David Obey’s Radical Idea
Representative David Obey, the top appropriator in the House, has a hot new letter out expressing deep skepticism about the wisdom of an ambitious COIN mission in Afghanistan. I think some of the points about military strategy are wrongheaded, and I especially think Obey overplays the argument that COIN would be futile. But what he says here is true, profound, and weirdly radical in the context of our present-day bizarre politics:
As an Appropriator I must ask, what will that policy cost and how will we pay for it? We are now in the middle of a fundamental debate over reforming our healthcare system. The President has indicated that it must cost less than $900 billion over ten years and be fully paid for. The Congressional Budget Office has had four committees twisting themselves into knots in order to fit healthcare reform into that limit. CBO is earnestly measuring the cost of each competing healthcare plan. Shouldn’t it be asked to do the same thing with respect to Afghanistan?
And again:
Lastly, after the healthcare reform effort is completed, this country still has four huge long-term challenges that will require a sustained national effort:
1. The need for further action to repair the fragility of our own economy and rebuild the capacity of our economy to provide desperately needed job growth;
2. The need for a long-term commitment to strengthen our national security by dramatically reshaping our energy policy – an effort that will require sustained and meaningful sacrifice by all elements of our society;
3. The need for long-term action to restore fiscal soundness by reining in the federal deficit; and
4. The need for long-term action to extend the fiscal soundness of Social Security and Medicare.
To me, these points about costs and tradeoffs get especially pointed when we start talking about ambitious full-spectrum counterinsurgency. It would do Afghanistan a lot of good to provide better economic opportunities for its population and high-quality effective public services. But they could also use better economic opportunities and effective public services in Baltimore. The citizens of Detroit are lacking in physical security, viable infrastructure, and corruption-free governance.
25 Responses to “David Obey’s Radical Idea”
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October 8th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
call me up when the residents of baltimore and detroit start flying planes into buildings.
October 8th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Yes, but any money we spend domestically might be construed by Republicans and the media as welfare for minorities, and that is the one thing that’s absolutely unacceptable in American politics.
Better we should spend the funds on the more honest and noble goal of killing some foreigners.
October 8th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
@JC: The lack of security and infrastructure certainly has caused far more deaths than 9/11, but you can feel free to wait for some salient event. You won’t be alone.
Some comments. First, his “long term goals” seem to be driven by fairly recent events, so I distrust the classification. Second, inc. complaining from republicans that it is treason to undertake cost benefit analysis with soldiers’ lives. Third, you always get the good bundled with the bad: Obey is on the right track here, but he’s gonna muddle it up with some wrongheaded comments about COIN in an attempt to solidify the point.
October 8th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Wanna talk about “costs” in Afghanistan?
Just being a fucked up selfish American do you really think Obama is going to watch as the Taliban once again comes to power in Afghanistan?
Really?
And the ONLY alternative is, as McCrystal has requested, a major increase in troop commitment. Even if we reduced the mission statement to protecting a wide spread humanitarian and aid mission in Afghanistan we need a surge of troops to protect the NGO types.
Maybe Obama can pay the Taliban enough to buy their promise to give us a bit of breathing room, at least enough to get all our helicopters off the embassy roof.
But in reality Obama is going to develop some limp dick
policy, you know that “third way forward”, to kick the can down the road. You know, pull a Bushit.
WooHoo!
October 8th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
3. The need for long-term action to restore fiscal soundness by reining in the federal deficit; and
4. The need for long-term action to extend the fiscal soundness of Social Security and Medicare.
Obey is a good guy but including these two just perpetuates rightwing myths.
October 8th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
We have troops on the ground in Afghanistan solely to satisfy neocon wetdreams, but no one in DC has the guts to say so.
October 8th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Erm. Call me up when residents of Afghanistan fly planes into buildings.
Mullah Omar can have the country, it’s not our dispute; all we care about is bin Laden.
October 8th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Obey is a good guy but including these two just perpetuates rightwing myths.
I agree. This stoking of nationalist grievances will just backfire. Why not do both: help Americans in need and worthy foreigners who are fighting bad guys for us, while we ride our bikes and conserve energy and don’t eat burgers and don’t drink soda.
I mean we spend trillions upon trillions bailing out Wall Street and the big banks via TARP etc. etc. We can spare some for the little people.
October 8th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
The lack of security and infrastructure certainly has caused far more deaths than 9/11, but you can feel free to wait for some salient event.
