Author Archives: jsh54

The Tax Wars.

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Should the rich pay their “fair share”? In 1992 there were three tax brackets: 15%, 28%, and 31%. In 1993 the Democrats created two additional tax brackets on higher incomes: 36% and 39.6%. Thus, the Democrats imposed higher tax rates on high incomes.[1]

In 2001 the Republicans cut federal income taxes on all Americans.[2] Single tax-payers with taxable income up to $6,000, heads of households with taxable income up to $10,000 and people filing jointly with taxable incomes up to $12,000 had their tax rate reduced from 15% to 10%. Those in the 15% bracket had the lower threshold indexed to the new 10% bracket. The tax rate on people in the next bracket was reduced from 28% to 25% by 2006. The rate on the next bracket would be lowered from 31% to 28% by 2006. The rate on the next bracket was reduced from 36% bracket to 33% by 2006. The rate on the highest bracket was reduced from 39.6% to 35% by 2006. The biggest percentage cuts in the tax rates were at the bottom end of the tax brackets, the smaller cuts at the high end. The two highest brackets still were taxed at a higher rate than in 1992.

These taxes continued through 2012, when the 2001 cuts on the two top brackets were allowed to expire, while the rates on the other brackets were made permanent. To illustrate, the rate for single filers making up to $8,925 is 10%; on $8,925 to $36,250 is 15%; on $36,250 to $87,850 is 25%; on $87,850 to $183,250 is 28%; on $183,250 to $398,350 is 33%; on $398,350 to $400,000 is 35%; and on $400,000+ is 39.6%. So, most Americans live under the Bush Administration tax cuts, while the wealthiest Americans live under the Clinton Administration tax increases.

Under these systems, what do different income groups pay as a percentage of federal income taxes?[3] In 1991, before the Clinton tax increases on high incomes, the top one percent of income earners paid 24.82% of the income tax bill; the bottom 50% paid 5.48%. In 2000, before the Bush tax cuts, the top 1% percent of income earners paid 37.42% of the income tax bill; the bottom 50% paid 3.91%. In 2011, under the Bush tax cuts, the top 1% of tax payers paid 35.1%; the bottom 50% of tax-payers paid 2.89% of taxes. (The top 50% paid 97.1%; the top 25% paid 85.6%; and the top 10% paid 68.3%.)

Across three very different administrations and under very different economic situations, the tax burden has been continually shifted from the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers onto the top one percent of tax payers. The Democratic mantra that the Bush tax cuts “favored the rich” is absolutely untrue. (In all likelihood, the Republican mantra that tax cuts will stimulate economic growth is equally untrue. That needs to be the subject of a different jeremiad.)

If tax rates favor the bottom 50%, income distribution favors the top 50%.

The “hard times” experienced by many Americans don’t have anything to do with tax-dodging by the rich. They are more likely to be the product of big shifts in the American economy within a globalized world economy since the 1970s. Fighting over shares of a shrinking pie isn’t going to fix the problem. We need broadly shared economic growth.

[1] For the sake of comparison, in Canada the highest rate of national taxation—on incomes over $132,000—is 29%.

 

[2] Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (EGTRRA).

 

[3] Kyle Pomerleau, “Summary of Latest Federal Tax Data,” Table 6. http://taxfoundation.org/article/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data

On the Border.

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Sometimes it is useful to look backward to have some idea about contemporary issues.

Hispanic-Mexican immigration is a political problem in the United States. In 1986 the US offered an amnesty to those Mexicans in America illegally, combined with the promise of a crack-down on future illegal immigration. The illegal immigrants got amnestied, but the crack-down was slow in coming. In 1994 the US did crack down on immigrants openly flouting the law along US highways. As a result, illegal immigrants concentrated on crossing the Sonoran Desert into Arizona. In 2004 1.3 million Mexicans got snagged by the Border Patrol trying to cross into the United States; 500,000 of them in Arizona alone. This totaled more than those arrested in any other American state, and it ignores the many others who got through. One estimate held that about 485,000 illegal immigrants successfully entered the country each year.

