The Syria Mess

I listened in today on Secretary of State John Kerry’s congressional testimony regarding US intervention in Syria.  Am I the only one who feels a sense of déjà vu hearing John Kerry talk about US military action involving a Middle Eastern dictator and WMDs?  Wasn’t it the same Democratic Presidential Candidate Kerry who denounced President Bush for ‘going it alone’ back in 2003?  Didn’t we hear (retrospectively, or course) about what a bad decision it was to get involved in a Middle Eastern crisis and how we had no business there? 

Irrespective of where you landed on the Iraq war, shouldn’t we all agree that we should be pretty darn sure about WMDs before launching US military action?   We do seem to have enough evidence to be sure that sarin gas was used, but we don’t know much else.  The idea that Syrian rebels used it themselves to draw the US into the conflict seemed like a fringe conspiracy theory at first glance. I mean, who would do something like that?  Let’s go to the archives:

In August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait.  On October 10, 1990, a Kuwaiti nurse appeared before the US Congressional Human Rights Caucus.  This quotation was reported on 60 minutes:

“Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, my name is Nayirah, and I just came out of Kuwait. While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the children to die on the cold floor. [crying] It was horrifying. “

American’s were outraged.  President Bush himself mentioned babies “thrown on the floor like firewood”.  On January 10, 1991, the US Senate voted to authorize war against Iraq.  The vote passed by 5 votes, and 7 senators cited Nayirah’s testimony as an influence in their decision to support the use of US military force.  After the US invasion, further investigation revealed no evidence to support her claims.  Instead, news reporters learned that Nayirah was actually the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US. The Washington Post also reported that the story, including presentations to the UN and Congress, was promoted by a Washington PR firm who was paid $11 Million by “Citizens for a Free Kuwait”.  Never underestimate the influence of skilled marketing.

In today’s Congressional testimony, Secretary Kerry painted a grim picture of 1426 dead in Syria, including 426 children.

"Instead of being tucked safely in their beds at home," he said, "we saw rows of children lying side by side, sprawled on a hospital floor, all of them dead from Assad's gas and surrounded by parents and grandparents who had suffered the same fate."

I heard Senator after Senator jump on the bandwagon with terms like “Syrian atrocities”, “shock the conscience of the world”, and “crimes against humanity”.  Nobody seemed to recall Nayirah, at least not when the cameras were rolling.

Syria has been ‘comms dark’, as dictatorships can be.  Syrian Dictator Assad has flatly denied using chemical weapons, which is to be expected.  We don’t have the benefit of a free press and streaming video to expose the facts and let us decide for ourselves.  But we should at least consider that we have precedent for Middle East organizations exaggerating facts to win sympathy of hearts and minds in the US.  Maybe some conspiracy theories aren’t as wild as they sound.

Besides that, we need to understand that not every conflict has ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’.  Some have ‘bad guys’ and ‘worse guys’.   But politicians have become adept at condensing every major issue into a 20-30 second synopsis, which is the attention span of the average voter.  In March of 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Bashar Assad a “reformer”.  Our current Secretary of State, John Kerry, called him a thug and compared him to Adolf Hitler.  Hey, people change.   But more importantly, we need to graduate from the simplistic notion that if one side in an atrocity is horribly evil, the other side must represent truth and light.  Bombing Assad into the Stone Age would leave a power gap that could quite possibly be filled with the kind of Muslim extremists who would love to get their hands on the weapons Assad has stockpiled over the years.  Of course a more limited attack would avoid that outcome, but… remind me the point of the attack if not to inflict significant damage?

I sort of understand the argument that a strong response is needed to send a message to others in the world who are watching.  But it’s a stretch to claim that US vital interests are at stake at any time, any place in the world, any time a chemical weapon is used, but not when thousands are slaughtered in tribal violence in Rwanda, Darfur, or even in Syria when citizens were killed in more conventional ways. 

Syria is a complex problem for which we have no easy answers. We should have seen this coming and done something to head if off years ago.  But that would have required more than 20-30 seconds to analyze and explain to voters.

The Zimmerman files

We’ve all been relentlessly bombarded in the past few weeks about the trial of George Zimmerman.  The jury found Zimmerman not guilty of second degree murder and manslaughter or Trayvon Martin, which were the charges against him.

Celebrities are quick to cash in on a perceived opportunity to appear to have a social conscience.  Kirsty Ally tweeted “White people used to make black people drink from separate fountains. Now we just shoot their children.”  Never mind that George Zimmerman is Hispanic, not white.

Miley Cyrus, that intellectual titan, tweeted “No justice, no peace”. Concise, yet vapid.

The Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson never let facts get in the way of a good public outrage. They calling for federal prosecution, prison for Zimmerman and a UN investigation to right the wrongs of an oppressive America.  That’s what they do.   

Eric Holder, who’s FBI already investigated and found no evidence of racism in George Zimmerman’s background, is investigating whether to bring federal charges against Zimmerman. And no less than the President of the United States chose to disregard the judge, jury and prosecution in the Zimmerman case declared who declared that the Zimmerman trial was not about race or Florida’s stand-your-ground law but about self-defense.  “Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago”, he told the world.  Really?  Obama would have been wandering around a housing complex in the middle of a rainy night and tried to beat in the head of a neighborhood watch volunteer because he thought he was being followed?  I suppose if he would have taken any questions at the ‘press conference’ someone might have actually asked him that.

Nobody is surprised that celebrities and politicians make grandiose statements about public events to try to polish their image.  But this isn’t about global warming, charity or demagoguing about Wall Street tycoons, big oil, or corporate America. The target here is a living, breathing man who has been found not guilty by an American jury.    We might expect gang leaders like Sharpton and Jackson to regard the welfare, reputation and even the very life of one non-white man as a collateral damage in a larger war.  But we ought to be frightened and outraged that our President can so easily throw an American citizen to the wolves to score political points. 

The Florida prosecutors didn’t even want to try the case because they couldn’t find enough evidence to convict.  But, bowing to public outrage from the racist community, the Florida attorney general went out and retained a different prosecution team and pressed ahead.  I can almost imagine how Pontius Pilot might have felt when an angry mob demanded appeasement.  Yet Pilot at least had the integrity to wash his hands of the injustice rather than be part of the travesty.  Our administration wants to be out in front of the mob, waving torches and basking in the glory.

George Zimmerman’s life has been a nightmare for the past year and a half, and he didn’t do anything other than defend himself.  Now, some public figures are determined to make him suffer even more – not because there is any evidence that he should – but only because they are willing to sacrifice his life for what they consider a more noble cause.  We have heard a lot of emotional speeches from people who ‘fear for their children’ in wake of the Zimmerman verdict.  Even more justified may be the fear of having our lives ruined by shameless, publicity hungry government officials.  

The Edward Snowden Affair

I’ve been trying to understand the media frenzy around NSA contractor Edward Snowden.  As media types are prone to do, they focus far more on headlines than investigating facts so it’s difficult to find out exactly what happened.  We are led to believe that Snowden, a high-school dropout who worked as a contractor to the US National Security Agency, not only had access to but also revealed these alarming details regarding highly sensitive surveillance that the US government was conducting on unsuspecting citizens:  Our phone records are being monitored.   

 Is anyone really shocked by this?  Anyone who has ever watched a spy movie or a gangster film knows that the government has the ability to see and hear just about anything we do.  And when terrorists like the Tsarnaev brothers conspire to detonate bombs at the Boston Marathon, we demand that the government do more to eavesdrop on bad guys so they can be stopped before they inflict their damage.  We want our government to identify, locate and round up all the colleagues that the Tsarnaev brothers corresponded with in the days leading up to and immediately after the attack, and the only way to do this is to have access to their phone records.  

So what’s the big deal?  The big deal is that people are uncomfortable with the idea that Big Brother knows too much about us.  Most brutal regimes demand loyalty from their citizens, and resistance can be easily nipped in the bud if the ruling class has access to otherwise private correspondence.    But at the end of a long, heated debate, most of us acknowledge the inevitable tradeoff of personal freedoms for greater security.  But we would feel more comfortable that our government would be responsible with this information if we didn’t have bald faced scandals involving the IRS and justice department using their influence to target political enemies.   It’s hard to take politicians seriously when they say “Trust us, we won’t use this information against you” when we just heard the IRS apologize for unfairly targeting groups who used names that ran afoul of the political leanings of the government employees in power.  

But let’s get back to Snowden.  We should be concerned that a low-level systems administration contractor could get access to classified information.  I’ve been to the NSA headquarters, and I have to say these are the most paranoid group of people I’ve ever encountered.  We couldn’t bring into the building any laptops, cameras, phones, jump drives, SD disks, CD-ROMs or anything that could be used to transfer information. We had to bring a US Government issued ID that matched the NSA employee sponsored invitation list, and there were guards with machine guns posted at the metal detector entrance to let us know how serious they were.  The conference rooms had no windows, lest someone spy through from some remote mountain vantage point. Nothing could be removed from the room, and we were subject to search before retrieving our items when exiting.  How could such a group possibly say “Oops, we didn’t think to restrict contractor access to our classified information”?  