Twin Cities bridge collapse, and arguably, Katrina. (IIRC, the Army Corps of Engineers had been warning of the inadequacy of the levees for years, but there was no funding for the big government intervention that would have been necessary to reinforce them.) Salience bias shouldn’t really control questions of national policy — we pay professionals to be smarter than our instinctive snap judgments — but there’s no shortage of salient infrastructure disasters either.
In any case, no matter how many angry young Saudi men there are in the world, they couldn’t have carried out 9/11 without getting onto airplanes armed, so that was really a security infrastructure failure too. Killing random Afghans won’t stop another 9/11 and, even if it had been done earlier, wouldn’t have stopped the one we had (whether the TSA will is arguable, but it at least has a chance). Worse, the same goes for killing bin Laden — as emotionally satisfying as it would be, graveyards are full of indispensable men in Afghanistan too.
October 8th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Two words – imperial policing. A permanent and very small presence on the ground can assist whatever govt. is able to survive; we can feed them pocket change in exchange for dubious intel. But the majority of the work will be done by drones. It worked in Iraq before Bush invaded and continues to work in Pakistan, Sudan, and Somalia. Drop bombs and move along – as long as you’re not there to take the blame for any collateral you’ll come out OK. The money saved can either be used to shore up port, border, and airport security or used to put a police monitored video camera on every corner and every project in Baltimore, Newark, and Detroit. Problem solved.
October 8th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Ah, but can the citizens of Detroit run across the border and grab a nuclear weapon?
Hyperbole at this point I know, but how stable will Pakistan be if we abandon Afghanistan? They certainly don’t want us there.
October 8th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
chris:
“Killing random Afghans won’t stop another 9/11 and, even if it had been done earlier, wouldn’t have stopped the one we had (whether the TSA will is arguable, but it at least has a chance).”
Who’s arguing for killing random Afghans?
October 8th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Y’know, the way things are working out, this logic is becoming a lot more persuasive: “to prevent another 9/11, we could have just armored all of the cockpit doors and called it a day.”
Having radicals running around and fscking up your shit *is* a PITA. But, when fixing the problem, it helps to really think the scenario all the way through.
October 8th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
It certainly would be more logical if we treated domestic policy and military policy in the same way.
First, The reason we don’t do so is pretty much constitutional. The President doesn’t need congressional review to get engaged in military action. The constitution gives the president broad leeway to commit the nation to actions which congress ultimately has to fund.
Second, as you like to say, Yglesias, there is a lot of path dependence in this issue. Insofar as Bush already committed us to this policy, failure to spend more looks like a sunk cost.
Third, we’re scrutinizing healthcare because legislators can manipulate this scrutiny to their personal benefit.
October 8th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Concerning Obey’s four points:
1. I thought the green jobs program, not to mention the stimulus package, was supposed to repair the fragility of our economy by providing the needed job growth.
2. Again, the green jobs program was supposed to reshape our energy policy.
3. I thought that Pelosi’s VAT would take care of the deficit if the special taxes on insurance companies and the wealthy didn’t.
4. I thought that the fiscal soundness of Social Security and Medicare would be accomplished by Medicare cost savings, as well as the taxes in 2.
As for Afghanistan, I thought our new attitude toward the Muslim world as expressed in Obama’s Cairo speech would fix everything up.
So apparently the entire Obama platform as I understood it has been abandoned and some other way to accomplish the Four Commands must be thought up. After less than nine months in office, nothing has worked. We’re right back at the end of GWBush’s second term. Gee, I must be really dumb.
October 8th, 2009 at 8:48 pm
It should be understood that our ability to project our military the world over without thought of the cost is now at the beginning of the end. This denouement will become one of the defining political struggles of the coming years. Often thought of as a fiscal issue and debate about what portion the military/intelligence side takes versus all those other calls on government funds but in truth it is deeper than that.
The building wail of the right over every possible issue is in fact a reaction to the loss of stature. The thing unimagined and unacceptable to that huge plurality of Americans who believe Americas superiority in all things is ordained by history and God whose most important symbol has become our imagined ability to shape the world with our military might. The military, the symbol in defense of our illusions.
October 9th, 2009 at 12:56 am
There are too many veto points in our political system to help the poor slobs in Baltimore and Detroit. Whereas there no veto points when it comes to helping the poor slobs that inhabit Afghanistan.
The only way out is taxes, Matt, which you know, and I’m sure the rich know it too. I’m guessing assets are fleeing this country like migrating geese in anticipation of future tax increases. We need to act now to get our money back before our money is gone.
