Independent Caucus

Constitutional Convention of 2010 - Long Overdue

I've been cautioned already about blog entries which are too long. Apparently, new as I am to this, the typical blog reader reads many blogs and simply doesn't have time for long posts.  Point noted, though, potentially not heeded.  One must make his point or not bother, it seems to me.  Still, if no one reads, then....

I'm reading and hearing more news sources report that voters are very dissatisfied with Congress.  People complain that Congress doesn't work for them, but rather for large special interests or even in service of the government itself, as if it were its own constituency.

I would like to see one or more of our graduate schools in government encourage those seeking topics for master's theses to choose this very topic: does our Congress--does our government--work?  Such papers would be supported by original research seeking to answer whether constituent priorities are addressed or ignored; whether positions endorsed by a few large campaign contributors tend to trump those of the larger constituency; whether the Congress as currently organized and run promotes efficient or wasteful spending; whether House and Senate rules, many of them decades old, promote, or hinder productive, representative government; and so on.

I think such studies would confirm the perceptions of most Americans (I say "most" because Congress' approval rating is well below 50%, in fact around 30%), that Congress is not well representing them, nor performing effective oversight, nor fairly taxing, nor responsibly managing spending, the federal treasury, or the national debt.

Think about that.  If that assessment were made of a corporation it would be completely reorganized.  But for a corporation, that would require only a vote by the board of directors.  To reorganize Congress, at the very least it would require a majority party willing to undertake the politically dangerous and difficult task of reviewing, rewriting, or abolishing many House and Senate rules.  At most? It would require something along the lines of the Constitutional Convention of 1787.  Such convention was proposed when it was agreed that elements of the current rules of government (the Articles of Confederation) were not working.

It's been 219 years since we last came together as a nation to review our rules of government and suggest changes.  Maybe it's time--past time--for another.

The Constitutional Convention of 2010, perhaps.  And maybe, just maybe, the only way to keep government honest and working is to have such a coming together as a nation every 25 years or so.  I think we kind of instinctively realize that goals and intent aren't corruptible, but practice is.  It's the nature of individuals to try to find ways around rules which thwart their own personal ambitions or wants.  Ask any teenager.  Taken to a constitutional level, it's natural to adopt practices and rules which over time violate the spirit of larger national goals and intentions regarding representative, checked, and balanced government.  Twenty-five years is a generation.  It seems only fitting that each generation be given its opportunity to review the performance of its government on various democratic and representative levels, and to suggest and vote on changes.

What do you think?

The Hillary Question: Whom to Believe?

Hillary has been in the news of late.  The Time magazine cover, for instance, "Love Her.  Hate Her," says it all. She gave Donald Rumsfeld what for in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee. I heard that Live on CSPAN and was disappointed in her.  It was a laundry list, a speech, eventually culminating in a question along the lines of "so, Mr. Secretary, what do you have to say for yourself?"  I didn't like it.  She had the Defense Secretary right in front of her, sworn in and everything.  Why not ask some detailed probing questions about something concerning her or bothering her about Iraq that might actually cast some light on what future policy should be?  She's a senator.  She's responsible for policy, at least, more than I am.  I get to vote once in a while.  I get to blog and promulgate my views in a manner which could certainly, given enough readership and action, impact policy.  But she can impact policy right now by virtue of her current job as senator, and the senate's constitutional responsibility of executive oversight.

The meeting is old news at this point, but this blog is new.  There will be more and more stories trying to figure out whether Hillary would be a good next president.  I don't live in New York, and am not in tune with local New York news and issues.  I've heard various of Hillary's colleagues compliment her that "she is doing a lot for New York."  I've heard that various times, almost just like that, as if it were scripted, even though it couldn't have been (save a supreme conspiracy theory) from the various disparate sources, usually speaking on the Sunday talking-head shows.  But then I see an email from Sibel Edmonds and William Weaver of the National Security of
Whistleblowers lambasting Hillary for not doing anything, much less enough, when it was discovered that a New York veteran was effectively killed by a poorly and fraudulently run, experimental cancer treatment program operated by the Albany VA hospital.

So is she "doing a lot" or is she doing nothing?  This is where we shall truly need some objective and independent writing and blogging on Hillary.  Because there is definitely a love her / hate her element capable of engendering all kinds of slanted and misleading reporting.  We need to know some truth about her.  If you know any, please don't keep it to yourself.

