Somehow, I've managed to lure another human being into contributing to my blog.
Welcome Will!
Will has a whole host of interesting stories and perspectives to share. A smart and hilarious guy, Im sure we'll all enjoy him!
Be sure to check out his other blog, Aut Pax Aut Bellum http://wgunn.blogspot.com/, for everything from epic sandwiches to politics.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Tax Racket
Before we head into the New Year, I wanted a chance to discuss the recently approved Tax Compromise that will take effect on January 1st. I’ve also been dying to put in my two cents since the new tax code was approved in mid-December. First, to get a side-by-side comparison of how each of the different tax plans would have affected you personally, I highly suggest going to www.mytaxburden.org to view and understand what perspective you’re coming from before reading on. It may have an influence on your opinion – it did mine.
Let me begin by saying there are both good and bad things about the new tax policy. However, I’d separate the good things into a short-term category, and the bad things into a long-term category so considering that tax codes are re-written every two years anyhow, the fact that the negative implications are far greater and will affect us fiscally as a nation for a longer period of time, concerns me.
1. Extending the tax cuts currently in place simply perpetuates the status quo.
There are two levels to view this on – how it will affect you personally, and how it is going to affect our overall economic situation. I can’t speak for the former but as for the latter, I’ll ask this, “How’s that workin’ out for ya?” In no complex terms, we’ve already tried this voodoo economics, trickle-down, fiscal bunk and it hasn’t worked! Corporations have posted record (and by record, I mean biggest ever since we’ve been recording these things) quarterly profits in three out of the four quarters of this year. So the first half of the plan worked; the tax cuts gave corporations the money they needed to hire more workers. However, the trickier and more important aspect, the actual jobs, never came. Very little explanation, no recovery. And this is the situation we’re willing to propagate?
If nothing changes, nothing changes. Come this time next year we’ll be no better off than we are today.
2. The spending/borrowing the US will have to do to pay for these tax cuts ensures that job-creating legislation, such as the infrastructure bill due to hit the floor early next year, will be blocked on the basis of cost. Aka – we’ve already spent all our money.
It is not new news to most of us that the US is falling behind in our infrastructure and that goes far beyond the maintenance of our current system. China, along with other countries, is revolutionizing how its people and more importantly, products, are getting around. Not only is it an excellent way to increase business efficiency, it’s one of the best job-creators available. Providing far more bang for our buck than a tax cut, these projects would employ thousands American workers and as most building material is fabricated, manufactured, and sold domestically, would provide local stimulus as well.
American schools are also in dire need of some Federal attention. We need an overhaul in curriculum, equipment, and technology. It is almost impossible to list the reasons why this is so critically important. One day, these kids whose education has been passed over time and time again in favor of short term political gains, will be the ones making Medicare decisions for all of us. That alone should be reason enough to ensure that they are, in the very least, decently educated.
3. Since the compromise will have to be approved again at the end of next year and again in 2012, tax policy is going to take center stage in political and presidential campaigns for the next two years, taking the focus away from jobs and the economy as a whole.
This, in my opinion, is one of the worst consequences of the tax compromise. Allowing these tax cuts to expire again in two years is certain to dominate the majority of the presidential campaigns and, let’s face it, probably half of 2011. While I agree that tax policy is extraordinarily important (clearly important enough to write a diatribe on the subject) it is not the most important issue we need to address at the moment. Priorities people. I feel like this is a “counting your chickens before they hatch” scenario. That is, it seems awfully misguided to be discussing income tax rates today when no one can be sure if they’re still going to have a job tomorrow. Your entire opinion on the subject could be changed at any minute with the presentation of a little pink slip.
Instead of a campaign season smothered in tax policy that tries to please every bracket of constituents (focusing, of course, on the biggest campaign donors), we need to be hearing a realistic plan for immediate implementation of painfully specific measures to get jobs back on track and the economy moving at anything other than its currently glacial pace.
4. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the tax cuts will only improve unemployment figures by 0.2% over the course of next year and ranks tax cuts as the least efficient way to stimulate the economy.
We can spend $900B in further attempt to continue to coax businesses and corporations into hiring and have nothing to show for it (just like the last time we tried this under Bush) OR we could be investing that money in infrastructure, education, green energy, emerging technologies, and research and have something tangible that improves the overall condition of our Country and the lives of its citizens.