By April 2007 there were about 20 million people from Mexico working in the United States. The goods they produced exceeded in value the GNP produced by all the Mexicans who stayed home. The money they sent home ($20 billion a year) trailed only oil exports in Mexico’s foreign earnings, leading both tourism and direct foreign investment. These remittances amount to a form of foreign aid paid by the United States to Mexico. Same as money for drugs.

Why do all these Hispanic-Mexicans come to the United States? In some places, going to work in the United States has become a basic right of passage for young men. The cost can run $20,000. The financing of this resembles American student loans. Illegal immigrants basically “charge” the cost of their passage, then spend years paying it off. The debt collector then becomes a regular figure in the emigrant community. Then there is is the awful state of the Mexican economy and the many injustices of Mexican society. Mexican elites export their surplus population to the United States to avoid having to pay decent wages or provide decent public services in their own country. More money for them.

So, it’s good for Mexicans and for Mexico. However, a majority of Americans regarded it as a Mexican invasion. Working-class voters see Mexican immigration as a threat to their livelihood. Probably a lot of middle-class people see the flood of Mexican immigrants as a threat to raise taxes for services and as a threat to the Anglo culture. You may not like that, but it’s a democratic country where citizens have a right to express their feelings—and where the feelings of non-citizens don’t count. In 2005 the—Democratic—governors of New Mexico and Arizona declared “states of emergency” in their states because of illegal immigration. They complained that the federal government has failed to address the problem. For example, while most Mexican immigrants are immediately returned to Mexico, most non-Mexican immigrants (120,000 of them) are released on their own recognizance by federal courts. It should surprise no one that they usually fail to appear for trial.

However, “American” politicians dissent from the majority view. Some people suspect that Republicans answer to powerful business interests, who see real advantages in having a low-cost labor force available for marginal enterprises; Democrats see potential voters if the “immigration reform” issue can be spun the right way. In both cases, the narrow interests of the political parties trump the desires of American voters. That can’t be good for democracy.

Ross Douthat and Jenny Dodson, “The Border,” The Atlantic, Jan.-Feb. 2006,” pp. 54-55.

Matthew Quirk, “The Mexican Connection,” The Atlantic, April 2007, pp. 26-27.

Clueless in Gaza.

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Israel captured the Gaza Strip from Egypt in the 1967 “Six Days War.” In 2005 Israel ended its military occupation of the Strip, handing over government to the Palestinian Authority. In 2007 Hamas won elections in the Strip (although not among all Palestinians), then followed up electoral victory by seizing control of the government in Gaza from the Palestinian Authority.   Israel saw this development as a grave danger. Hamas does not recognize the right of Israel to exist. Hamas militants backed up words with deeds by firing rockets into Israel. Israel responded by imposing a tight blockade on Gaza. All sorts of things–from computers to food–were barred from entry, and most Palestinians were barred from leaving Gaza.

The blockade wrecked the economy of Gaza. In early Summer 2014, there were 1.8 million people living in the Gaza Strip; 40 percent of them were unemployed; almost half of them received food aid from the United Nations; and 80 percent of them lived under the level defined by the UN as in poverty. At the same time, Hamas circumvented the blockade by digging many tunnels into Egypt which allowed the import of all sorts of goods. (It is difficult to believe that there wasn’t also a large “black” economy that never figured into UN calculations of living standards.)   So long as the Egyptians tolerated the Hamas tunnels, Israel’s blockade could not have full effect as a form of non-military coercion. However, Hamas had begun as an extension of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. When the Egyptian military overthrew the government of Mohammad Morsi, the new government cut-off the Hamas tunnels. The people of the Gaza Strips suddenly began to suffer a great deal more than before.

