Maggie's Farm

Robert Strange McNamara died today. The New York Times devotes thousands of words to justifying why McNamara should have been more a “dove” like today’s Times is on most issues. The Washington Post is only a bit more reserved in its thousands of words.

McNamara’s passing, however, in another take, does not end the Summer dreams that turned into national nightmares. Those nightmares are still being played out this Summer by President Obama and his advisors who recklessly pursue their lesson from Vietnam, to kiss up to our mortal enemies and to abandon our friends and those who rely upon the US as a bulwark of principled freedom.

In the Summer of 1964, we had incumbent President Johnson purposely downplaying the challenge in Vietnam of North Vietnam’s aggressions against the South, to further his election by gulling the electorate, while Barry Goldwater – painted as bringing on Armageddon in the Daisy political ad ranked as one of the vilest ever – spoke more plainly:

Make no bones of this. Don't try to sweep this under the rug. We are at war in Vietnam. And yet the President, who is Commander-in-Chief of our forces, refuses to say - refuses to say, mind you, whether or not the objective over there is victory. And his Secretary of Defense continues to mislead and misinform the American people, and enough of it has gone by….

 

To our independence we owe that our first among firsts President, George Washington, labored to keep a poorly supplied army in the field.  George Washington had at his back a Jew, Haym Solomon, largely responsible for obtaining crucial funding. (See below)  Now we have as President a man of another stripe, whose commitment to our security and the lives of our fighting men and women is summed up as WTF!  That seems his attitude toward others’ as well, say Israel for example, or to be made an example of his pusillanimity.

Jules Crittendon and Herschel Smith bring us, sadly, up to date.

First Crittendon:

Bob Woodward on the ground at Camp Leatherneck reported this morning in an article ridiculously headlined, Preventing Another Iraq/US Says Key to Success in Afghanistan: Economic, Not Military, that the Obama admin considers it a “new era.” 

 

The headline is not Woodward’s fault, except to the extent he buried and obfuscated his lede. He reports after the jump that National Security Advisor James L. Jones briefed commanders on the ground that there won’t be more troops, that requests for more troops will prompt a “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” response in the Oval Office.

 

That’s your lede, Bob. There’s your hed, Washington Post copy desk. Obama to Troops: “WTF?” 

 

…

 

…Jones knew when he took the job it would involve smiling through a lot of shit sandwiches. Shit sandwiches like telling other Marines, going into combat, “Sorry boys, you don’t get what you need. Not because we can’t give it to you. But because President Nancypants won’t give it to you. Doesn’t like the way war looks on him and he’ll go all Whiskey Tango Foxtrot if you try to foist it on him. So suck it up.”

 

…

 

Too bad. It’s something American troops have dealt with before and will most earnestly endeavor to deal with now. Maybe they can pull it off. The United States military, after all, has proven remarkably resourceful, resilient and adaptive not just in these wars but in all the wars it has fought. It would be helpful this time, going into this difficult task, if the Commander in Chief’s attitude toward the expertise of the men who will to the heavy lifting was something other than “What the fuck?”

 

Now Smith concludes:

So we now know that the current administration sees Operation Enduring Freedom as the WTF? war.  We know that the National Security Advisor doesn’t have the fortitude to whisper the hard things in the ear of the President.  We know that the President doesn’t really want to deploy more troops to Afghanistan, and we also know that the Colonels want more troops to cover their area of operations.

 

This sets the stage for the coming phase of the campaign.  We have seen this before in Iraq: hasty turnover to the ISF and more difficult counterinsurgency than had previously been planned.  The dissimilarity is a President who was willing to send the necessary forces to get the job done.

 

Now, Wikipedia on Haym Solomon:

Solomon negotiated the sale of a majority of the war aid from France and Holland, selling bills of exchange to American merchants. Solomon also personally supported various members of the Continental Congress during their stay in Philadelphia, including James Madison and James Wilson. Acting as the patriot he was, he requested below market interest rates, and he never asked for repayment.^[4]…

 

In 1975 the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp honoring Haym Saloman for his contributions to the cause of the American Revolution. This stamp, like others in the "Contributors to the Cause" series, was printed on the front and the back. On the glue side of the stamp, the following words were printed in pale, green ink:

 

"Financial Hero—Businessman and broker Haym Solomon was responsible for raising most of the money needed to finance the American Revolution and later to save the new nation from collapse." The Congressional Record of March 25, 1975 reads, "When Morris was appointed Superintendent of Finance, he turned to Solomon for help in raising the money needed to carry on the war and later to save the emerging nation from financial collapse. Solomon advanced direct loans to the government and also gave generously of his own resources to pay the salaries of government officials and army officers. With frequent entries of 'I sent for Haym Solomon,' Morris' diary for the years 1781–84 records some 75 transactions between the two men."