5. The prospect of the US borrowing from China to the tune of $900B over the next five years to pay for this beast gives plenty of reason for Europe and other nations to start betting against our debt.
This one gets kind of complex and extremely scary if you live and spend in American dollars. In the simplest way I can explain it, the dollar is currently the world reserve currency. Since oil and other various commodities are bought and sold with dollars, foreign governments are basically forced to retain a large amount of currency in US dollars. Usually this currency is used to buy US Treasury bonds, thus their reserve is loaned to us for interest. We use these funds to help cover our huge deficits. That's why traditionally we can get away with huge deficits on a scale that would bankrupt most other nations. If the world moves to the euro, as China, Iraq, and Venezuela have spoken about in the recent past, then everyone would sell off these bonds and our economy would collapse. If conservatives are really concerned about this country moving the way of Greece, this right here is precisely how it will happen.
Following the financial apocalypse would be massive dollar devaluation, skyrocketing inflation, and general credit markets chaos.
As always, BIG thanks to all of my generalized sources:
©2010 Tax Foundation, www.mytaxburden.org, The Congressional Budget Office http://www.cbo.gov/aboutcbo/, C-SPAN http://www.c-span.org, The Committee for Economic Development http://www.ced.org, and others Im sure.
Quote of the Week
Before you can begin to think about politics at all, you have to abandon the notion that there is a war between good men and bad men. ~Walter Lippmann
Something to think about perhaps as we head into the new year?
Something to think about perhaps as we head into the new year?
Endstate
"And mortgag'd States their Grandsires' Wreaths regret
From Age to Age in everlasting Debt;
Wreaths which at last the dear-bought Right convey
To rust on Medals, or on Stones decay."
-Dr. Johnson, Vanity of Human Wishes, 1749
June 2, 2007, Paktika Province, Lwara District, near FOB Tillman, Afghanistan - "Hafiz, ask him what the fuck he's so upset about. [...] The school? Yeah, someone put a bomb outside it, that's why we're here. [...] No shit. You're telling me that someone in the village blew it up? For what? [...] Because he didn't get the contract to build it in the first place? Seriously? What a war."
Nine years, two months, and twenty-one days ago, the United States embarked on OEF-A, our military's term for our nation's longest sustained active conflict: the war in Afghanistan. Our general mission was two-fold: first, to bring the perpetrators of the September 11th terrorist attacks to justice, and second, to restore some measure of stability to what is arguably the most devastated, war-torn, depleted country on the face of the Earth. Rounding the corner on OEF's 10th anniversary, it is difficult to tell how our results have measured up to our initial expectations. Quantifying those results is far from a mere academic exercise. As our country continues to pour billions of dollars and millions of man-hours (to say nothing of the lives, limbs, eyesight, and sanity lost by so many of our young soldiers) into Afghanistan, we must remove ourselves from our national pride and re-examine our national purpose.
In order to get a good sense of how we're doing, it's important to take a close look at what we're doing. The US military is involved in a variety of interconnected campaigns in Afghanistan, run through several different joint commands and encompassing a vast array of tactics, techniques, and procedures. The Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines are engaged in an ever-shifting mixture of nation-building, tactical-level diplomacy, civil engineering, and high-altitude guerrilla warfare. To characterize Afghanistan as a shooting war first and foremost misses the point, especially in recent years. Kinetic operations (shooting people) have given way to non-kinetic operations (building things for people, giving money / crops / hope to people, asking people questions, etc.) and the war has taken on an entirely different character. In doing so, we have shifted our focus from a mission based on holding accountable those who attacked us to a mission based on building a better life for the Afghan people.
The important question is why we have shifted focus. This is not meant to be rhetorical. In large part, many of the high-value targets we sought in Afghanistan and elsewhere were killed or captured during the earliest stages of the war. Of note, of course, is Osama Bin Laden, alleged mastermind of the September 11th attacks and the public face of Al Qaeda, who escaped into Pakistan during the war's early months. While we still routinely kill and capture commanders of various local Taliban forces, it is safe to assert that the high-value-target phase of the war is all but finished; the Taliban is now commanded from Pakistan's tribal regions by men who do not expose themselves to the tender caresses of guided bombs. Bin Laden has escaped; Pakistan has no intention of turning him over even if they were able to find him. This leaves us with the second general objective: restoring stability to a region ravaged by practically every kind of degradation, violence, and disease imaginable.
