plans) the right to recover, from the insured, health care payments when the insured member has already received payment for the very same expense from a court award or settlement.”  Guess what?: “The staff and the trial bar want this provision.”

Recovery by insurers or medical providers from tort awards is currently particular  and complex in each state and federal jurisdiction.  The tort lawyers aim is to in one fell swoop have their way, damn the costs to others than the fees to themselves and the double-payments to clients.

Last week, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that tort reform caps on settlements would reduce the federal costs of health care by $54-billion.  The Associated Press concludes: “Even in the health care debate, that's real money.” But, the CBO report only touches on a small portion of the total cost of defensive medicine.

One of the leading doctor-bloggers (not hostile toward much of reforms) wrote in USA Today: “At $210 billion annually [according to various studies; about 9% of total health care spending], defensive medicine is one of the largest contributors to wasteful spending, and it can manifest in many forms: unnecessary CT scans, MRIs, cardiac testing and hospital admissions. A 2005 survey in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 93% of doctors reported practicing defensive medicine.”

The association of major insurers, America’s Health Care Plans (AHIP), finally launched a last-minute counter-attack the day before the Senate Finance Committee vote, to little avail.  It will have even less influence in the legislation negotiations in Harry Reid’s office, only including Reid, Senator Dodd, Senator Baucus and the White House.

Tort lawyers' objectives and influence is clear.  The rest of us are not adequately represented.

P.S.: Good discussion of the context. 

In considering the motivations of Maine Senator Olympia Snowe’s decision to vote in the Senate Finance Committee in favor of sending its unwritten healthcare bill to the full Senate one should understand that aside from any other reasons Maine would benefit.

Snowe has teeter-tottered, basically desiring an expansion of government health care programs, but the decisive factor may well be that she is a Senator from Maine.  Regardless of her political stripe, the best explanation of Senator Snowe’s vote is she wants to bring home the dollars from other states’ taxpayers to provide medical coverage to the voters in her state.

Some of Maine’s latest statistics:

Maine is a gross receiver of $1.41 of federal spending for each dollar of federal taxes paid from the state’s taxpayers.

Maine, however, has one of the highest state and local tax burdens among the states.

Maine’s business tax climate is among the least attractive.

Maine’s Dirigo Health, its attempt at universal health care, is a failure, as in other states. The percent uninsured in Maine did not budge under Dirigo.  Dirigo contains a “public” option, which didn’t work, so Senator Snowe has opposed one.  She, however, has pushed in the Senate Finance Committee to reduce the penalty for not buying insurance, which together with the guarantee of coverage regardless of health condition will result in increased premiums to those who are insured and make a subsidized government plan more attractive.  Similarly, the taxpayers' or overall costs of the expansion aren’t primary to her.

Politico has a discussion of the leverage Senator Snowe may obtain from her vote. Some of those in favor of a more extreme bill fear that.  They needn’t, as now that she has voted in the Finance Committee, her voice can and will be ignored by the Democrat leadership patching up whatever they wish to move forward.  That will likely include some sort of sub rosa “public” plan.

Others notice the bailout of Maine's failed Dirigo, at the expense of other states.  Instapundit wonders "Payola?"

I’d be more interested in what New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman tells his daughters about serving in the military than his telling President Obama to accept the Nobel Peace Prize “on behalf of the most important peacekeepers in the world for the last century — the men and women of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.”

His young daughters, and President Obama’s, are about the same age as my older son.  My son asks me if he should enlist.  I answer that it will be his choice, there are important personal and citizenship benefits and prices, and the benefits may or may not work out for him and others.  My son will make his own choice, and he will know from his father’s life that he can rely upon me to walk the talk, whether in a promise to him or by my example in how I live.  He will decide if that is the suitable example for his way of living.

It is relevant to our children whether they’ve seen us walk the talk in our lives and with them when by our words we properly honor those who serve and may encourage others to serve.  That neither Thomas Friedman nor President Obama chose to serve in the military, or that I did, is the past.  The now our children see is how our words to others match our words to them.