 

Haym Solomon died unpaid back and broke.

President Obama has received much, well deserved, criticism in the US and Europe for meekly abandoning the anti-regime protestors in Iran. We’re still not sure how well the new Iraqi army will do, although performance is promising, as was ARVN's before we cut off its armament supplies.  Much of our confusion or doubts about what’s the correct and best things to do are rooted in our Vietnam experience or, rather, how it is now viewed, by President Obama and many Americans.  (I last wrote in December here about the current situation in Vietnam. The repression has gotten even worse, since.)

Robert Kennedy told us: “Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.”  That’s more hopeful and better lesson for President Obama than the course seemingly he’s on as told by Karl Marx: “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.”

A core issue in our recollections of Vietnam is the performance of the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam), our South Vietnamese allies.  My good friend, R.J. DelVecchio, fellow former Marine in Vietnam, able student of Vietnam, and humanitarian, just sent me an email about the “Evolution of the ARVN” that is a particularly good overview and corrective to many’s view.  Let me share it with you:

R.J. DelVecchio email 6-29-09

I have had comments from other vets, especially the ones who served in
'65-'67, about the very poor quality of the ARVN troops they encountered.
No doubt those recollections are valid, as were some of the news
programs and other reports that were severely critical of ARVN units.
This has led to a general belief that the South Vietnamese soldiers were
always overall a poorly trained and badly led bunch, who tried to avoid
fighting whenever they could, and didn't fight well even when they had
to.
But this is actually an unfair and false legend, for reasons many of us
just don't know about.
In the '60-'68 time frame, there were many units that were poorly trained
and poorly led, officer commissions were obtained through politics and
bribes, intra-military politics ran rampant, and only a minority of the
units, such as their Rangers, Marines, and some others, were really good,
tough soldiers.  (A unit of their Rangers held part of the line at Khe
Sanh, and performed very well there.)
However, during Tet '68 they seemed to pull together and fought well
against the attacks.  (ARVN units actually retook more of the territory
of Hue than Marines did, in fighting just as nasty as the Marines went
through.)
After Tet, a lot more South Vietnamese came off the fence and decided
that they really didn't want the North to come down and take them over,
enlistments in the Army went way up, training got a lot better, and the
general quality of the South's military began to improve noticeably in
'69-'71.  Of course, that was when the number of Americans serving up
front was declining all the time, so there weren't that many
opportunities for us to see the ARVN doing better.
By '72, when we were gone, the number of subpar units in the ARVN had
become a minority, and many units were excellent, their 1st Division for
one.  And when the Easter Invasion hit from the North, 200,000 NVA
regulars in several divisions, with 400 tanks, much better artillery than
we'd left for the ARVN, and AA missiles and guns to shoot down the
South's planes, they wound up in a series of large pitched battles that
were as intense but a lot longer lasting than any we ever fought.  The
siege of An Loc was a kind of ARVN Alamo, went on for weeks and weeks,
destroyed the city completely, but the cut off ARVN fought like tigers
and refused to surrender.  They stopped NVA tanks by jumping on them
under fire to stuff grenades in the view slits.  US Advisors were there
to witness it all, and there are some good books about it.
But of course by then the media (both US and international) didn't have
that much interest in what went on, there were very few reporters on the
ground any more, so the coverage of all this was minimal at best.
But by the final invasion of '75, with NVA forces twice as big as in '72,
superbly equipped and supplied from massive bases in Cambodia, the ARVN
were on limited fuel and ammo, half their tanks were down for repairs
that depended on spare parts they couldn't get any more, and they started
to fold under the blitzkrieg.  Their President made a poor decision to
start an unplanned retreat, and things when to hell in just a few days,
leading to the panic scenes of soldiers running after planes and hanging
onto chopper rails in Da Nang.  (What you didn't hear about were the
radio calls from VN Marine units in the hills, who never surrendered and
fought to the death.)
So it all went to pieces, but there were still some heavy duty battles,
such as the 18th Division under General Le Minh Dao at Xuan Loc holding
off three times their number of NVA and inflicting massive casualties on
them as they tried to get past them to Saigon.  Finally the NVA bypassed
them, and when ammo ran out, the General surrendered them and himself
(even though the US would have gotten him out), and he became one of the
longest prisoners of the war, 18 years in "re-education".
These are the things not many of us heard about, but in all fairness have
to take into account now.  I know personally more than a few South
Vietnamese veterans, who fought hard and have the wounds to prove it,
many of whom also spent a lot of time in the terrible camps after the
war, where the death rate was 30% from starvation, overwork, and disease.
They deserve our respect, and after all, they were our comrades in some
sense, who got left in the lurch when Congress cut off their critical
supplies and we broke the promise made at the Paris Accords to come to
their aid if there was an invasion again.
For anyone who doesn't know it, I go back to Viet Nam to help the
crippled ARVN vets who lead really tough lives there, still under laws
that discriminate against them, their kids, and grandkids.  Go to
www.thevhf.org if you have any interest in this.
Del