In April 2014 Hamas went so far as to form a unity government with its old rival Fatah, which rules the West Bank (after a fashion). This got Hamas nowhere. Israel sank the peace-talks being pushed by the United States rather than deal with Hamas.

Hoping to force an end to the blockade, Hamas went onto the offensive in Summer 2014. Hamas could not hope to coerce Israel directly. Hamas could hope to provoke a humanitarian crisis that would lead to international pressure on Israel to ease or end the blockade. Hamas had imported a large stock of missiles through the tunnel system before the coup that put Morsi in prison. Now these missiles began to rain down on Israel. The Israelis struck back with air attacks, artillery fire, and a ground incursion. In the process, the Israelis discovered many tunnels that ran not into Egypt for smuggling, but into Israel. Between 2001 and 2005 Palestinian suicide bombers had killed 800 people in Israel until the Israelis walled themselves off from the Palestinians. Finding this defense penetrated by the tunnels, the Israelis went wild.

Israel’s air and ground offensive against Hamas certainly provoked a huge humanitarian crisis. It killed about 1,900 people; destroyed 10,000 homes; and forced the emergency relocation of perhaps 400,000 people within the confines of the tiny area. Criticism of Israel’s actions came from all around the world. Israel has been pushed back toward revisiting the situation of April 2014 in the sense that it will negotiate through the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority. On the other hand, Hamas also came in for much criticism for using Palestinian civilians as human shields as they fired their rockets from the midst of civilian areas. Much of this criticism, little noticed in the West, comes from other Arab governments. Moreover, Israel demands the effectively-supervised disarmament of Gaza as a prerequisite to ending the blockade. Fatah sees a chance to make gains against its rival, Hamas.  Hard to make a deal when no one wants a deal.

“Misery in Gaza,” The Week, 22 August 2014, p. 11.)

Peachy and Danny

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Soon after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in the Seventh Century AD, Arab Muslin tribes burst out of the Arabian peninsula to begin a wave of conquest that ran on for centuries. Muhammad’s successors as leaders of the Muslims took the title of Caliph (“Successor” to the Prophet). The single large Arab empire soon fragmented into multiple kingdoms. Sometimes the rulers claimed the title of Caliph. The last important ruler to claim the title was the Ottoman emperor. The title went unclaimed after the fall of that empire at the end of the First World War. As more and more of the Muslim world fell under direct or indirect control of non-Muslims, especially of European states, nostalgia grew for the days of Muslim power and unity.

Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai was born in Samarra, Iraq in 1971. He claims to be a descendant of Muhammad’s own Quraysh tribe. He earned a doctorate in religious law and set up as a preacher. Salafism was all the rage among Sunni Muslims at the time and he found himself attracted to it.

When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, al-Badri joined the resistance. In particular, he joined not the Sunni Iraqi tribesmen fighting against the Americans and the Shi-ite majority, but Al Qaeda in Iraq. This franchise of al Qaeda sought to foster war between Sunni and Shi’a in order to make the Iraq occupation a disaster for the United States. In 2005 American troops arrested him during a raid on a resistance group. He spent some time locked-up in Camp Bucca. In the United States prison sometimes serves as a sort of advanced education in crime and as an anti-social networking site. That seems to have been the case with Camp Bucca as well. Al-Badri got to know a lot of people with views similar to his own. As part of its effort to disengage from the war in Iraq, the Americans turned over many of their prisoners to the new Iraqi government. As part of its effort to mend fences with former opponents, the Iraqi government let many of them go. Badri was among those released.

He went back to the struggle against the Americans and the government they had created. During his time in prison, much had changed. Sunni tribesmen had grown weary of both the bloodshed and the strict Islamic fundamentalism pushed by al Qaeda. The “Awakening” movement among Sunnis combined with the American “surge” to put al Qaeda on the ropes. The survivors were rethinking the whole strategy of fighting Shi’ites instead of just the Americans, who were plainly eager to get out of Iraq in the near future. The newly-released Badri must have had a Rip van Winkle moment. He argued for sticking to the old course. When he saw that he wasn’t winning the argument, he started making his own contacts with the rich men in the Persian Gulf states who had funded al Qaeda. This gave him an independent source of money. He adopted the name Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Abu Bakr having been the father-in-law of Muhammad and the first Caliph.