Israel and the U.S. vs. Hezbollah: A Shortsighted Response

The Israeli and U.S. response to Hezbollah's recent attack across the Blue Line, in my view, was shortsighted and rash.  The shortsightedness in this case for the Israeli leaders, government and people (since the war was hugely popular when it broke out) can be related to a game of chess.  Hezbollah seemed to expose its queen for almost no reason.  They seemed to do so recklessly, even pathetically, because the queen could now be easily taken by Israel's military, Hezbollah's move having provoked such a response.  However the Bush administration is correct when it says that authoritarianism hates democracy; ergo, Hezbollah hated the establishment of a democratic government, be it a young one, in Lebanon, and wished to weaken it.  Well, Israel's response did just that.  I wonder if Hezbollah leaders, before running for bunkers at the start of the bombing campaign, first toasted the moment with some alcohol-free beverage.  Israel underestimated her opponent, and her opponent's motives, and let Hezbollah play her side of the chess board.

There are some truisms in the Arab world, one of those being that as tribally as the Arab world can behave, when some member of it is in a military fight with Israel, they all close ranks.  Arguably, the West is safer when the various disparate Arab political and guerrilla groups are not working together, but competing with one another.

Another truism is that the Arab world, even the more moderate Arab world, would just as soon Israel go away entirely.  There is a common feeling that Europe and America fought a big war and designated a piece of Arab land to solve the problem of Jewish nationalism instead of some piece of Europe or America.  That view is mistaken from everything I've read - as it was the Jews themselves who began to emigrate to the present state of Israel both before and after the war.  And further, everything I've read indicates emigrating Jews didn't find much when they got there, but a lot of vast, arid, undeveloped or underdeveloped space.  And, with some industriousness they are to be given credit for, I should think, even or especially by Arabs from that part of the world, they solved some of the problems of living in that region and began to build enough new villages and towns to make people take notice.  So, Balfour notwithstanding, the West did not choose Palestine for the Jews.  They chose it themselves, which doesn't alter the first sentence of this paragraph - that the Arabs have never really wanted them there - either now, then or back to biblical times.

Still, there are such things as "moderate" Arab states and peoples, and so I would argue that while all Arab states probably don't want Israel there, only a few would commit the mass murder necessary to eradicate them.  Therefore - and this is the shortsighted part - Israel must understand that her long-term security interests are enhanced by growing the "moderate" view and isolating the radical view.  You don't do that by bombing the only Arab democracy and a neighbor back to her civil war days simply because the central government and army are not yet strong enough to confront and deal with a well-armed Iranian/Syrian-backed, -funded and -supplied militia in its southern end.  All you do is all they did - make the democratic government of Lebanon look impotent in the eyes of the Lebanese, as well as throughout the Arab world, and make Hezbollah, Iran and Syria look stronger.  In the process, Israel turned even moderate Arab states against her, and also, against the U.S..  All America accomplished by going along was to weaken her position as an honest broker in the Middle East and to increase hatred for America on the Arab street.

The shortsightedness is further amplified when one considers that a Security Council resolution - 1559 - already existed for addressing the Hezbollah problem.  It had only been partly implemented, to be sure, most notably, the part dealing with Syria's pullout from Lebanon.  But it existed!  There wasn't a need to call for a meeting of said Council to get said resolution.  No need for the international community to come together to draft language.  Language had already been drafted, voted upon and passed!  And now, Israel - after a clear aggression against her by Hezbollah across the blue line where multiple soldiers were killed and two kidnapped, with a subsequent raining down of Katusha rockets on northern Israeli towns - was in the perfect position to be the undisputedly aggrieved one and to implore the international community to do exactly what it ultimately did do - implement a plan for enforcing the remainder of 1559, except that Israel chose to gain that outcome along with the derision of the entire Arab world for what was deemed by all Security Council representatives except the United States (I listened to it on C-SPAN radio) as a "disproportionate response."

Sometimes a good caddy, like Steve Williams, will reach for the 2-iron before Tiger reaches for his driver.