 For those who may want to look further about the ARVN, here’s some useful sources:

 - A bibliography, slightly dated 

 - Another overview of the evolution of the ARVN 

 - A fine book on the ARVN’s “Patton”

 - A critical look at the ARVN’s social difficulties, not battle worthiness, review by a professor at the US Air Command and Staff College 

 - Much valuable writings, photos, and links

- A promising new book on ARVN and US Marines prowess during the Easter Offensive of 1972 

 - The Battle of An Loc at Wikipedia

 - The fate of the ARVN soldiers post-1975

 - Jules Crittendon adds to this bibliography.   Thanks Jules.

Also, I just added in the Comments some emails I received from witnesses to performance of the ARVN.

Do “Democrats Present Hurdles for Obama,” or do basic truths?

Those who say they’re confused or that some issue is complex usually are avoiding seeing basic truths.  This is the case with health care “reform” and with the broader matter of government spending and regulation of the market economy.  In a big and fast-paced world, it’s difficult to cut through to root causes but basic truths still emerge and overcome the chatter clutter. 

For examples of basic truths:

-          Government spending is tilted toward social goals and shifting political power and its rewards moreso than productivity outcomes.

-          Taxes tend to reallocate resources from the private sectors’ productivity and personal choice goals toward the goals of the less productive.

-          Government debt costs and can tend to become excessive and crowd out other government and private social goals as well as basic responsibilities.

For example of how basic truths emerge:

It is now admitted by all but its fiercest partisans and flacks that the sort of health care reforms touted by Democrats in Washington will not trim overall costs.  It will increase national debts, and reallocate control of personal choices and of provider renumeration as to cause rationing and shortages of providers and access.  Polls demonstrate that most of the public is opposed to the details that have leaked from the closed doors in D.C. trying to come up with schemes.

Yet, the current Rasmussen poll still finds “50% of U.S. voters at least somewhat favor the Democrats’ health care reform plan, while 45% are at least somewhat opposed,” although the poll “question did not in any way describe the plan as it stands to date. It was simply presented as the health care reform proposed by President Obama and Congressional Democrats.”  The poll points at partisanship, and we may add hope, at cause of this survey result.

So, what is the result when hope meets reality, or basic truth?  The widely touted Massachusetts health plan offers insight.  Prior to its effective date, 67% of Massachussetians supported it.  Now, only 26% consider it a success.  What happened?  This heavily footnoted analysis sums up what happened:

When Massachusetts passed its pioneering health care reforms in 2006, critics warned that they would result in a slow but steady spiral downward toward a government-run health care system. Three years later, those predictions appear to be coming true:

 

• Although the state has reduced the number of residents without health insurance, 200,000 people remain uninsured. Moreover, the increase in the number of insured is primarily due to the state's generous subsidies, not the celebrated individual mandate.
  

