Democratic Values in Domestic vs. International Policy

These last few weeks I found myself struggling over how to approach some of the recent issues in US domestic governance.  From uncomfortably authoritarian reactions to left-leaning protestors, to authoritarian flavored ideas on internet freedom and detention of citizens, I’ve floundered for weeks somewhere between Chicken Little style ranting and my -tragically common- defeated indifference.  Finally looking to a thoughtful recent post from Liza on US Foreign Policy on issues of Rule of Law and Human Rights in Russia, I decided that the best approach to writing on these subjects would just be to ride the coattails of my sharper witted peers .
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I am not sure I agree with Caroline Glick

Caroline Glick, a columnist for the Jerusalem Post, believes one problem with the war or terror is that the US has been insufficiently aggressive in fighting it. In particular, she would like the US to expand its efforts to countries such as Iran, Lebanon, and Syria. Although she doesn’t directly call for US-led regime change in these countries, it seems to me that at a minimum she would like the US to do something to make these countries more unstable than they already are. After carefully considering her point of view, I have come to the conclusion that she is totally nuts. Let’s leave the merits of the policy aside (of which I think there are few) and look at the US record on regime change in the broader Middle East over the past decade. We have tried it in two countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, and the record is, to put it charitably, mixed at best.

Don’t get me wrong – I very pleased that Glick has such confidence in the US’s capacity to get other countries to govern as we wish they would through a policy of military aggression. The problem is that I find it really hard to believe that the world would be a safer place if the US provoked more instability in the Middle East. Perhaps in a future column Glick will outline why she thinks the US military would be more successful in Iran, Lebanon, and Syria than it has been in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. Until that day comes, I hope that our joint chiefs of staff don’t read her work and think, “hmm…she’s got a point. Lemme run it by Obama.”

Voting rules affect election outcomes

Scholars and practitioners of politics are probably more familiar with how voting rules affect election outcomes than the average person. Since I am a member of this group, Ari Berman’s Rolling Stone article on The GOP War on Voting made me nauseous. The nickel version of the article is that Republicans in many states, under the guise of reducing voter fraud, are putting onerous demands on who can vote, despite the fact that voter fraud is nearly non-existent in the US. Not surprisingly, these demands don’t fall equitably along the political spectrum, but target likely Democrats. For example, in Texas a concealed weapons permit is acceptable ID for voting, but a student ID is not. FYI, gun owners are far more likely to vote Republican than college students.

What is perhaps more interesting than Republicans manipulating voting rules to increase their chances to win elections is the sales pitch: reducing vote fraud. Most people in the US I suspect have no idea how much of a problem it is and few are pro-fraud. Voter suppression, I suspect, doesn’t test as well in focus groups.

Congressional Politics & Global Conflict

Image courtesy of ForgottenInvasion.com

Recently I’ve had a few excellent and rather fiery discussions with friends on the subject of the current conflict in Libya and the role being played by the United States in that conflict.  It’s fairly difficult for me to stand behind uses of military force, but like some of my peers it’s hard to see what would have been the better option for the US in Libya.  While I suspect David and I differ in regard to our government’s stance on the conflicts in Yemen and Bahrain, we agree that those conflicts are not a reason to let things in Libya grow worse.

Specifically, a colleague asked my opinion on the President’s recent decision to pursue military action in Libya without the consent of Congress.  Amid the current din of contrasting claims of Obama’s Presidential weakness, and the image of him as a socialist authoritarian overstepping the boundaries of Presidential power, the question certainly seemed worth addressing.  This isn’t the first time the role of the executive in conflict has come to a head in American history, and I suspect it will not be the last. Continue reading »

Wrong answer

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley resigned today (i.e., was fired) as a result of critical remarks he made about the Obama administration’s rather inhumane treatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of passing confidential cables to Wikileaks. This is the wrong response. Manning has not been convicted. The right answer would be to respect Manning’s human rights. It’s a sad day in a democracy when a government official is fired because he criticizes his government’s human rights violations over its own people, while the violations continue.