Posts Tagged ‘middle-east’

The Bully

March 24th, 2011 by John Feehery

I hate bullies.

Muammar Gaddafi is a bully.

He has bullied his own people for years, he has bullied all who try to do business in Libya, and he has bullied his neighbors.

America likes to stand up to bullies.

We have a long tradition in the United States that we fight the bullies.

Whether the bully is King George the Third or Slobodan Milošević, we don’t let bullies win.

It usually takes us a while, though, to figure out who is a bully that threatens our interests and who is a bully that we can do business with.

We didn’t declare war on Hitler for example until the Japanese attacked us.

George Bush the first allowed Saddam Hussein to stay in power after the first Persian Gulf War, and it wasn’t until Al-Qaeda attacked us on September 11th, that George Bush the second finished the job.

The problem with going after every bully is that there are a lot of bullies out there.

North Korea is run by a bully.  So is Russia.  As is Zimbabwe.  And the list goes on.

We can’t stop all the bullies everywhere.  Read more...

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Posted in middle-east, war | 1 Comment »

Union Rip Off

February 18th, 2011 by John Feehery

The trade union movement started in medieval Germany as a way for artisans to band together to perfect their craft.

The craft unions now perfect ripping off the taxpayers.

Unions used to target big, mean industrialists who paid minimal wages and exploited workers.

Unions now target Democrats in primaries who don’t tow their line.

And their line is never ever give an inch when it comes to ripping off the taxpayers.

It is trite to say that the federal government is going broke. But as long as the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department can get the Chinese to buy our bonds, our brokenness is more notional than visceral.

At the state level, though, it is more than a notion that bankruptcy looms. The pension system in Illinois is due to collapse any day now. California is a complete mess every year. And the list goes on.

In Wisconsin, the new Governor has decided that he has to change the deal when it comes to the unions and the taxpayers. In Wisconsin, a progressive state, the taxpayers have finally had enough of the rip off. That is why they elected a Republican governor who had a plan.  Read more...

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Posted in Economy, Government, Politics, Theory, spending, taxes | 1 Comment »

It’s A Dangerous World Out There

February 17th, 2011 by John Feehery

Amid all of the excitement about how wonderful the revolution is in Egypt, an element of the Egyptian mob reminded us that all is not sweetness and light in the streets of Cairo.

Laura Logan, the intrepid and successful CBS News correspondent, was brutally attacked and sexually abused by about 200 gangsters who saw her blond hair and decided that acting like a group of savages was acceptable behavior.

She was eventually saved by a group of Egyptian women and 20 Egyptian soldiers, perhaps the only two groups that currently have any credibility in a civilization that is 7,000 years old.

This attack, as terrible as it was, serves a valuable reminder for American observers. It is a dangerous world out there, especially in this region of tribal governance and a tribal religion.

Democracy requires a certain amount of trust, a certain amount of decency, a certain amount of moral rectitude, and a certain amount of respect for human life. After this brutal attack, most Americans should get the point that democracy isn’t going to come to Egypt in the next couple of weeks. Egypt isn’t quite ready for prime time.  Read more...

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Posted in Egypt, Foreign Relations, Government, Media, Politics, Theory, tragedy | No Comments »

The Decline and Fall of the Nation State

February 14th, 2011 by John Feehery

In the 19th century, empires fell and in their place arose nation states.

The last of the empires, the Hapsburgs, Ottomans and the Romanovs, were wiped out in the first two decades of the last century, decimated by the First World War.

The nation state arose, based on the ancient Athenian concept of the City State. The idea was that nations of people would organize into representative democracies and that these democracies would somehow band into a league of nations that would make war a thing of the past. As Wikipedia pointed out, “the most noticeable characteristic is the degree to which nation-states use the state as an instrument of national unity, in economic, social and cultural life.”

The nation state was always better in concept than it was in reality.

Europe never quite got the nation state right in the twentieth century. First, came the fascism of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Tito. When they were defeated, a cold war and the Americans held the European continent together. When the Cold War ended, the Europeans briskly moved to establish the European Union, which aimed to tame nationalism once and for all.  Read more...

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Posted in Foreign Relations, Government, History, Politics, Theory, national security | No Comments »

Foreign Aid On the Chopping Block

February 8th, 2011 by John Feehery

According to a Gallup poll released right before the President’s State of the Union Address, a majority of Americans said they favor cutting U.S. foreign aid, but more than 6 in 10 opposed cuts to education, Social Security, and Medicare.

That is not that surprising. Nobody wants their Social Security touched. Let’s cut spending on all those foreigners.

Another survey, released in 2010 and conducted by The WorldPublicOpinion.org project at the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes, asked the question: “What percentage of the federal budget goes to foreign aid?” The median answer was roughly 25 percent, according to the poll of 848 Americans. In reality, about 1 percent of the budget is allotted to foreign aid.

In fact, we spend about $37 billion each year on foreign aid, out of a budget of more than 1.3 trillion.

The foreign aid budget has gone up in the last decade. President Bush spent a lot on foreign aid, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa and in programs aimed at stopping the spread of Islamic terrorism in the Middle East and of narco-terrorists in Central and South America.

President Obama has continued spending a lot on foreign aid, although he emphasizes environmental assistance much more than Bush did.  Read more...

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Posted in Economy, Foreign Relations, Government, History, Theory, spending | 1 Comment »

The Iraq Elections

March 8th, 2010 by John Feehery

It wasn’t as exciting as the first time that Iraq held democratic elections, but it was probably more significant.

I asked my friend Alex Mistri, who spent a year in Iraq working at the highest levels of the American government, what these elections mean to him.

He told me two things.

First, Iraq is slowly but surely becoming a model of democracy in the Middle East.

Second, that having Iraq become a model of democracy is actually a threat to the Iranians, even if the Iranians have some influence on some of the political parties today.

As Alex puts it:   “The road ahead in Iraq no doubt remains uncertain.  But the Iraqis have once again demonstrated – not through word but action – their appetite for representative government.  Increasingly, it must enter the international consciousness – if it hasn’t already – that Iraq is becoming the most democratic nation in the region.”

As it turns out, President Bush might have been on to something with his crazy belief that a place like Iraq could handle democracy.  Alex asked the question, “Might the ‘quixotic’ aims of the previous administration still be within reach?”  Read more...

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Posted in Foreign Relations, Government, Politics, election | 3 Comments »