   



• Health care costs continue to rise much faster than the national average. Since 2006, total state health care spending has increased by 28 percent. Insurance premiums have increased by 8–10 percent per year, nearly double the national average.
  

   



• New regulations and bureaucracy are limiting consumer choice and adding to health care costs.
  

   



• Program costs have skyrocketed. Despite tax increases, the program faces huge deficits. The state is considering caps on insurance premiums, cuts in reimbursements to providers, and even the possibility of a "global budget" on health care spending—with its attendant rationing.
  

   



• A shortage of providers, combined with increased demand, is increasing waiting times to see a physician.
  

   

With the "Massachusetts model" frequently cited as a blueprint for health care reform, it is important to recognize that giving the government greater control over our health care system will have grave consequences for taxpayers, providers, and health care consumers. That is the lesson of the Massachusetts model.

 

Massachussets is in a budget crisis, as most states, not helped by the far-above estimated costs of its health care law (see this July 2009 comprehensive services and costs analysis), requiring steep cuts in services and increases in taxes.   And, as Massachusetts’ Democrat Treasurer points out:

Cahill asserted that those whose legacies are tied to the healthcare initiative failed to take a hard look at the costs when the legislation passed several years ago and now are reluctant to cut costs. “If you’re going to bankrupt one group to help pay for another, at the end of the day we’re all poorer,’’ Cahill said.

For more basic truths, see: Top Ten Reasons For ObamaCare Are Based On False Information

 

Making statistically valid generalizations about 1/6^th of the US economy, health care, is difficult, at best, beyond saying we spend a lot.  Even that generalization is suspect when viewed against what we get and what we can afford.  When one disaggregates, focusing on specific elements, it’s even more difficult.  There’s usually inadequate data, and erroneous or politically misleading conclusions drawn.  But, as witness the House yesterday narrowly passing a 1300-page cap-and-trade energy bill, without even reading it, to regulate and tax almost the entire US economy, facts are easily left behind in favor of political power seeking and arm-twisting payoffs to individual legislators and their contributors.

So, let’s get real.

Tom Bevan, founder-editor of daily must-read RealClearPolitics, today writes “Busting the Administrative Cost Benefit Myth,” that a government-run plan would save spending by cutting administrative costs, based on a Heritage Foundation paper that “Medicare Administrative Costs Are Higher, Not Lower, Than for Private Insurance.”  In short, because each Medicare claim is for a much higher amount than each private insurance claim, the percent of the dollar amount of total claims for mostly fixed administrative costs is lower in Medicare.  If considered, instead, on administrative cost per number of claims processed, Medicare’s admin costs are higher than in private insurance.

The former head of Medicare and Medicaid and former US assistant secretary of health recently, similarly, took on this administrative cost myth in the Wall Street Journal, asking and answering “Is Government Health Insurance Cheap?”

But the comparison between public and private plans is a false comparison. Private insurance and public benefits are not the same business. For all its warts, private insurance tries to manage care. Medicare is mostly about paying the bills presented to it….

First, private insurers must build provider networks. These networks can include high-value providers and exclude low-quality providers. Except for certain circumstances, including criminal acts, Medicare is forbidden from excluding poor quality providers. It lets in everyone who signs up. So one question to ask is, will the public plan have Medicare's indifference to quality -- or invest in the cost of a network?

Second, private insurers must negotiate rates. Medicare just fixes prices using a statutory and regulatory scheme. And anyone who imagines a public plan would be less costly than private plans must keep the following issue front and center: In the many procedure categories where Medicare's statutory price does not cover full provider costs, shortfalls are shifted to private payers who end up subsidizing the public program. So, will a public plan negotiate rates or simply use fiat as a means of gaining subsidies from private insurance?

Third, private insurers must combat fraud -- or go out of business. Indeed, these payers have every incentive to invest in antifraud personnel and strategies down to the point where return and investment are equal. But anyone who thinks that a public plan could serve as a "yardstick" for the private sector needs to consider Medicare's dismal record with regard to fraud, waste and other abuse….

Fourth, private insurers must incur the administrative cost of marketing. Medicare, of course, does not need to market. A public plan competing with other alternatives would have to market itself to the public, and this means tax dollars used to advertise against private plans. Or the public plan could "compete" by using heavily subsidized marketing channels not available to private insurers, such as Social Security mailings, welfare offices, unemployment check stuffers, and the constellation of government-funded "advocacy organizations."  