When I was a young 2nd Lieutenant serving in OEF VI, I rode along on a patrol to the village of Margah, about twenty kilometers north of FOB Bermel, Paktika. As a Fire Support Officer, I took on the secondary role of Company Intelligence Officer, and in this particular case was tasked with gathering a list of necessary medical supplies which would enable the village's resident doctor to better care for his charges. I met the man at his house, and sat down for tea with him and his attendant. We carefully inventoried his remaining supplies, and he made suggestions for what would help him take care of the village. After this was complete, I inquired as to the common health problems he faced. He discussed the question with my interpreter, who turned to me and said "Sir, he says there are many health problems here, but the ones he sees most frequently and is most concerned about are malaria, tuberculosis, and scarlet fever." This conversation has stayed with me throughout the years because of what it indicates about the general state of human existence in rural Afghanistan. There is no question: rural Afghan society currently exists at a standard of living unknown to the vast, overwhelming majority of the human population. Disease and famine routinely kill villages at a time, the country has been embroiled in a variety of military conflicts longer than most living Afghans can remember, and it is not uncommon for families to lack every possible civil service outside rudimentary subsistence agriculture and a polluted source of drinking water.
It is this level of isolation and lack of support that presents such an incredibly difficult problem to our nation-building efforts. Afghanistan has a government; one may even endeavor to argue that they have a legitimate, democratically elected government, although my own suspicions tend to counter this position. What they do not have is a government presence. The government is utterly and completely disconnected from the preponderance of Afghan civilians, and while this persists the war is, for all intents and purposes, un-winnable. Many of the Afghans I encountered during OEF VIII, my second tour, lived near enough to the border that they had no concept of national identity whatsoever. Their ethnic identity had replaced it fully; they believed themselves to be citizens of Waziristan. We sought to convince them that they were in fact Afghans, but I cannot say that I blame them for their skepticism.
It is truly difficult to conceive of this level of isolation from a Western perspective. A great many Afghan civilians never venture outside their home valley, or if they do, their travel is limited to extremely similar villages in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The border is generally thought of as more of a nuisance than anything; in most cases tribal and ethnic groups extend across it and family ties are in every case far more important than any national feeling. The government simply has next to no presence in many rural areas. When it does, it frequently takes the form of Afghan National Police (ANP) who are usually under-paid due to corruption in the higher ranks, badly armed, far from home, and utterly uneducated. In contrast, the rebel fighters commonly known as the Taliban generally operate in the area in which they grew up, they are well-armed and supplied, and are in many cases familiar to the locals. The ANP have gotten a (sometimes deserved) reputation for committing the crimes they are intended to stop, which makes exploitation of the gulf between civilians and the ANP even easier for the Taliban.
Let me pause to explain what I mean by "the Taliban." Contrary to the typical assumption, many if not most of the attacks carried out against Coalition forces in Afghanistan are supported in large part by what we would call "amateurs." Hard-line, fundamentalist, do-or-die Taliban are relatively few and far between, although they do exist and are extremely dangerous. Many attacks are planned by the Taliban, financed by the Taliban, and carried out by local dirt farmers for $30. Afghanistan is a land without hope for the future. The people have spent so long without education and civil services, without employment opportunities or a chance to learn new skills that they have oftentimes abandoned hope of ever attaining these things. The Afghan (Pashtun) conception of honor is centered around defense of a thriving family; having heirs to carry on one's name is of paramount importance. Heirs require marriage(s), which requires money. No money, and therefore, no honor is to be had as a dirt farmer. This is a serious problem to your average Afghan male. The offer of a few dollars to fire a rocket at the Americans or spot for an IED team is very difficult to turn down if you are living in the kind of poverty that causes large percentages of your village to starve and die if the rains are worse than usual. Killing these people in droves is not effective. In fact, it is exactly the opposite. There is little to do in rural Afghanistan for recreation, so sex is a frequent go-to cure for boredom when one has run out of hashish. Families are enormous. Every rocket-firing dirt-farmer who eats a missile for his trouble has ten brothers, all ten of whom are now willing to fight to the death to restore the family's honor.
