That "Unprecedented" Letter from the Republican Senators to Iran

Over the weekend, I had a liberal acquaintance link the following image on her Facebook:

And while I normally have a great deal of tolerance to publicly post ideas I disagree with, this one bothered me, specifically because I happen to know a bit of history about this very question.

You see, during the Carter Administration, the President (through his State Department) negotiated a treaty with the Soviets.  The name of this treaty was the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty II Treaty of 1979 (more commonly known by the acronym SALT II).  And, generally speaking, the treaty was pretty bad for the US.  It committed us to limitations in the very systems most feared by the Soviets, and in return they "promised" to limit the same classes of weapons (which they lacked the technology to duplicate on the scale we had).  Before ratification before the Senate occurred, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.  So the Senate balked.  And in 1986, they flat out repudiated the treaty, and it was dead.

So, what would happen if 47 Senators told the "Russians" that they "shouldn't trust us" because we "wouldn't keep our end of the deal?"  Well, I don't know about the exact number of Senators that killed SALT II (but I do know that it was Democrats who held the majority in the Senate in 1986, so that should tell you how bad the deal was), so it may not have been 47.  And they didn't tell the "Russians" since it was actually the Soviet Union back then.  And as for "they shouldn't trust us" I think the author is saying that "we won't ratify this piece of dreck" is saying "not to trust us" because we "wouldn't keep our end of the deal", but if that's how the Iranian theocratic dictators want to take it, I don't really care.

So I basically summarized all this, linked to the details of the treaty and called it a day.  Strangely, no debate followed.  I guess pithy quips via image macro are only so clever when there's no competing history to refute them.

Yeoman Farmers

It used to be when a Kennedy would marry, we'd get a whole set of stories about how they were "American royalty," and this wedding was therefore somewhat like the marriage of prince so-and-so to some duchess or other.

Nobody anywhere thinks that about Dakota Meyer marrying Bristol Palin. Dakota Meyer has a better claim to the virtue of courage, at least, than any prince I can think of who has lived since the Hundred Years War; Palin is certainly from a family of high political connections among a certain political party. Yet I think it's fair to say that no one would mistake them for royalty.

Even better, no one would mistake them for people with aspirations toward being royalty. That's the real difference.

That no one would make the comparison might be a way in which some people look down on them as not being fit for membership in the aristocracy. That they would be horrified by the comparison says something about their own character. The something said is deeply American.

Good luck to a young couple. Marriage is hard, but it can be wonderful.

Why Our Enemies Are Doing Well

The answer is straightforward:

* Social insularity: Our leaders know fellow insiders around the world; our enemies know everyone else.

* The mandarin’s distaste for physicality: We are led through blood-smeared times by those who’ve never suffered a bloody nose.

* And last but not least, bad educations in our very best schools: Our leadership has been educated in chaste political theory, while our enemies know, firsthand, the stuff of life.

...

[W]hen new blood does enter — through those same “elite” institutions — it’s channeled into the same old calcium-clogged arteries. And we get generals with Ivy League Ph.D.s writing military doctrine that adheres cringingly to politically correct truisms and leaves out the very factors, such as the power of religion or ethnic hatred, that prove decisive. Or a usually astute commentator on Eastern European affairs who dismisses Vladimir Putin as a mere chinovnik, a petty bureaucrat, since Putin was only a lieutenant colonel in the KGB when the Soviet Union collapsed and didn’t go to a Swiss prep school like John Kerry.

That analyst overlooked the fact that Hitler had been a mere lance corporal. Stalin was a failed seminarian. Lenin was a destitute syphilitic. Ho Chi Minh washed dishes in the basement of a Paris Hotel. And when the French Revolution erupted, Napoleon was a junior artillery officer.

Certainly it's the weak and the poor who have the most interest in overturning any given system. But Peters, though not wrong, has only half the answer. The problem isn't just that the elite is both insular and so detached from the real world as to be largely immune to the pain their bad decisions cause. That's true, but it's not the whole truth.

