Why military intervention does not work out; a strong warning to hawks

Fareed Zakaria on CNN Sunday, October 18, 2015, delivered a strong warning to those who think the definition of American strength , its exceptionalism, and leadership is military intervention. He reviews both the Russian experience and the US since the Eisenhower administration and the resulting disasters, humanitarian, quagmire and occupation and failure then and now as a lesson for the future.  He praises Dwight Eisenhower's wisdom for bucking public sentiment for military action.

 I strongly agree and those who are rational could agree as well because evidence is based on experience .  Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

I yield my posting this week to him.

For his excellent concise comment on the subject, go to http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1510/18/fzgps.01.html

Sequester.cliff..taking a step forward into the abyss...

The English language can be a landmine for some not born to it.  Recently,  I heard a  former US ambassador  reminisce  about a foreign ambassador  who  boasted to him of  progress they had made to overcome a crisis. Said the foreign ambassador: “We stood at the edge of a cliff and then we took a step forward.”     In my mind, I visualized an old beep- beep roadrunner cartoon with a hapless  critter stepping into thin air and falling into a  crevasse. 

 That also reminded me  about  those on both sides of the aisle thinking that there would be progress if they  stood at the edge of the sequester cliff,  took a step they called forward , and plunged head  first into the chasm.

Many  economists and the Congressional Budget Office predict that if the sequester’s  dire cuts to both domestic programs  and the Pentagon take place  March,1,  sooner or later unemployment would rise  to 9% from 7.9% today and we will slip into recession (as we  tisk tisk  a 1.5% growth in the last quarter).   

Nothing in Sen.Marco Rubio’s  GOP response   to Obama’s State of the Union Address  last week was reassuring.   Rubio’s message : middle class  America,  government shouldn’t help you; free enterprise will.   All we need, he said, is 4% growth to solve our debt woes to help the middle class improve and get jobs.  Rubio’s sole specific economic pump priming to increase growth   was limited to   more drilling for gas and oil on public lands and ramping  up coal mining. Romney’s similar approach was rejected  in November 2012. No surprise:  the President leads congressional Republicans when it comes to dealing with the country’s debt limit, according to a Feb. 15  Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Rubio’s rhetoric contrasted sharply  with  the President’s advocating  for  what government could do for the middle class today…increase minimum wage, make preschool mandatory, invest in roads and bridges. 

On the face of it, the GOP and Democrats seem  oceans apart. Both short term plans to stimulate  the economy  preferred by the Democrats and Republicans’ sole  reliance on spending  cuts now as their  long term plan to tackle the deficit  look   as dead in the water  as the   ill-fated cruise ship  that lost power,  and full of unbathed,  unflushed passengers,  drifted in the sea several days  last week .

Some appearing  in this  past Sunday’s media gave sound advice: Tom Friedman, writing in the New York Times , implored the President “ to make one more good shot at a grand bargain on spending, investment and tax reform …. because it  would give the country so much more of a lift “.   A grand bargain would include both short term stimulus and long term tax and entitlement reform.    Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summer on Fareed Zakaria’s CNN show   said the need for  short term stimulus must not be ignored, but we should not  exclude  long term plans, either.” It was possible to chew gum and walk across the street at the same time”

Is there any  hope Congress can  pull back from the cliff’s edge? In his address, Obama threw some  life lines to the GOP: He proposed to reduce Medicare costs by  the equivalent amount proposed by the Simpson Bowles debt reform commission and he supported  tax reform, including reducing  taxes on businesses that created jobs in the US. Did the GOP seize the opportunity to deal? Not yet.

Republicans  should  also stop opposing closing tax loopholes and  take a reality check.  Simpson-Bowles (as well as Mitt Romney) proposed closing  loopholes because cuts would alone not be enough to resolve the deficit problem.   Math counts.

Washington Post ‘s  Ruth  Marcus  on ABC’s“This Week”   had the best line of Sunday:  “Put the GOP and the Democrats on that stinky ship  until they came to agreement.”

For more, visit www.mufticforumespanol.blogspot.com

This is the original version submitted to the Sky Hi News. The newspaper published a heavily edited version in today's newspaper due to space constraints.  www.skyhidailynews.com