Allow me a recap: here we are, nine years and change sunk into a country with a sub-30% literacy rate, a war that can't be won by killing the other team, and the greatest nation-building challenge on Earth in our shaking hands. My question is "How do we win?" We need an endstate, and I cannot conceive of what such a thing would look like. Make no mistake, the Taliban are religious only because it suits their methods. Like America's extreme Christian Right, they desire only power, and are willing to use faith or any other convenient tool to derive it from the citizens of their country. If we left today, the Taliban would be back tomorrow, the banners of their proclaimed faith held high in triumph. We have partially succeeded and partially failed in our first objective, and for our second objective, we have set up a Sisyphean task. Any progress we make in terms of infrastructure will eventually come to benefit the Taliban when we leave and they return.
We speak at length of "getting the population on our side" and "connecting population with government" but there is simply no hope that we will convince the rural folk of Afghanistan to set aside literally thousands of years of tradition and ethnic pride and oppose the Taliban who many of them see as the lesser of two evils if not outright good. They are oppressive, they are brutal, but they are the True Believers in the eyes of the populace, and that carries weight no government can compare to. Our temporary measures have no long-term goal. The amount of time and money required to achieve such an enormous transformation as would be required to truly oppose the Taliban is far more than any sane nation would commit. We can win every single battle, but we cannot win this war, because it cannot be won over the long, long term. There is no "win" to be had. The sooner we accept this and act accordingly, the more American time, money, and lives can be saved.
We have not lost the war in Afghanistan. I can't imagine how such a thing would even be possible, unless perhaps we had been militarily defeated by the Taliban in the war's opening days. We have been winning the shooting war up and down, left and right, for years running. Do not make the mistake of considering a call for withdrawal to be defeatist in any way. There is simply nothing to gain. Consider the best of all possible outcomes. In the best possible scenario, Afghan society will undergo a transformation by our actions there and reject religious fundamentalism and its adherents in order to adopt representative democracy. I agree, it seems unlikely. Now consider what that will gain us:
- Afghanistan would no longer be used as a training ground for terrorists. Pardon me if I don't flail my arms with barely-contained joy. The only thing we gain by pushing extremists out of Afghanistan is pushing them into a different country (in this case Pakistan, or about half of Africa.)
- The Afghan people would enjoy a higher standard of living. This would be good for them, but we do not invade nations in order to drag their people, kicking and screaming, into the fourteenth century. Perhaps this is merely a sign of my cold-hearted cynicism, but I do not think several trillion dollars and thousands of lives is a fair trade for bringing running water to the people of tribal Afghanistan.
There is simply no point in continuing. There would not be much of a point in continuing if the war was completely free and did not risk American soldiers. As it stands, it is utterly absurd to commit troops to a war that we cannot win and would not benefit from winning if we could. Our government's reluctance to be perceived as weak is costing us human lives on a daily basis.
From Age to Age in everlasting Debt;
Wreaths which at last the dear-bought Right convey
To rust on Medals, or on Stones decay."
-Dr. Johnson, Vanity of Human Wishes, 1749
June 2, 2007, Paktika Province, Lwara District, near FOB Tillman, Afghanistan - "Hafiz, ask him what the fuck he's so upset about. [...] The school? Yeah, someone put a bomb outside it, that's why we're here. [...] No shit. You're telling me that someone in the village blew it up? For what? [...] Because he didn't get the contract to build it in the first place? Seriously? What a war."
Nine years, two months, and twenty-one days ago, the United States embarked on OEF-A, our military's term for our nation's longest sustained active conflict: the war in Afghanistan. Our general mission was two-fold: first, to bring the perpetrators of the September 11th terrorist attacks to justice, and second, to restore some measure of stability to what is arguably the most devastated, war-torn, depleted country on the face of the Earth. Rounding the corner on OEF's 10th anniversary, it is difficult to tell how our results have measured up to our initial expectations. Quantifying those results is far from a mere academic exercise. As our country continues to pour billions of dollars and millions of man-hours (to say nothing of the lives, limbs, eyesight, and sanity lost by so many of our young soldiers) into Afghanistan, we must remove ourselves from our national pride and re-examine our national purpose.