The other half of the problem is the old problem of scale. We talk about this here often under the heading of Schumpeter's economic principle; it's more familiar to military science as the OODA loop. Our institutions are so large and so intricate in their approval chains that there's a huge advantage in terms of how fast a decision can be made and acted upon for streamlined organizations. Putin just issues orders, after all. ISIS isn't very big. USEUCOM or USCENTCOM has to socialize a plan among all their staff sections, who reach down to subordinate commands for input and then hash out a plan among themselves before they present it to their general. Most likely, he will need to push that plan up to the Pentagon if it represents a radical change to existing strategy. They have their own process before an answer comes back down, and the easiest answer is to push the suspense for the decision to the right while we ask a few more people. If the change requires a change from an interagency partner, their bureaucracies have to get involved too.

Even if the President were replaced with someone with new-blood ideas and the will to enact them, the bureaucracy would still have to go through at least a basic staffing process to ensure that it carried out the decisions in an orderly fashion. Because the bureaucrats are part of the existing order, there will be many who drag their feet or otherwise resist firm leadership (remember the CIA's campaign of leaks to the press about Bush's programs?).

In the absence of firm leadership from a President with such ideas, the system is almost too ossified to move at all. This is a real issue even for those leaders who are correctly motivated and trying to do the right thing.

What has to be done to address these challenges is to create a new way of responding to them -- one that isn't part of the bureaucracy, and that doesn't answer to it. A lot of the success of the special operations community comes from the fact that it operates on a much shorter chain. Were Congress to issue a letter of marque to a private organization tasked with fighting ISIS, that organization could act with Congressional authorization without any need to be directed by the State Department or the other executive bureaucracies at all.

It's absolutely true that we need new blood from outside of this elite, people who are more familiar with and in more direct contact with real life. We also need for them to be able to move fast and hard. They need to be able to make a call and make it happen with the same speed that our enemies can leverage. Otherwise, even our great strength and wealth will but little avail us.

Hardest quiz ever

I've never done this badly on an internet quiz before: only 50%.

A higher authority

The White House is taking that letter more seriously than I expected:

Sure, it’s tasteless for the American president to go over the heads of the American legislative body and appeal to an unelected council of international diplomats in order to outmaneuver his domestic opposition. This kind of behavior is also precisely what the American people have come to expect from Barack Obama.

Scots Magic

A joke I heard today:

An Englishman and a Scotsman go to a pastry shop.
The Englishman whisks three cookies into his pocket with lightning speed.
The baker doesn't notice.
The Englishman says to the Scotsman:
"You see how clever we are? You'll never beat that!"
The Scotsman says to the Englishman:
"Watch this, a Scotsman is always cleverer than an Englishman."
He says to the baker,
"Give me a cookie, I can show you a magic trick!"
The baker gives him the cookie which the Scotsman promptly eats.
Then he says to the baker:
"Give me another cookie for my magic trick."
The baker is getting suspicious but he gives it to him. He eats this one too.
Then he says again:
"Give me one more cookie... "
The baker is getting angry now but gives him one anyway. The Scotsman eats this one too.
Now the baker is really mad, and he yells:
"And where is your famous magic trick?"
The Scotsman says:
"Look in the Englishman's pocket!"

Honor and Food

As I assume is well known to readers here, in the United States Marine Corps it is a standard that leaders do not eat until their men are fed. This is a point of honor, because honor is sacrifice of your interests for the good of others in your community. The leader occupies a position of honor, which means that when there is a sacrifice to be made, it properly belongs to him to be the one who makes it. The leader sees that those under his command are fed first, and only then takes time -- if there is time -- to eat himself.

So I read with interest this article about an attempt to re-invigorate traditional Japanese foodways, in which the person in the position of honor also has a duty related to the order of the eating of food. It's just that it's the opposite order:

“The principal is the first person to eat lunch,” says Masahiro Oji, director of the Ministry of Education’s School Health Education Division. “If he gets sick none of the rest of the food gets served."

Different practical concerns prompt a different order, but the deeper issue is the same.

