Talent hits a target no one else can hit;
Genius hits a target no one else can see.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The Neo-Con Strawman: Isolationist!
I think for me the most compelling interventionist argument is a humanitarian one; I still remember in high school seeing films of liberated Nazi concentrated camps, mounds of naked corpses, a young emaciated woman with protruding eyes staring blankly; the immortal diary of Anne Frank, whom died in a camp perhaps weeks from liberation. How could we have not known and taken out genocide infrastructure? But war is a nasty business where things are not always black and white, even in the fight against Nazi Germany, e.g., the bombing of Dresden.
You might think after the dubious, divisive missions in two small Asian countries, Korea and Vietnam, that we would be more prudent in picking our battles. Look, we didn't necessarily approve of brutal Communist regimes in the USSR and mainland China, but there were prudent considerations for the US to realize the limits of our policy and power. There's also a question of resources; we are approaching a $17T national debt, not including an estimated at least $80T in unfunded liabilities. We have a defense budget that amounts to about 20% of a $3.7T budget--more than the next few countries put together; many countries freeload off our morally hazardous security umbrella. It's not just the fact that, like our entitlement programs, these expenditures are unsustainable; but when we have global spanning alliances, we also exposure ourselves to multiple points of potential conflicts, spreading our military thin and the risk of unintended, long-term commitments and/or nation building.
Keep in mind that it was not the Afghanistan Taliban government which attacked the US on 9/11--and we knew that Afghanistan was a Pandora's box with respect to foreign occupation (consider the USSR experience just a couple of decades earlier--and Russia was much closer than we were). I do understand the fact that the Taliban refused to hand over UBL and was protecting him and his cohorts. What has been the result of our involvement? We have been backing a corrupt regime; we suffered at least 2260 fatalities (roughly two-thirds of coalition forces'), not counting injuries; according to one estimate, we've spent about $650B in Afghanistan.
I think the idea that being skeptical of US involvement in Syria, Iran or North Korea is "isolationist" is an unsupported smear. The "internationalists"/interventionists have been fear-mongering in cases where our national defense is not immediately at risk. Take, for instance, our meddling with the Syrian resistance; there are Islamic radical elements in the resistance, making for an ironic development, and there are unintended consequences, including risks to the Western democracies. I understand the Syrian regime is likely responsible for crimes against humanity, but for me the issue is one more of regional leadership than a self-anointed global policeman. Rand Paul and others have registered concerns, including Egyptian aid that props up the military: if and when the military cracks down on protests, we can be viewed as enablers. Debate is healthy: the "isolationist" insult is a red herring intended to intimidate more pragmatic military conservatives. We all understand that the US faces threats, and the world is a lot closer and faces new threats because of computer networking and other advanced technologies. How are we "isolationist" just because we insist on a higher barrier of entry in picking our battles?
Rand Paul is not putting the GOP brand of a strong military at risk; if anything, Bush and Cheney's incompetent handling of Iraq and Afghanistan did much to damage the brand. Logan has published a relevant essay Rand Paul is No Isolationist; Goldberg has an alternative take in The Myth of an ‘Isolationist’ GOP.
Cato Event, Fixing Guest Worker Visas: Thumbs UP!
I was literally hanging on each panel speaker's word; in a recent commentary, I criticized economist Cochrane's disparaging remarks on the guest worker program.
Let me discuss one of my Indian/Asian friends, now a naturalized citizen. He was an H1B working for a staffing agency at an American subsidiary of a Japanese high-tech manufacturer in Santa Clara (he had in fact worked at Cisco on a prior engagement). Now for most Americans, H1B's live a precarious existence, legally tied to one sponsoring employer until they achieve their "green card", a status conferring permanent legal residency (no longer dependent on the original sponsor). My friend found that when he moved to a lower-billing assignment, his employer accordingly lowered his compensation. At the time, the company's Apps DBA had issued 2-weeks notice; my friend's employer also worked with contractors and reached out to me; my friend would later tell me that he was the one to pull out my resume. Originally it was to be a 5-week gig as a temp. The IT manager position was also vacant, and it was filled within 2 to 3 weeks after my start. The gig was extended 2 more times before I was offered the corporate DBA position.
The IT team was fairly small, and we wore several hats. My friend, a systems analyst, transitioned into a key project manager role. There was a key failed project headed by a former long-term client manager in Illinois (whom decided not to relocate with the move of headquarters to Santa Clara). My new boss canceled the contract, handing it over to my friend,and my boss promised and delivered on early limited functionality in operations within a couple of months (vs. 8 months under the former manager's project team with no functionality even in demo mode). My friend and I got along famously on this and other initiatives; he knew I would figure out the technical issues, and I trusted him to handle the vendors and politics. I used to tease him we were the Lennon/McCartney of database.
At some point, my former agency got bought out, and the new owners thought they could get a better rate for my colleague on another project. My wheeler-dealer manager thought that my colleague would get lost in the shuffle; there had been some talk of raising my colleague's rate, but my boss would only agree to paying more if it all went to my colleague. I felt my boss was playing with fire with my friend's position with the agency as he was closing in on his green card, and when my colleague was reassigned to another customer, I had to jawbone my boss from suing the agency, claiming lack of notice. For me, it was a turning point in my relationship with the company; my boss had reneged on some commitments, and my friend had a moderating influence on him. Several weeks later I was finalizing arrangements for a job interview in Austin with a real estate Internet portal company when my boss suffered a heart attack while on a Vermont branch office visit; my leaving would have had a serious effect on company operations, so I canceled the visit, but I resigned several weeks later after my boss was back on his feet. Unfortunately, the Austin gig was no longer available. About a year later I was negotiating to do Apps DBA work on a local government project in Austin, when the company's president/co-founder pleaded me to take their failing reference project in Wisconsin (I moved to the northwest suburbs of Chicago, because they only had one Wisconsin project).
Some time after I left, my friend got his green card and was almost immediately hired by our former client/boss. A few years later, the manager left the company under bizarre circumstances, and my friend succeeded him. (He also co-founded a small software company; he had some product development interests in EDI applications and expense reporting, based on earlier work he did in Silicon Valley.)
I remember after he got his green card, I asked him whether he was going to get his citizenship. He snapped back at me, "Why does everyone ask me that?"; I guess it must have been like a husband 5 minutes after his first child's birth, asking his wife when they can start on the next one. For me, being an American citizen is the best, and I wanted that for my friend, too.
A few years later, he casually mentioned that the other day he had been sworn in as a US citizen. I expressed disappointed that he hadn't let me know in advance, because, yes, I would have flown to the People's Republic of California to be at the ceremony--to me, it was that big a deal. Why not? I once flew from Houston to Orlando to see my Navy buddy get married to another Navy instructor and friend....
A few things about this presentation: they talk about more of an H1B/employer exchange in prospective immigration legislation (e.g., if an H1B gets laid off by his sponsor under current law, he has to leave, which is very inefficient if another employer could use his skills); in the Q and A, they address Cochrane's "second-class citizenship" argument, noting a path to a green card and citizenship; they echoed my independently stated concerns about the inadequate work visa pipeline in the Senate bill and warned, as I did, these artificial constraints don't address the real problem, and we may be back addressing immigration reform a decade or two from now if we don't fix it now.
There's a lot more to the discussion, but for those with an interest or little background on the topic, I highly recommend it.
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Henry Payne and Townhall |
The Beatles, "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da"