Thereafter, Badri/Abu Bakr went on a rampage. He gathered fighters drawn to his ideas and his oratory. He moved his operations into the eastern parts of war-torn Syria, where a vacuum of power existed. Syria itself was full of jihadist enthusiasts, either Syrian ones or foreigners drawn to the struggle. Many of these fighters shifted their loyalty to what Abu Bakr now called the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). He emptied banks, exported oil from wells ISIS had seized, sold plundered antiquities, and taxed local people. With a huge war-chest and 10,000 enthusiastic followers, Abu Bakr set out to recreate the Caliphate.

History is unlikely to repeat itself, but there’s only one way to find out.

“The man who would be caliph,” The Week, 19 September 2014, p. 11.

 

Just like imam used to make.

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Trying to help foreigners understand America, the Gummint pays for some of them to study in the US as Fulbright scholars. Nasser al-Awlaki and his wife came from Yemen in 1971 on a Fulbright to study agricultural economics. He got an MA from UNM, then a Ph.D. from Nebraska, then taught at Meenasotta for a couple of years. Almost immediately, he and the missus had a child. They named the sprout Anwar al-Awlaki. Having been born in the USA, Anwar was an American citizen. In 1978 the family returned to Yemen.

To be perfectly honest, the goat pizza available in Yemen paled in comparison to what could be had in the States. In 1990, Anwar al-Awlaki started in at Colorado State University. One summer he spent the break fighting in Afghanistan. (Must have made for interesting conversation in the dorm that Fall. “So, Bill, what did you do this summer? I picked lettuce on my uncle’s farm. Hoo-whee, we had some wild times on Saturday night. How ‘bout you Anne-War? Well, I ambushed opposing mujahedeen, then walked around shooting the wounded in the head.”) Anyway, by 1994 he got a B.S. in Civil Engineering and was a part-time imam in a mosque in Denver.

In 1996 he landed a job as an imam in San Diego. Here he got an M.A. in Educational Leadership from SDSU. However, Shaitan (in the form of babes in bikinis) beset him: he got hauled in for soliciting prostitutes a couple of times. In 1999 the EffaBeeEye came around, wanting to know if he had any ties to the “blind sheikh” who had organized the 1993 WTC truck bombing or to the then-munchkin terrorist Osama bin Laden. He said “no” and that was good enough for them. Meanwhile, a couple of the future 9/11 guys were attending services at his mosque. In 2000 he landed a job as an imam at a big mosque in northern Virginia. (We can’t even keep alcoholic child-molesters from becoming school bus drivers, so why blame a mosque for hiring an imam who can’t keep his pants on?)   During 2001 he worked toward a doctorate in Human Resources Development at George Washington University’s Education School. (He actually didn’t have much in the way of Islamic scholarly credentials, so his charismatic appeal to ignorant fanatics seems to arisen from what he picked up in American Ed. Schools.)

Then 9/11 came along. “The US was at war with al-Qaeda, not with Islam.” So, Awlaki got invited to a lunch at what was left of the Pentagon. They probably served pork chops or crab cakes, because the next thing you know (March 2002), he was on a plane to Yemen. From 2002 to 2004 he bounced between Yemen, the US, and the UK as an advocate of jihad.

After a variety of adventures, Awlaki settled down as a long-distance recruiter and inciter of jihadis. His fluent English and knowledge of American society, his charismatic personality, and his ease in using modern media made him a prominent figure despite hiding out in a remote area of one of the most backward places on Earth. The London subway bombers, the Times Square bomber, the Fort Hood shooter, and many others all had his sermons on their computers or had exchanged messages with him. Since he has said that “jihad against America is binding upon myself, just as it is binding upon every other able Muslim,” he probably wasn’t trying to calm them down. When the Underwear Bomber said that Awlaki helped train him for his mission, the government got fed up and decided to kill him. On 9/30/11 they did.