That Glow

Way back in 2004, Newsweek writer Evan Thomas admitted that "the media ... wants Kerry to win. They're going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic .... There’s going to be this glow about them ... that’s going to be worth maybe 15 points."

Apparently their relationship to Hillary Clinton is slightly different.

Sleeping Dogs

Apparently in China, they should be left lying.

No Progress

Grim's Hall, 2008:

I looked up the definition for "sexism" today, and I find that it is defined as "the sense that one sex is inferior to, or more valuable than, the other." We have a number of ways of expressing the same concept: "male chauvanism" or "female chauvanism," "misogyny," and so forth.

What we don't appear to have is a way of expressing a concept that recognizes the real differences between the sexes in a way that honors them. As far as I know, there is no word in the language for a "a sense that though the sexes are genuinely different, both are necessary and valuable." That is to say, we have a lot of ways of describing a problem, but we have no way of talking about the solution.

I've tried to use the term "chivalry" in this context -- that men should regard women, though different, as wonderful and valuable, and should take care to listen to their concerns and help make a world in which they feel welcome.

Two things happened when I did that, which point up the severity of the problem. The first is that it was pointed out to me, by a well-meaning and kind-hearted woman, that I was offering good advice to men, but nothing for women. If "chivalry" is right for men, what is the female version of recognizing the differences between themselves and men, honoring men, and trying to make a world in which we also feel welcome and valued? I have no answer to that question: there is no word I know of that applies.

The other thing that happened was that certain feminists received my use of "chivalry" as a sort of code-word for male chauvanism.

The Daily Mail, today:

They found men whose answers led to them being classed as benevolently sexist smiled more while playing the quiz game and chatting. They were more patient while waiting for their female partners to answer the trivia questions and warmer, friendlier and chattier than those who were hostile sexists... Study co-author Jin Goh said: 'Benevolent sexist men hold women in high regard and are willing to sacrifice themselves to save and protect women.

So, OK. Let's ask the same questions. What is the female version of what is on display in men seeing women as valuable, listening to their advice as a civilizing influence (an impulse rather unfairly degraded by being phrased as "putting on a pedestal"), and trying to do right by them and show them that they are safe and welcome in public places?

And why should we receive men who do it as bad? There are some senses of the word "strong" in which women are stronger than men. There are others, including the most fundamental sense, in which this is not the case. That fact is a fact simply: can't we be honest about it? Can't we show each other honor while recognizing each other's imperfections? If we can't acknowledge the truth about each other's imperfections without failing some assumed duty of respect, talk about putting on a pedestal!

Can't Wait For The Hillary Presidency

The main piece of news to emerge from the session was her confusingly worded disclosure that she has already deleted the emails that she believes are no one’s business but her own.

Go to hell is not typically a sentiment expressed by politicians on the brink of a presidential campaign. But in Hillary Clinton’s case, it reflects a sincerely held belief[.]

OK, So We Can't Make "Treason" Stick...

...how about the Logan Act?

...critically, the citizen must act “without authority of the United States.” Although most assume that means without authority of the Executive Branch, the Logan Act itself does not specify what this term means, and the State Department told Congress in 1975 that “Nothing in section 953 . . . would appear to restrict members of the Congress from engaging in discussions with foreign officials in pursuance of their legislative duties under the Constitution.” That doesn’t mean Members would have immunity under the Constitution’s Speech and Debate Clause; it just means the statute would arguably not apply in the first place. Combined with the rule of lenity and the constitutional concerns identified below, it seems likely that contemporary and/or future courts would interpret this provision to not apply to such official communications from Congress....

Finally, as Peter noted yesterday, the Logan Act has never been successfully used (indeed, the last indictment under the Act was in–not a typo–1803). Although most assume this is just a practical obstacle to a contemporary prosecution, it’s worth reminding folks about “desuetude”–the legal doctrine pursuant to which statutes (especially criminal ones) may lapse if they are never enforced[.]

There's a long history here.

In 1970, as an inactive Naval Reserve Officer, Kerry traveled to Paris and talked with North Vietnamese government officials. He even stated later to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that “I realize that even my visits in Paris,” Kerry testified, “are on the borderline of private individuals negotiating.” He got it wrong there too. Again the Logan Act does not differentiate between public or private individual. It's pretty clear on the "any" part.