No, not really.  But, maybe figuratively.

President Obama refused to meet with the representative of the imprisoned in Cuba winners of the National Endowment for Democracy's annual Democracy Award as Presidents Clinton and Bush had others during their terms in office, or even issue a statement until the editors of the Washington Post chided him. 

Message to Cuba's democratic opposition: We don't have time for you….They, like the beleaguered pro-democracy movements of Venezuela and Nicaragua, are hoping that the American president will focus his policy on supporting them. Yet for now, Mr. Obama's diplomacy is clearly centered on their oppressors.

 

We should have been warned during the campaign by Obama’s passivity toward the Russian invasion of Georgia that he’d continue it toward Latin America’s and now Iran’s oppressors.

Another clue comes from that the image of Che Guevara, icon to ignorant T-shirt wearers as a symbol of change rather than as a psychopathic murderer, served as the model for the Obama campaign’s “Change” poster.  This T-shirt contest melded the two.

The reviewer of Theodore Draper’s seminal 1965 tome on Castro’s Revolution, in the left-leaning New York Review Of Books no less, pointed out how this psychology works, prescient to President Obama formatively molded by the moral myopia behind the Che iconography:  

There is in the United States a school of thought which refuses to recognize that the anti-American policies of a foreign ruler might be motivated by anything so crude as a desire to increase his own power at the expense of the United States. They fail to understand that even in the unlikely event of Washington never making a foreign policy mistake, the sheer wealth and power of the United States would still inevitably arouse the antagonism and cupidity of some. Their invariable explanation for the hostility of a foreign ruler is that the U.S. must have made a mistake—and in their view, it is always the same mistake: lack of trust in that ruler's good intentions, misinterpretation of his legitimate measures of self-defense, and unwillingness to assist him in the promotion of his social reforms. In each individual case, the argument appears convincing to many people. One has to hear it repeated over and over again on different occasions to realize the utter innocence of the underlying assumption—namely that the Stalins, Maos, Khrushchevs, Castros of this world are benevolent, peaceloving social reformers who would be happy to concentrate on raising the living standard of their peoples if only wicked Uncle Sam and his gang of reactionary allies would permit them to do so.

As Wikipedia describes the Eagles’ “Hotel California”:

"The song's lyrics describe the title establishment as a luxury resort where 'you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.'  On the surface, the song tells the tale of a weary traveler who becomes trapped in a nightmarish luxury hotel that at first appeared inviting and tempting."

When I was a boy, the populations of New York and California were about equal.  The taxpayer and sane-unfriendly policies of New York led to its decline, as people flocked to the Golden State, California’s population now more than double New York’s.  Now, the gold is severely tarnished. The supposedly “something for nothing” policies that pander to the poorer, illegal immigrants, the S.F and L.A. liberal elites, envirocrazies, and unions, all at the expense of taxpayers and business, has led to an exodus of born Americans and industry to other states.  Like New York, California is near bankrupt and its dominant power-brokers refuse to wake up.

California voters just roundly rejected the Democrat-Schwarzenegger phony fixes.  So, now, as reported from Sacramento, there’s a standoff in which the Democrats continue to peddle phony fixes.  Schwarzenegger seems to be refinding some sobriety, but as Sacramento’s top columnist narrates, the gimmicks are a joke.

"And the key thing," Schwarzenegger said, "is now to just really make sure they don't come up with one-time solutions, because even if you go and withhold your taxes, it's a one-time solution. Or if you go and move the date of paying your paychecks from June 30th to July 1st, to kick it over to the next fiscal year, that's a one-time solution. It doesn't help you in the out years."

 A smart-aleck journalist – this one, in fact – quickly reminded the governor that his budget also contains "one-time solutions," such as forcing taxpayers to speed up payments to the state.

"Absolutely correct," the governor conceded. "And what we don't want to do is add to those."

"So it's all right if you do it but not all right if they do it?" yours truly persisted.