In order to get a good sense of how we're doing, it's important to take a close look at what we're doing. The US military is involved in a variety of interconnected campaigns in Afghanistan, run through several different joint commands and encompassing a vast array of tactics, techniques, and procedures. The Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines are engaged in an ever-shifting mixture of nation-building, tactical-level diplomacy, civil engineering, and high-altitude guerrilla warfare. To characterize Afghanistan as a shooting war first and foremost misses the point, especially in recent years. Kinetic operations (shooting people) have given way to non-kinetic operations (building things for people, giving money / crops / hope to people, asking people questions, etc.) and the war has taken on an entirely different character. In doing so, we have shifted our focus from a mission based on holding accountable those who attacked us to a mission based on building a better life for the Afghan people.
The important question is why we have shifted focus. This is not meant to be rhetorical. In large part, many of the high-value targets we sought in Afghanistan and elsewhere were killed or captured during the earliest stages of the war. Of note, of course, is Osama Bin Laden, alleged mastermind of the September 11th attacks and the public face of Al Qaeda, who escaped into Pakistan during the war's early months. While we still routinely kill and capture commanders of various local Taliban forces, it is safe to assert that the high-value-target phase of the war is all but finished; the Taliban is now commanded from Pakistan's tribal regions by men who do not expose themselves to the tender caresses of guided bombs. Bin Laden has escaped; Pakistan has no intention of turning him over even if they were able to find him. This leaves us with the second general objective: restoring stability to a region ravaged by practically every kind of degradation, violence, and disease imaginable.
When I was a young 2nd Lieutenant serving in OEF VI, I rode along on a patrol to the village of Margah, about twenty kilometers north of FOB Bermel, Paktika. As a Fire Support Officer, I took on the secondary role of Company Intelligence Officer, and in this particular case was tasked with gathering a list of necessary medical supplies which would enable the village's resident doctor to better care for his charges. I met the man at his house, and sat down for tea with him and his attendant. We carefully inventoried his remaining supplies, and he made suggestions for what would help him take care of the village. After this was complete, I inquired as to the common health problems he faced. He discussed the question with my interpreter, who turned to me and said "Sir, he says there are many health problems here, but the ones he sees most frequently and is most concerned about are malaria, tuberculosis, and scarlet fever." This conversation has stayed with me throughout the years because of what it indicates about the general state of human existence in rural Afghanistan. There is no question: rural Afghan society currently exists at a standard of living unknown to the vast, overwhelming majority of the human population. Disease and famine routinely kill villages at a time, the country has been embroiled in a variety of military conflicts longer than most living Afghans can remember, and it is not uncommon for families to lack every possible civil service outside rudimentary subsistence agriculture and a polluted source of drinking water.
It is this level of isolation and lack of support that presents such an incredibly difficult problem to our nation-building efforts. Afghanistan has a government; one may even endeavor to argue that they have a legitimate, democratically elected government, although my own suspicions tend to counter this position. What they do not have is a government presence. The government is utterly and completely disconnected from the preponderance of Afghan civilians, and while this persists the war is, for all intents and purposes, un-winnable. Many of the Afghans I encountered during OEF VIII, my second tour, lived near enough to the border that they had no concept of national identity whatsoever. Their ethnic identity had replaced it fully; they believed themselves to be citizens of Waziristan. We sought to convince them that they were in fact Afghans, but I cannot say that I blame them for their skepticism.
It is truly difficult to conceive of this level of isolation from a Western perspective. A great many Afghan civilians never venture outside their home valley, or if they do, their travel is limited to extremely similar villages in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The border is generally thought of as more of a nuisance than anything; in most cases tribal and ethnic groups extend across it and family ties are in every case far more important than any national feeling. The government simply has next to no presence in many rural areas. When it does, it frequently takes the form of Afghan National Police (ANP) who are usually under-paid due to corruption in the higher ranks, badly armed, far from home, and utterly uneducated. In contrast, the rebel fighters commonly known as the Taliban generally operate in the area in which they grew up, they are well-armed and supplied, and are in many cases familiar to the locals. The ANP have gotten a (sometimes deserved) reputation for committing the crimes they are intended to stop, which makes exploitation of the gulf between civilians and the ANP even easier for the Taliban.