Can the United States execute an American citizen without trial, without even producing the evidence upon which the decision to kill him is based? Would you really want to establish the legal precedent? Talk about “death panels”! So, civil libertarians opposed the execution. On the other hand, some of them say the US can’t “execute” anyone anywhere without trial. It will be hard to fight a war on terrorism with those hand-cuffs in place. What to do?

Carlotta Gall on Afghanistan

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The British had an empire all over the world, so both British journalism and the British intelligence service had an unusual reach. Many of the empire-builders, journalists, and intelligence officers were willing to go where others feared to tread. Henderson Alexander “Sandy” Gall (1927) grew up on a rubber plantation in Malaya, went to school in Britain, and then went to work for a series of news agencies. He reported on the Suez Crisis (1956); the Hungarian Crisis (1956); the Congo Crisis (1960-1963); the Vietnam War (various times, 1965-1975); the Six Days War (1967); Uganda (where he was arrested by Idi Amin’s police in 1972 while reporting on the expulsion of the Indians); and the Yom Kippur War (1973). Along the way, Gall did some work for MI 6, the British intelligence service. He slowed down a bit for a decade to work as the news presenter on a television show and to have a family. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 he went there to make a series of documentaries about the “mujahideen” fighting against the Russkies.

His daughter, Carlotta Gall (1971?- ) is a chip off the old block. She went to Cambridge University, where she “read” Russian and French, then got an MA in International Relations and Journalism. This provided her with a launching pad to become a reporter for the Moscow Times, covering the war in Chechnya (1994-1998). She briefly covered the Caucasus and Central Asia for the Financial Times and the Economist (1998-1999), then went to work for the New York Times. For a couple of years Gall covered the wars attending the break-up of the former Yugoslavia (1999-2001). Then she went to Afghanistan to cover the American war against the Taliban and al Qaeda (2001-2013). Now she is supposed to be covering the Middle East, but the Times sent her hot-foot to Ukraine when trouble cooked-off there.

Right at the moment (September 2014), she is best known for her book The Wrong Enemy.[1] Based on her years of reporting in and deep knowledge of Afghanistan and Pakistan, Gall argues that Pakistan is the force driving the Taliban in its fight against the Americans. The Soviet invasion of Pakistan put a hostile state on the western border of Pakistan. Both the Americans and the Pakistanis involved themselves in supporting the “mujahideen” resistance to the Soviets. When the Soviets left in 1989, so did the Americans. The Pakistanis stayed. Soon, the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) aligned itself with the Taliban, the victors in the civil war that followed the Russian defeat. Briefly, after 9/11, Pakistan aligned itself with the Americans who overthrew the Taliban as part of their hunt for Osama bin Laden. When, after several years, it became apparent that the Americans would not be leaving Afghanistan any time soon and appeared to be creating their own client-state in Kabul, the ISI re-entered the fray by reviving the alliance with the Taliban. The chief culprit here has been Pakistani General Ashfaq Kayani, who headed the ISI from 2004 to 2007, and then became chief-of-staff of the army in a country with a long history of military intervention in politics. Under Kayani’s direction, ISI armed, trained, and directed the Taliban in a war that has killed 2,300 American soldiers, 1,100 other foreign soldiers, and somewhere between 50,000 and 70,000 Afghans.

Why haven’t the Americans recognized that they are fighting “the wrong enemy”? Possibly because the ISI is good at hiding its hand. Possibly because of long-standing deficiencies in the CIA. Possibly because the incompetence and corruption of the Karzai government is so much easier to see. Possibly because it would be difficult to explain to the American people.

[1] Carlotta Gall, The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014 (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014).