 

Democrats rant against California Prop 13, that limits property taxes, and the 2/3rds rule in the legislature, that limits Democrat majorities.  San Diego Union-Tribune  newspaper editorial board member Chris Reed, sets them straight: California property taxes since 1980 have “gone up 84 percent faster than combined inflation and population growth;”  without the 2/3rds rule California would “see an enormous range of tax hikes -- not budget restraint or cuts -- whenever deficits emerged,” as in New York. The New York Times describes the many instances of unions, aside from using their power over the California and New York legislatures to protect their profligate benefits, using their political power to self-servingly increase the costs of “green” power.

Former NYC Mayor Rudolph Guiliani op-eds in today's New York Times that New York needs a 2/3rds rule, like California’s.

SUPERMAJORITY FOR TAX INCREASES Too often increasing taxes is the first impulse for Albany legislators. Requiring a supermajority for tax increases would provide a powerful check on those who still think we can tax and spend our way out of economic problems. A supermajority would protect already over-burdened citizens and attract businesses, improving our long-term competitiveness.

Hmmm!  A 2/3rds rule for Congress, House and Senate, wouldn’t eliminate budget battles but might slow down the fast-Barack haste to tax and spend the rest of America into California and New York’s bankruptcy.

Whoops!  The Wall Street Journal reminds me, I missed New Jersey.

The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll appears more honest in demographics and political leanings of respondents than the one with slanted political-affiliation respondents that the New York Times-CBS tried to slip past us over the weekend.  Simply, there’s justified concern over the costs of healthcare but more concern over losing the healthcare we now have or the government dictating it.  President Obama remains popular, but his policy is bad medicine.   

As this poll sums up:

A majority of Americans see government action as critical to controlling runaway health-care costs, but there is broad public anxiety about the potential impact of reform legislation and conflicting views about the types of fixes being proposed on Capitol Hill… Most respondents are "very concerned" that health-care reform would lead to higher costs, lower quality, fewer choices, a bigger deficit, diminished insurance coverage and more government bureaucracy. About six in 10 are at least somewhat worried about all of these factors, underscoring the challenges for lawmakers as they attempt to restructure the nation's $2.3 trillion health-care system.

 

Part of the reason so many are nervous about future changes is a fear they may lose what they currently have. More than eight in 10 said they are satisfied with the quality of care they now receive and relatively content with their own current expenses, and worry about future rising costs cuts across party lines and is amplified in the weak economy….

 

Beyond general backing for governmental action, a few specific provisions under consideration on Capitol Hill receive significant levels of public support, including higher taxes on households with incomes above $250,000, a limit on medical malpractice amounts and, under certain conditions, a law requiring all Americans to carry health insurance. A large majority, 70 percent, opposes a new federal tax on employer-paid health insurance benefits that exceed $17,000 a year.

 

Majority support for certain new government action, however, does not come with high hopes: Half of all Americans said they think the quality of their health care will stay about the same if the system changes, and 31 percent expect it to deteriorate.

The poll data is available here.  Here’s part of the data below:

When I was a boy, my father would pile me in the Hudson and drive around the country.  He'd been a tool and die maker since WWII, machining the precision equipment that produced America's plenty.  We'd stop at factories and ask for a tour, which the men who labored there were all too pleased to provide.  Ah, memories.

Last Sunday, the boys and I spent a wonderful day at the Antique Gas & Steam Engine Museum in Vista, CA, north San Diego County.  (Website www.agsem.com) On 50-acres are gathered the restored and waiting to be restored machines that powered America becoming the breadbasket that fed its other workers and the world.

The boys' fun began before we left the driveway.  Captured, bagged and moved to our more rural destination.

Here's a field of oldies.

A highlight was the hour-long parade of machines.  A steamroller leads the way.

That's a tractor pulling a bailer.

The Clampetts were there, too.

Jason stands by as a seasoned former farmer and mechanic instructs Gavin in how to run this old wood burning steamer.

For reference to size of this fuel-burning baby, Jason is almost 5' tall.

Jason instructs Gavin in the finer points of this replacement for pulling a plow.

The boys got to ride all over the 50-acres on a 1940's Farmall like this one.

There was stuff for the ladies to do, like these early clothes washing machines.

This one brought back memories, tractor mobile USMC artillery.

And the visit ended with the most scrumptious home-made peach pie, a la mode of course, served up by farm ladies, who gave seconds to the boys.

A wonderful Fathers Day, and memorable to the boys.