Let me pause to explain what I mean by "the Taliban." Contrary to the typical assumption, many if not most of the attacks carried out against Coalition forces in Afghanistan are supported in large part by what we would call "amateurs." Hard-line, fundamentalist, do-or-die Taliban are relatively few and far between, although they do exist and are extremely dangerous. Many attacks are planned by the Taliban, financed by the Taliban, and carried out by local dirt farmers for $30. Afghanistan is a land without hope for the future. The people have spent so long without education and civil services, without employment opportunities or a chance to learn new skills that they have oftentimes abandoned hope of ever attaining these things. The Afghan (Pashtun) conception of honor is centered around defense of a thriving family; having heirs to carry on one's name is of paramount importance. Heirs require marriage(s), which requires money. No money, and therefore, no honor is to be had as a dirt farmer. This is a serious problem to your average Afghan male. The offer of a few dollars to fire a rocket at the Americans or spot for an IED team is very difficult to turn down if you are living in the kind of poverty that causes large percentages of your village to starve and die if the rains are worse than usual. Killing these people in droves is not effective. In fact, it is exactly the opposite. There is little to do in rural Afghanistan for recreation, so sex is a frequent go-to cure for boredom when one has run out of hashish. Families are enormous. Every rocket-firing dirt-farmer who eats a missile for his trouble has ten brothers, all ten of whom are now willing to fight to the death to restore the family's honor.
Allow me a recap: here we are, nine years and change sunk into a country with a sub-30% literacy rate, a war that can't be won by killing the other team, and the greatest nation-building challenge on Earth in our shaking hands. My question is "How do we win?" We need an endstate, and I cannot conceive of what such a thing would look like. Make no mistake, the Taliban are religious only because it suits their methods. Like America's extreme Christian Right, they desire only power, and are willing to use faith or any other convenient tool to derive it from the citizens of their country. If we left today, the Taliban would be back tomorrow, the banners of their proclaimed faith held high in triumph. We have partially succeeded and partially failed in our first objective, and for our second objective, we have set up a Sisyphean task. Any progress we make in terms of infrastructure will eventually come to benefit the Taliban when we leave and they return.
We speak at length of "getting the population on our side" and "connecting population with government" but there is simply no hope that we will convince the rural folk of Afghanistan to set aside literally thousands of years of tradition and ethnic pride and oppose the Taliban who many of them see as the lesser of two evils if not outright good. They are oppressive, they are brutal, but they are the True Believers in the eyes of the populace, and that carries weight no government can compare to. Our temporary measures have no long-term goal. The amount of time and money required to achieve such an enormous transformation as would be required to truly oppose the Taliban is far more than any sane nation would commit. We can win every single battle, but we cannot win this war, because it cannot be won over the long, long term. There is no "win" to be had. The sooner we accept this and act accordingly, the more American time, money, and lives can be saved.
We have not lost the war in Afghanistan. I can't imagine how such a thing would even be possible, unless perhaps we had been militarily defeated by the Taliban in the war's opening days. We have been winning the shooting war up and down, left and right, for years running. Do not make the mistake of considering a call for withdrawal to be defeatist in any way. There is simply nothing to gain. Consider the best of all possible outcomes. In the best possible scenario, Afghan society will undergo a transformation by our actions there and reject religious fundamentalism and its adherents in order to adopt representative democracy. I agree, it seems unlikely. Now consider what that will gain us:
- Afghanistan would no longer be used as a training ground for terrorists. Pardon me if I don't flail my arms with barely-contained joy. The only thing we gain by pushing extremists out of Afghanistan is pushing them into a different country (in this case Pakistan, or about half of Africa.)
- The Afghan people would enjoy a higher standard of living. This would be good for them, but we do not invade nations in order to drag their people, kicking and screaming, into the fourteenth century. Perhaps this is merely a sign of my cold-hearted cynicism, but I do not think several trillion dollars and thousands of lives is a fair trade for bringing running water to the people of tribal Afghanistan.
There is simply no point in continuing. There would not be much of a point in continuing if the war was completely free and did not risk American soldiers. As it stands, it is utterly absurd to commit troops to a war that we cannot win and would not benefit from winning if we could. Our government's reluctance to be perceived as weak is costing us human lives on a daily basis.
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