Exporting Jobs

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Companies are owned by private investors seeking the maximum return on their investment. In the decades after the Second World War, the United States slowly became a high-cost place to do business. Labor costs (wages and benefits), and environmental and workplace safety regulations played an important role in this process. The weakening quality of the American workforce in terms of science and math also played a role.

Beginning in the late 1970s major American firms began seeking higher profits through the lower production costs that could be attained by moving operations outside the United States. General Electric, under Jack Welch, figures as one of the leaders in this movement and GE was not shy about encouraging its own suppliers to do the same. Many other manufacturers followed the example of GE. For example, in 1992 the Ford Motor Company overseas manufacturing sector employed 47 percent of its workforce, but still employed 53 percent of its workforce in the US and Canada. In 2009 the overseas operations employed 63 percent of its workforce, while 37 percent were employed in the US, Canada, and Mexico.

Then, in the 1990s, the growth of the Internet exposed service industries to globalization as well. Computer programmers have seen 13 percent of their jobs exported to foreign countries.

Furthermore, the United States has the second highest rate of taxation on corporations in the world. The nominal tax rate on corporate profits is 35 percent. Companies have spent decades lobbying Congress in successful efforts to create tax loopholes, so the average effective rate is 25 percent. In Canada the corporate tax rate is 16.5 percent; in Germany it is 15.8 percent; in Ireland it is 12.5 percent. Thus, the tax rate on corporate profits in the United States remains higher than the rates in many foreign countries.

Many American companies have created foreign branches to take advantage of lower labor and regulatory costs, and lower rates of taxation. Moreover, American corporations with operations abroad must pay the difference between the tax rate in the country where they earned the profit and the tax rate in the United States when they repatriate those profits. Rather than do so, the companies reinvest the foreign profits in their foreign profits in expanding production overseas, rather than reinvesting in the United States. America is almost alone in double-taxing profits earned abroad.

In 2010, the Simpson-Bowles commission President Obama recommended that the US tax rate be lowered to 23 percent and most loopholes closed. American business leaders generally accepted this proposal. However, the proposal also encountered opposition from the left to any reduction of taxes on business. According to one critic of corporate tax avoidance “It’s unpatriotic, it’s unfair, and we can’t afford it.”

Who profits from this strategy? American corporations profit: in 2009 47 percent of the revenues of the five hundred leading American corporations came from their overseas operations. Developing economies that host American corporations profit: between 1995 and 2008 China’s GDP grew an average of 9.6 percent and India’s GDP grew an average of 6.9 percent. It’s harder to say that America itself benefits. Between 1995 and 2008 the GDP of the United States grew an average of 2.9 percent. In 1950, the United States Government pulled in thirty percent of its revenue from taxes on corporations. In 2010, the United States Government pulled in nine percent of its revenues from taxes on corporations.

Corporate “inversions” are just the latest example of these problems.

“Where America’s Jobs Went,” The Week, 25 March 2011, p. 13; “Taxing corporations,” The Week, 2 September 2011, p. 13.

Arab Youth

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Can one be optimistic about the future of the Middle East? Not if you read the newspapers. What if you read the work of knowledgeable scholars? Then there might be more cause for optimism. Juan Cole has argued that a watershed divides the older generation of Arabs from the youth of today. The older generation is poorly educated and often illiterate, largely rural, and religiously observant. Fundamentally conservative, they have accepted a “complacent, stagnant and corrupt status quo” in politics and the economy. Younger people, Cole argues, are better educated, more concentrated in urban areas, more familiar with all kinds of technology, and less religiously observant than are their parents and grandparents. In Egypt, half the population is less than 25 years old. They are also un-employed and under-employed at “Depression-era rates.” On the one hand, this gives them serious grievances against their own society. On the other hand, it leaves them with a lot of free time for complaining, talking, organizing, and demonstrating.   Their familiarity with social media magnifies these tendencies. Cole argues that these sorts of young people played an important role in the “Arab Spring” uprisings that brought down authoritarian rulers in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt.[1] Cole focuses in particular on “left-liberal youth living in towns and cities” whom he sees as forming a credible opposition to both traditional authoritarian governments and to Islamic fundamentalists.