Another top national columnist recently asked me, “if you'd ever had the thought that we are losing the best people our country has to offer” in our current wars.  I replied:

What I would say is that in my experience in and with the military (I served in the Marine Corps in Vietnam and come in contact with many in my Encinitas area just south of Camp Pendleton), meeting and overcoming the challenges and realistic fears of enlisting, of training, and of serving in a war, all under the risk of severe harm or death, causes one, each one, to exert themself to rise to be the best Marine or soldier they can be.  That creates a mature, focused person with a special appreciation for their citizenship and country and freedoms, as well as for the welfare of others one serves with and the people in the country serving in.

In short, it is their training and service and sacrifice that makes them, all who serve, the best we have to offer, and upon their return the best citizens.  Those who fall are, thus, of course a severe loss.

The possible loss of one’s child is calamitous.  So is the loss of others’.

If Thomas Friedman or President Obama do not believe that how they counsel their own children is more telling than how they counsel others’ children, that tells me all I need to know about whether they walk their talk, really care about others’ children, or are worth taking seriously.

If literally every effort is not made to support those who do serve to survive and accomplish the mission upon which sent, that is the most serious dereliction possible by a parent or columnist.  Words may be enough for the Nobel Peace Prize, or a New York Times column, but not enough for any responsible parent.

P.S.: Ed Morrissey relays who is saying what about what to do in Afghanistan. 

One of my dearest, longest and most respected friends has stared more deeply and widely into the dark side of reality than anyone.  We just discussed my “Davy Crockett attitude” toward President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize. My way of being is to find reasons to smile in the face of challenges.  I, also, believe this travesty further removes him from the ability of serious-minded people to support him.

My friend is qualified to be less sanguine: he served as a combat advisor in Vietnam, a MSM war correspondent in SE Asia, a refugee worker for the Cambodians who could escape massacre, became a Catholic priest, served at the Vatican, is currently a challenging professor of philosophy at a major college, and continues his priestly ministering.

Here’s what my friend has to say about what he titles “Taliban Peace Prize For Obama.”  (My friend chooses to withhold his name from this post, so as not to intrude politics into his classroom or ministry.)

Giving Obama the Nobel Peace Prize is an even more political act than giving it to Arafat. More shrewd as well.

 

The Nobel committee hopes to influence Obama's decisions on Afghanistan. Now that he is an internationally recognized man of peace, he is not going to order a surge in Afhanistan. McChrystal won't get the troops he says he needs.

 

The White House has been preparing this ground for weeks, suggesting that since Al Qaeda is now weak a Taliban return to power needn't worry us. We can live with that, they say off the record. The great military thinkers Joe Biden, John Kerry, Rahm Emanuel, and David Axelrod have developed a long-range John Murtha strategy that will operate along the lines of a video game: if you see movement on the screen, push a button.

 

And with the Taliban back in power, we won't have to worry about messy elections. But what about those who fought with us? What has the Taliban in store for them? If Afghanistan were not a land-locked country, we could expect thousands of boat people.

 

But not to worry. When asked about a possible bloodbath following a hasty withdrawal from Iraq, Obama said he didn't really have a problem with it and its possibility should not determine policy. He won't have a problem with it in Afghanistan either. After all, we've been told, Afghanistan, like Vietnam or Iraq before the surge, was always unwinnable. We'll accept a certain number of refugees to help ease the short-term sting of conscience over betraying an allly. But as with all vices, repetition makes the practice easier. This won't be the first time we've betrayed an ally.

 

It will destoy the military, of course, but by the time that becomes clear Obama will have passed from the scene.
Also read this on Obama's attitude toward bloodbath in Iraq, and this commentary on the political award to President Obama.

1.  Everyone should start their day with a good laugh, it scientifically proven to lead to better attitudes toward whatever we do, which is scientifically proven to lead to better results;

2.  Because I can’t find any other commenter who believes he deserved it, it’s heartening that we can unite around common-sense;

3.  Since none can justify it, commenters on other candidates for the 2010 congressional and 2012 presidential election may be more honest about those who run on empty records and words;

4.  President Obama’s preparation for and delivery of an acceptance speech may distract him from doing more to weaken the US and allies and reward foes, thus furthering peace;

5.  President Obama no longer actually has to do anything to receive a Nobel Peace Prize, which may reduce he further worsening the outcomes of the measures already taken, thus furthering peace;

6.  All those living in countries wracked by conflict and those in countries where they are oppressed can relax instead of fighting or standing up, knowing that hope is enough to be rewarded for accomplishing nothing, thus furthering peace;

7.  The Nobel Prize will fit in nicely to the new White House décor alongside the Obama chosen faux painting;

8.  Displaying encouraging honesty, President Obama says “ ‘I do not feel I deserve to be in the company’ of previous winners, ‘transformative figures who've been honored by this prize, men and women who've inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.’ ”

9. I can look forward to President Obama’s picture officially being hung alongside Yasser Arafat and Le Duc Tho’s.

10. The 50-year old childhood book I have of Nobel Peace Prize speeches that inspire by the winners’ track-records will rise in value.  Perhaps, President Obama will use the prize money to buy it from me.