Up must go the capital gains tax, estate tax, and most especially, the marginal tax rate. The charts that compile the history of the top marginal tax rate are several clicks north of mindblowing. They indicate, to me at least, that as hardcore Capitalist Americans we were Socialists once, and young.
You’ve pounded this issue before. Perhaps it should pounded every day until the end of time. From 1951 until 1963, 14 consecutive non-war years, the top marginal rate on income above 400 grand was 91% (SAY WHAT!) No wonder we, as a Nation, could build our one great project, the despised -for stinking autos- interstate highway network, without going 50 billion trillion into debt.
Adjust for inflation, of course.
October 9th, 2009 at 1:18 am
I think you have listed this chart before. I turn to this chart often, when I am looking for answers -the answers to all questions.
The first time I looked at it, stared at it, my eyes begin fill with tears. At first, I thought “My eyes? My eyes? They fill with tears of rage!”
But that wasn’t it. I was weeping, straight up, the knowledge sinking in slow -I was born into Capitalism.
http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php
October 9th, 2009 at 1:28 am
@17 Oops…”From 1951 until 1963, 14 consecutive non-war years”
Sorry Uncle Ron and Uncle George. I overlooked Korea. 12 consecutive non-war years.
October 9th, 2009 at 2:58 am
Unemployment kills the Afghanistan project, if we are going to lay out a trillion, it should be on American infrastructure, which has been obviously ailing for some time, and puts Americans back to work.
Afghanistan is a fantasy, and it’s embarrassing to see our military running around proposing billions and trillions of dollars to defeat a tiny little terrorist force that got lucky in an attack on 9-11, I’m sure Osama is laughing at us, it really is stupid, nearly all of the Pentagon leadership should be fired immediately.
Any health care plan should also have a public option sewn in, there is literally no sane reason to fight for the interests of the private insurance companies who have so royally screwed countless Americans in need of essential care, it’s bad enough we’re not pursuing this criminal activity and racketeering against these firms let alone face the indignity of our democratic representatives publicly fighting for the interests of these scumbags.
October 9th, 2009 at 3:05 am
Seriously, strategists need to pull their melvins out of their behind, because the weakness of our economy and employment, compounded by overreaching in places like Afghanistan, along with ridiculous annual inflation of health care costs, and rapidly deteriorating (non-IT) infrastructure, is exactly the recipe for radical political, economic, and currency change in the future that leads to the dramatic weakening of American power, influence, and ideals, not to mention social unrest at home and abroad.
I really question whether the Pentagon even understands strategy anymore, let alone assumedly civilian strategic agencies we may have in play. To put it bluntly, it sounds like a bunch of dumb azzes are in control.
October 9th, 2009 at 8:24 am
This. Plus the general requirement of the military-industrial-security complex for endless war. Afghanistan is just a convenient pretext.
October 9th, 2009 at 8:51 am
This is where I get off the bus. I don’t see why people in Afghanistan should be worth less to me that people in Baltimore. I don’t doubt that money spent fighting insurgents in Afghanistan is probably not the most effective way to increase marginal utility, But good government in Detroit isn’t either. We should probably be giving development assistance to some country I haven’t heard of or we should be lowering our barriers to immigration or we should be getting countries in Africa to trade with one another. The idea that people in Detroit need help is more of a political argument than a moral one.
October 9th, 2009 at 8:56 am
Which is exactly why you should oppose the murdering of 10 civilians for every Taliban we kill.
October 9th, 2009 at 9:45 am
I’m kind of surprised that so many people in the comments are defending the continuation of “Bush’s Excellent Adventure in the Middle East.”
First, climate change was hinted at, with energy issues, but long-term, that’s the big problem.
As to Afghanistan, some people have made it an issue of terrorism, not wanting Al Qaeda to regain a footing if the Taliban takes over. Right now the Taliban controls around 80% of the country’s geography yet Al Qaeda hasn’t moved back in. For war supporters, explain why they haven’t set up operations in that area? They appear to have bases or camps in Pakistan, where they are bombed and attacked by Pakistani forces and American drones, so it can’t be just a fear of military action.
Second, a poll came out showing that 60% of Afghanis wanted the Taliban to be a part of the government. How do you “protect” the populace from a political movement the majority either approve of or don’t feel hostile to? Especially when the Karzai puppet-regime is LESS popular than the Taliban.
Afghanistan is a dumb, useless war.