There are objections to Professor Cole’s optimism. For one thing, if you track the historical background to the “Arab Spring,” you can see a rising wave of public discontent. In early 2003, there were demonstrations opposing the American attack on Iraq; in 2006, came Youtube videos of Egyptian secret police abusing suspects in custody; in late 2008, there were demonstrations over the first Gaza war between Israel and Hamas; and in early 2011, video of Tunisian police firing on demonstrators started the ball rolling for the “Arab Spring.” The trouble is that these were equal parts anti-Western (US, Israel) and anti-authoritarian.

Second, the concept of rootless, estranged young people is an umbrella category. Estranged young people looking for a cause don’t have to choose left-liberal progressivism. Young people in the Thirties flocked to Nazism with as much enthusiasm (and in greater numbers) as they did to the International Brigades that fought for the Spanish Republic. Jihadists shelter under the umbrella just as much as do progressives. A familiarity with social media is no vaccine against Islamism. Both ISIS and Anwar al-Awlaki could master modern social media as well as can the progressive young people of the Middle East.

Finally, faced with a choice between Islamists governments elected after a “revolution,” and a return to the old order under the auspices of a military-economic elite complex, the progressive young people celebrated by Professor Cole seem to have opted for the latter. Now that the old order is back in power, the young progressives appear to have come in for as much repression as has the Muslim Brotherhood.

However, the real question is not what mistakes were made by the young people studied by Professor Cole, but what they have learned from those mistakes. They will get another chance. The fighting in Libya will—eventually—burn itself out. The al-Sisi government doesn’t appear to have any solutions for the deep social and economic crises of Egypt. ISIS is going to give radical Islamism a bad name in many quarters. The older generation will gave way to the younger generation. Time is on their side.

[1] Juan Cole, The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation Is Changing the Middle East (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014).

Arming the Moderates

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Controversy has swirled around President Obama’s Syrian policy. In particular, people have talked a good deal about the need to support the “moderates” opposing Bashar al-Assad. It has been said that the failure to support the “moderates” allowed the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) to expand its power. In light of this discussion, it is interesting to revisit a piece in the New York Times from April 2013 by Ben Hubbard.[1]

According to Hubbard, the rebellion against Assad began among, is led by, and continues to draw most of its support from conservative Sunni Muslims. They were pro-Islamist from the start. In contrast, the supporters of a “democratic” Syria mostly have been “civilian activists, protesters, and aid workers.” Such people played a role in igniting the rebellion, but soon found themselves pushed to the curbside. Instead, the Ahrar al-Sham group and the al-Qaeda affiliated Nusra Front raised soldiers, obtained arms, and launched attacks. Early small successes snowballed into greater successes later on. Rebels armed-up and added more recruits by seizing Syrian army posts, then towns, and then key resources. ISIS represents this pattern carried to an extreme.

Hubbard reported that one moderate rebel military leader had claimed that most Nusra Front recruits had “joined the group for the weapons, not the ideology” and “some left after discovering the al-Qaeda connection.” However, he acknowledged that the Nusra Front fielded the strongest military force in his area and spoke “on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.”

A year and a half ago Hubbard reported that “nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.” Instead, “More than two years of violence have radicalized the armed opposition fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad, leaving few groups that both share the political vision of the United States and have the military might to push it forward.”

 

A couple of observation and questions.

Islamist jihadis come to fight for ISIS. Why don’t equivalent figures come to fight for a democratic, secular Syria? Rich people and governments arm the Islamist rebels in Syria. Why don’t equivalent figures or governments in other Arab countries arm the supporters of a democratic, secular Syria? Is it because the supporters of secular, democratic government are few and far between in the Arab world? This isn’t to argue that such people don’t exist. Television talk-shows are full of them.

