Letter 2 America for August 9, 2013

Dear America,

It appears that the lessons of President Obama's first term weren't lost on him.  On the domestic scene, we have the impending debt ceiling fight looming above our weak economic recovery like a dark cloud, and the Republicans in the House of Representatives in particular are rattling their sabers again.  After two prior such campaigns, the Republicans getting what they wanted in each of them though both sides described the outcomes as compromises, The President seems to be saying out loud that he isn't going to play that game again.  He has not only said that there won't be any quid pro quo for an increase in the ceiling--a non-event in previous political eras--but that he won't even discuss it.  He has learned that the outcome of negotiations with a Republican Party that won't compromise is that the Republican Party, and its conservative wing in particular, wins, even if not completely.  They get some of what they want if not all of it, and the Democrats look to their constituents like wizened old hacks, which many of them are.  This new resolve on President Obama's part may actually revitalize the Democratic Party, and that would be a positive development from the perspective of progressives and liberals, among whom I count myself.  Just as in the Clinton years, The President is saying that it is the Republicans who are threatening to shut down the government by refusing to raise the money necessary to operate it, not the Democrats who are refusing to submit to partisan extortion.  The standoff may not end too well in that there could be at least a temporary cessation of some of the governmental activities that make this country run smoothly, but the blame will be squarely and aptly placed on the Republicans by the electorate, and that is as it should be.  But the domestic scene is not the only area in which fortitude is the new presidential modus operandi.

After more than a decade of policies that led to near permanent ensnarement in the politics of inherently unstable nations, we are finally acting prudently.  It appears that the Assad regime in Syria will survive the rebellion against it, though at great cost in human life and suffering.  But instead of rushing in unilaterally as we did in Iraq and Afghanistan, we are taking a place alongside the other nations of the world and waiting for consensus rather than forcing our political will on anyone.  And the prudence of that policy is manifested in the current condition of Libya.  It appears uncertain whether that nation will turn toward western style democracy or will rather opt for a more fundamentalist, Muslim theocratic form of social organization.  And a peremptory American policy of intervention would not have changed that fact.  After more than a decade in Afghanistan and also in Iraq, where we still have troops though we no longer fight battles there,  the best we can claim for our efforts is Pyrrhic victory, and the ultimate outcome of each of those two wars is far from certain.  So, following the Libyan policy model in Syria rather than the Afghanistan-Iraq unilateral interventionist model seems to have been by far the more prudent choice, and President Obama made it.

And now there is the Edward Snowden affair.  I am not sure how I feel about what he did; his disclosure of NSA intelligence activities could be whistle blowing, but it could also be treason. And for the benefit of our society at large, for posterity, that disparity has to be resolved.  There is too much at stake to allow for politicization of the issue, and it seems to me that the only way to resolve it is with a trial.  But now Russia has given Snowden asylum as if he were indisputably a political refugee being persecuted for his beliefs.  In response, the Obama administration has cancelled a scheduled "summit meeting," that is a meeting of the two undisputed leaders of the nations involved, in protest of Vladimir Putin's decision to afford that status to Snowden.  Of course all this begs the question of what we would have done if Snowden had been a Russian seeking asylum in the United States, but we returned Elian Gonzalez to Cuba, so the issue is at least open to debate.  And as to the Russian policy of not just declining to assist rebels in Syria but abetting the Assad regime by providing heavy armaments and technology for Assad's use in his effort to survive as a despot, it is just one more thorn in the American national side, and there are others, so the rebuff of Putin is well in line with what caused it.  But the Obama administration is also taking on the Israelis, who have been acting with impunity on the issue of settlement of the West Bank of the Jordan River for nearly fifty years.  The international consensus is growing, and it is generally opposed to such settlements not just as an issue of international law, but as a moral issue as well.  And in the past, American policy would have been to stand staunchly on Israel's side, virtually no matter what it did, but President Obama has shown a more circumspect attitude on Israel and has demonstrated that he is unwilling to give it carte blanche, at least not on the settlement issue. The virtue of his parsing of American foreign policy is that it gives us flexibility when it comes to deciding when to vest American resources in resolving issues either peacefully or by armed conflict, which in turn leaves us free to repudiate autocrats whether they are on our side or not.  That flexibility is a sine qua non for rationality and sound judgment as well as morality in American international behavior, and President Obama is making it possible, perhaps for the first time since we became a world power, and certainly for the first time since we became the only world "superpower" remaining.  I like the way this is going, this second term.  I just hope he keeps it up.

Your friend,

Mike