Well, the U.S. stayed silent and let Israel swing away.  We don't have biblical animosities with the Arab world.  Cooler heads should have existed and prevailed within the U.S. government and State Department once those soldiers were taken and the Katusha's began to fall.  But we just let them swing away.  Israel reacted angrily and  allowed anger to forge policy.  The U.S. should have offered Israel her 2-iron, but instead just went along.  It's a shame, really.  My sentiments are with my own country, and I regret our diminished stature in the Middle East as a true force for effective and fair diplomacy.  We will be paying for this error for a while.  Israel had to know she would not, could not dislodge, disarm, destroy Hezbollah with a few strategic air strikes and U.S.-made smart bombs.  She also had to know, nasty as they are, that Hezbollah's Katusha's would not, could not fundamentally threaten Israel.  Israel should have instituted temporary evacuations from some of the more vulnerable northern regions, made her facile case (a video of 10 or 20 Katusha explosions should have done it) to the U.N. and given the U.N. Security Council countries and others an opportunity to act on her behalf to enforce 1559.  She would have achieved the outcome she ultimately achieved - Hezbollah forced to share space with a large contingent of international troops and the Lebanese army - without having weakened the democratic government of Lebanon, and coalesced Arab hatreds against herself and the U.S. from among even moderate Arabs.

So Easy

I'd like to illustrate something central to this blog and its overall purpose.  I originally titled this post "The Israeli and U.S. Response to Hezbollah:  Dumb and Dumber."  It went on, as you will see subsequent to this post, to describe the mistakes Israel made, and to call them dumb, and the mistakes the U.S. made, and to call them dumber.

And then I waited a day.

Maybe that's what political discourse and debate needs today - 24 hours to think it over.

The result is use of "dumb and dumber" is gone, leaving more objectively-worded descriptions of what I believe were the mistakes made, and dropping the more subjectively-worded labels.  And therein is why dumb and dumber is gone - because it was dumb to write and would have been dumber to post.

I had to almost laugh at myself given the "creed" effectively lain down in "First Post" - my own words and inspiration for this blog - that its posts and comments reflect "rationale, reason and proportion."  It is "proportion" which is violated by labeling and, in effect, name-calling.  Easy, politically-charged labels and name-calling stoke an angry response instead of a reasoned one.  And yet, I feel I am joined by the vast majority of you in believing that reasoned debate is preferable to angry debate, and that it makes better policy.

So how is it that my first post to follow my "First Post" could have contained such elements?  Well, I found out - because it is so easy.  It was so easy to write.  Applying the label felt good, somehow.  I'm no psychologist.  But it did.  I felt - superior - somehow, more enlightened than the average Joe, to assess what Israel and the U.S. did and to declare it "dumb" for all the world and my innumerable blog readers (well, maybe one day) to see.  I'm a 46 jacket size and use of "dumb and dumber" took me to 46 and 1/4.

But for anyone, and to be sure there are millions just within the U.S. who agreed with the Israeli and U.S. response to Hezbollah, "dumb and "dumber" would have tapped into their anger, their very human anger at being called dumb by some knuckleheaded blogger, in their view.  And had such individuals taken the time to comment, such comment, even had they avoided labeling me in kind, would likely have been colored and motivated by that anger.  And I would have had that to read instead of their own well-reasoned reply as to why Israel and the U.S. were correct to do as they did.  And I would have learned nothing, garnered nothing from the blogosphere at large.  And I may as well have made my post to my bedroom wall instead of the Internet.

We don't need to personally attack, label and otherwise demean individuals who act or believe differently than we do in order to advance a different way.

If words are worn like clothing, it shouldn't be necessary to fault the wearer in order to suggest a change of shoes.  Nor should the individual's first choice be proof of his stupidity; rather, perhaps, that he never really considered the pair you favored, nor your reasoning for favoring them.

Words matter.  The success of our words has always been gauged by those who hear them and want to make them their own.

I realized no one has ever been called dumb and wanted to make that his own or her own.

First Post

This is the first post of a blog that hopes to present views from an independent perspective. So what is "independent?" It's a perspective based more in rationale, reason, proportion, and fact than in doctrine and familiar partisan policy positions. Doctrinaire arguments fit Justice Stewart's characterization, in that they are hard to define but easy to recognize.

This site will welcome comments on the political, social, and international issues of the day. A superb comment will make its point, support it, identify and describe contrary points others might make, and reason thoughtfully why the contrary positions do not hold up, or perhaps why they do.

It is my hope that this simple blog might start a wave, a trend of political discourse and debate which is on a higher, more informative, and more helpful level than the reflexive partisan positions we have all heard so much and so often, and thereby be true to its domain name - independentcaucus.com.