The American conjecture that fighters flow toward the Islamists because they are the ones with the guns, rather than because of ideology, is belied by the many foreign jihadis who have come to Syria and by the growth of ISIS at the expense of the Nusra Front.

Would Western efforts to arm the moderates just lead to the supporters of the Islamists upping their own support?

Would supporting “moderates” sufficiently to bring them to power just create a puppet-government that has no legitimacy with the majority of the Syrian people? One that is scorned by other Arab governments?

Is it possible that “moderates” just don’t want to fight? Maybe they’re just too “moderate.”

[1] “Islamist Rebels Create Dilemma on Syria Policy, NYT, 28 April 2013, A1, A8.

 

Straight talk on American Education.

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The cost of sending your kid to a university has gone up by 8 percent in the middle of the next-best-thing to “The Great Depression” that my folks lived through. President Obama—God bless his pointy little head—has offered a plan to help some of the worst off. His Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, has been hard at work on a plan to replace the much-despised “No Child Left Behind” with “Well, Some Children Will Be Left Behind.” (At least it falls in the tradition of what American schools have been doing for two hundred years.) Asian countries have been gaining on American educational achievement like alligators fed on a mix of steroids and speed. Americans are desperate for better and more cost-effective schools.

I’ve taught at a little college for almost twenty years and at an Enormous State University for half a dozen years before that, so I’ve got a pretty good idea of what high-school graduates bring with them to college (aside from enormous bongs and that idiot dub-step music). I’ve got two boys aged twenty (graduated from a public school in the suburbs and attending a private college in the farther suburbs) and seventeen (who may graduate from an elite private school—unless he does one more thing to piss-off the headmaster), so I’ve got some idea of what kids are capable. Here’s my plan.

Close a bunch of the lesser universities and colleges, public and private. On the one hand, this will increase the competition among students to get in to colleges. There won’t be “safety schools.” There will just be clerking at Wawa or being the assistant manager for deep-fried products on the swing-shift at McDonald’s. You’ll end up looking like Jabba the Hutt and you’ll never get a member of the opposite sex to look at you. So, get good grades in high-school or Darwinism will take care of the rest. On the other hand, this will stop the facilities arms race that began in the Seventies. I spent six weeks in a Harvard dorm one summer a few years ago. No air-conditioning, buy your own fan; drizzle of lukewarm water from the shower, no matter how far you had run; took five minutes to get the badly-cut key to turn in the door lock; Army noodles with ketchup in the dining hall every night; did you want them with fish balls, pork balls, or tofu balls? Gym is crowded? Go for a run and do some push-ups. Library is crowded? Read your textbook in your room. Classroom is crowded? Get there early or stand at the back. Long line outside the professor’s office? Bring a book—or chat with the others about Darwin.

Fix the public schools. On the one hand, “Waiting for Superman” was right up to a point, but then confused the little bit—teachers’ unions are bad–with the larger whole of the problem—the schools are a mess. You have to be smart, committed, and know your subject to teach. Nothing more. Teach for America is right: smart kids who know a lot about their subject do better than ordinary teachers. Socrates didn’t have an Education degree. In fact, nobody had an Education degree before the end of the 19th century. Education schools didn’t exist. How did we ever manage to progress? On the other hand, stop using the schools as the vehicle for delivering useful public services. Self-esteem, psychological disorders, poor nutrition in the home, bullying, obesity, and sports-band-ceramics for that matter, are not central to the educational mission. Focus! (NB: That doesn’t mean some other agency can’t deliver those services.)

At the root of all our educational problems is the family. Turn off the “social media” (including the television). It turns kids’ brains to applesauce. Take your kids to the public library. Library is closed? This is worth burning buses over. Most of all, read to your kids. Nothing is more important. Except, maybe them seeing you read too.

Technology? Remember, Bill Gates didn’t have a computer in his house or school when he was growing up. Imagination and ambition come from somewhere else.