For those interested, here’s the Nobel Peace Prize announcement.  Here’s some of those considered less deserving by the Nobel committee.  The faux painting honored by being chosen to grace the White House.  President Obama’s acceptance comments, including no comment about what he plans to do with the $1.4-million prize money – my hope should be adequate, right?  The New York Times, of course, struggles to find foreigners who are diplomatically complimentary, but finds few.  Nonetheless, the New York Times coverage is predictably laudatory of "Imagine". Struggling to draft my Happy Face list, I finally found someone on the Left able to find a reason to favor of the Prize choice as a repudiation of President Bush. Since this diverges from other leading Left commenters, who find it absurd and undeserved, we can look forward to they ignoring their prior words as they once again shamelessly find excuses to extol the sagacity hidden to everyone else.  To prolong your Happy Face, don't click on Memeorandum for the outpouring of incredulity.

If you can read this, you’re aware there’s a debate within and outside the Obama administration about what the US is to do about Afghanistan.  If you are, also, a careful reader you are probably confused or conflicted.  With good reason.

Eight years after 9/11, the objectives and the means to them are still unclear or ill-focused.  We’re told by various authorities the objectives range from containing a relatively few Al-Quaeda to reconstituting much of the social fabric and governance of Afghanistan and its immediate neighbors.  Similarly, authorities recommend means that range from narrowly targeted attacks from within or outside Afghanistan, or Pakistan, to increased ground forces to major social welfare and government reform efforts, each with differing time horizons.

Those authorities with the most experience in these matters tend toward the broader objectives and means.  Yet, all of them caveat their course with hard-learned reservations about success.

THE authority, as provided by the Constitution, the President, despite his and supporters’ politically convenient mouthings meant to win an election, is determined to, according to reports from insiders, re-examine the entire matter from basic assumptions forward.

Opponents of his presidency find themselves in the comfortable position that Obama capitalized upon pre-election of pointing out the gross inconsistencies in the president’s words, actions and results.  This is furthered by the arch comedy of verbal hypocrisies from his supporters.

A few more global strategists, like Henry Kissinger, point to the broader tableau of possibilities, involving India, China and Russia much more deeply.  However, none have demonstrated such inclination.  Indeed, even the NATO countries are, as usual, hesitant to increase their meager commitments, especially to unsure decision-making in Washington and prospects.

Compounding all this is that, now including the global economic shakeout, none of the Western countries appear willing to devote the commensurate resources to the broader missions.

So, ultimately, the start-from-scratch debate is healthy in revealing the stakes, the stake-holders, the opportunities, the risks, the costs and the constraints. Regardless of efforts for the debate or process to be more transparent, it is reasonably so, and such decisions are always finally made among a small circle and the inescapable responsibility of the President.

Obama administration insiders preclude withdrawal.  That leaves either a full-bore effort, which may or not succeed, or a lesser effort that everyone with access to the best information says will only prolong everyone’s agonies with less to no expectation of satisfactory resolution.

No one’s eloquence can mask that stark choice.  Polling indicates that is recognized by most citizens.

Politicians tend to see compromises as the natural order of things.  The rest of us live in a more directly consequential reality.

All of the evidence so far about President Obama indicates his reality is dedicated to vapid speeches.  No tangible results have come from any.  On any subject, only his hardest-core supporters still rally to his words.

I support the fullest re-examination of all aspects of our involvement in Afghanistan, both in itself and for its vital educative function for all of us.

I support the direct consequences of whatever decision is made by President Obama to be properly seen as his responsibility alone.  He has finally cornered himself, and has run out of words to distract from that.

What we’re debating is not just the fate of Afghans, Pakistanis, other countries, our or others’ security and pockets.  It is, also, the determiner of our own and President Obama’s mettle, integrity and future.