That one really was treason in the aid-and-comfort sense, coming from a military officer at a time when we were deployed at war against the very people with whom he was publicly negotiating, but the man went on to a long career in the Senate and now holds the position of Secretary of State.

Small is Beautiful

The polling did not just show the lack of faith in national institutions and leadership; it also shows that people increasingly feel that the best solutions for the country's problems will come from local communities, state governments, and institutions. Sixty-nine percent of respondents said that state and local institutions—from governments to businesses to community groups and volunteers—offer the best new ideas because they were closer to the problems, more adaptable, and had a greater stake in finding solutions. Just 22 percent of respondents thought the federal government and big business were better equipped to solve the country's challenges.

To varying degrees, that attitude remained constant across gender lines, age, race, and party affiliation—reflecting respondents' strong preference for state and local institutions and solutions.... It shows the extent to which people across demographic groups are turning away from the federal government[.]

The Federal government can still do some useful things. It just shouldn't try to do so many things that are better left to smaller governments. State and local governments can often represent a community with a sort of consensus about what should be done, or about what's important or best in life.

The Federal government has to represent a vast number of communities, and Americans simply no longer share a set of common values across the population. As the diversity of the American community grows, the government will either have to become less powerful or less legitimate. Put another way, the Federal government can either let powers pass to smaller communities that can honestly represent the will of the people, or it will have to use increasing amounts of force and compulsion to impose a view without broad support.

I still think the 10th Amendment more or less gets this right: outside of specifically delegated powers, the Federal government should draw back and leave things to the states. We should reconsider the amendments after the original Bill of Rights insofar as they expand Federal power beyond that original allocation, or serve to limit the power of the states vis-à-vis the Federal government. We should encourage a rollback of Federal laws accordingly.

Win Small, Lose Big

A Small Victory:

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) said it will not seek to issue a final framework for the rule “at this time” after receiving more than 80,000 comments on the proposal, the “vast majority” of which were negative.

A Huge Loss:

Regulators won a big victory at the Supreme Court on Monday as the justices endorsed expansive powers for changing the interpretation of federal rules. The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that federal agencies do not have to follow procedures for notifying the public and collecting comment when changing the interpretations of rules, effectively removing steps from the process that can take months and sometimes years to complete.

So the next time there won't be 80,000 negative comments on a proposed rule change. There will just be a rule change. If you're lucky, you'll find out after the fact. If not, you'll find yourself in violation of a law that "changed." Like magic.

Definition of a problem

As permaculturist Joel Salatin likes to say, sometimes a problem is just a system that worked well but was split into two systems that created seemingly intractable problems.  His example is barren fields and toxic feedlots, as opposed to fields well composted with animal manure.  The "bike desk" is an invention meant to take two problems and combine them into a solution:  people spend too much time inert in front of desks, and it takes a lot of energy to power their desktop toys.

Traitors!

The NY Daily News goes all-out.

Do these people think Americans owe a personal duty of loyalty to the President? That Congress is not a co-equal branch of government structurally designed to counterbalance the Executive, but rather a subordinate branch of government?

No wonder Congress so rarely tells the truth. First honest thing they've said in months, and look how people react.

Right to Work

"Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests." - United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 23.4.

Scott Walker signs the Right To Work law in Wisconsin.

Nobody's saying you can't form a trade union. They're just saying you can't force people to join it. If you can deliver on your promises to improve pay and working conditions in a serious way, you can probably get people to sign on. Unions did this for years. Yes, it's harder to do it this way than with a rule that requires workers to join your union; yes, it's harder to do it this way than with rules forbidding the company from hiring scabs. But you can still do it, if you devote yourself to providing returns for the workers who pay dues. You can still make your case to the people, too, who may refuse to cross a picket line if they agree you are being shabbily treated.

It was too easy for a long time. Many unions did badly by their members, and devoted themselves to power and corruption instead of helping their own loyally as the first priority. If you want to survive, you'll have to get back to what made unions strong in the first place.

Wikipedia says that "scabs" in this context dates to the Elizabethan era, by the way. I had no idea.

For Eric Blair

A Roman cavalry project along Hadrian's wall.

Pen and Phone

People are really mad about this letter to Iran.

But to directly communicate with a foreign power in order to undermine ongoing negotiations? That is appalling. And just imagine what those same Republicans would have said if Democratic senators had tried such a thing when George W. Bush was president.

Yeah, good thing nothing like that ever happened.

Bear in mind this was not an official trip to Europe and the Middle East. Kerry was not visiting as a representative of the United States Government. He was in no way commissioned by the executive branch to negotiate alliances with foreign countries. So what was he doing there?

What, never? Well, hardly ever.

[Senator] Obama has built much of his campaign for the Presidency on the fact that he has been against the war in Iraq from the very beginning and would demand an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq were he to be elected President. Yet, on his first trip to Iraq recently, he is alleged to have attempted to negotiate a delay in troop withdrawal from Iraq....

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari reports that Obama made his ‘demands’ the central focus of their talks while he was in Iraq.
“He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington,” Zebari said in an interview.

Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops – and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its “state of weakness and political confusion.”

But that's just a tu quoque; to stand on it would be an informal fallacy. So let's give a positive argument.

Article I of the US Constitution gives Congress the following powers related to foreign policy, none of which are subject to checks and balances from Article II.

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises...

To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;

To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States...

To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water[.]

In addition to that, Congress has the power to raise and order all the armed forces of the United States, checked by the President's commanding of those powers.

The President's powers to conduct foreign policy are all checked by the Congress. Treaties require the advice and consent of a supermajority of the Senate. Appointing ambassadors requires advice and consent. Commanding the armed forces at war, in theory if less in practice lately, requires Congressional consent to having a war.

I say 'in theory if less in practice lately' with Obama's Libyan adventure especially in mind. The President has frequently acted as if the Constitutional checks on his power did not exist. Similarly, he has ignored his oath to faithfully enforce the laws that Congress has enacted whenever he sees fit to do so, not just in the recent 'executive amnesty' but by directing those under his direct control not to enforce laws nor to defend certain laws in court when they came under challenge.

Why should he not expect the Congress to respond in kind, and to wield its 'pen and phone' authority with as little regard for him as he has shown for them?

If he wants a new atmosphere of comity and cooperation with the Congress, the ball is very much in his court.

Today's Quiz: Are You A Socialist?

It's the Socialist Worker's quiz, so they'd like to convince you that the answer is "yes." But they had to admit that, for me, the answer is "no."

There's a weird throwaway question about the US military being a force for good in the world, which of course it is -- but that's not really a socialism issue, is it? I wondered if it might be a trick question, since some people sometimes argue that the military is the most socialist part of the United States. (It's not a very good argument.)

Partly the problem is that the quiz runs things together that don't belong together. Do I think that schools, clean water, and hospitals should never be run for profit? Well, no; but I also think that there's a huge difference between "schools," "hospitals," and "clean water." To me, that's not a category of things that should be run for the common good instead of private interest; it's an ascending scale. I don't think I'd ever be annoyed at someone for starting a private school, even if they charged a fortune for attendance. We've just seen an argument from Tex that it can make really good sense to run a private hospital business alongside a public one. Even if we agree that we should provide some sort of public access to health care, that doesn't imply that every hospital should be nonprofit.

There are several things about water that make it a stronger case for a public approach. In a city, the infrastructure concerns are going to mean that you'll almost certainly get a monopoly, and monopolies are problematic. We often address them with public regulation. Too, even in rural areas where people have wells, the nature of water means that the water table under your house is the same one your neighbor is pulling from. Let's say that you had a neighbor who came in, dug a well, and began bottling and selling the water to such a degree that everyone began having trouble getting water. Your wells might even go dry, but he can dig a deeper one with the profits from the water he sold after sucking it out of the same water table you were using. When dealing with these kinds of issues, at least some democratic controls on the market activity often make good sense.