More likely the case is that Snowden really didn’t have access to anything top secret, or even anything that wasn’t common knowledge.  Some people – maybe Snowden himself - apparently don’t spend time thinking that much of the stuff they put on the Internet, emails, facebook, etc can be seen by anyone with a computer, and that includes NSA employees.  So those people act shocked to learn that the US Government can see what you posted and who you called.  But just because Snowden isn’t the James Bond he wants to portray doesn’t mean we should treat his activity lightly.  The US Government’s response cannot be limited by the value of the information Snowden revealed, but it must send a message to any and all future traitors that the US takes disclosure agreements seriously, and you should not think that 15 minutes of international fame is a good tradeoff for betraying your country.  Just like presidents lying to congress, we cannot allow ourselves to discern between ‘important lies’ and ‘excusable lies’.  It’s the principle of the act and the integrity of the security measures that must be considered.  

So I hope we catch Edward Snowden, put him on trial, and send him to prison for a very long time.  But maybe not until he has had to live in hiding for a few months, and the world finds out how meaningless this spy info really is.  Then the world would see clearly how fame and notoriety is such a bad trade for a lifetime of fear, regret and shame.

Just Don't Call it Branch Rickey Day

Most of us in the US know April 15^th as tax day, the day when federal and state personal income taxes are due.  But starting in 2004 major league baseball declared that on April 15 of each year, every player in every game wears number 42 in honor of Jackie Robinson, the Texas oil baron who sacrificed fame and fortune to be the first black professional baseball player. No, wait – he was a research chemist working on a vaccine for leukemia.  No, that’s not it either… perhaps he was a concert pianist and composer who gave up his career for the social advancement of his race? 

Well, actually none of those is accurate.  Jackie Robinson was just a good athlete who was the first black offered money to play baseball.  He wasn’t necessarily better than all other black players before him, it wasn’t that he sacrificed some greater calling to prove a point about race, it wasn’t that he organized a march on Washington, refused to give up his seat on the bus, or risked being thrown in jail to be a historic champion of civil rights.  He just agreed to live the dream of tens of thousands of other kids who wished they could get paid for playing a game they loved. 

So why do we need a Jackie Robinson day?  What was the selfless and heroic act he represented that blazed the way for all future black athletes?  Well, racism was definitely strong in major league baseball in the 1940s. No official rule existed that banned blacks from joining the league, but no team had been willing to sign black players despite their demonstrated success in the Negro league.   For sure, Mr. Robinson would face resistance from fans, players, media, and maybe even his own teammates for invading a ‘white sport’.   But let’s not forget, he wasn’t picking up garbage or shining shoes, he was playing baseball for money.  I have no quarrel with Jackie Robinson; by all accounts he was a great player, a great teammate, and never folded to the temptation of lashing out at his antagonists. 

Let’s be honest, who had the most to lose when Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers?  A strong case could be made for Branch Rickey, a white business manager who took the risk to break ranks with the fellow owners and league officials by signing a black man. But you probably never heard of Branch Rickey¸ even though he is recognized as the innovator of the major league farm system, for signing the first Hispanic player, for encouraging the expansion of the league by adding new teams, and for instituting the use of baseball helmets.  Rickey was quoted as saying "I may not be able to do something about racism in every field, but I can sure do something about it in baseball."        

But Rickey’s ambitions put him at odds with many others in baseball management. Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, a judge, opposed Rickey’s proposal for a farm system, thinking it would ruin the existing minor leagues. But his perseverance ensured the survival of the farm system, along with many other beneficial changes to baseball including spring training facilities, batting cages, pitching machines and new statistical measurements for measuring effectiveness. Rickey’s gamble on Jackie Robinson paid off with Robinson wining Rookie of the Year honors and his Dodgers going to the World Series. 

Yet Rickey paid the price for making his enemies. He was forced out of the Dodgers organization and faced resentment from other team owners and management.  So if we define heroes as those who do something selfless on behalf of others, who is the real hero who broke the color barrier of major league baseball?   Shouldn’t we have a Branch Rickey day?  

But that’s not how racism works.  Black racists need to take every opportunity to remind America how underprivileged and oppressed blacks are, and how white people owe them for the crimes of the past. And white people, trying to assuage a conscience of guilt for not having their own history of oppression, jump on board to 'atone for the sins' of a generation they neither created or supported. Soon to be released is the movie "42", which will again enshrine Jackie Robinson as the champion of civil rights- the 'David' who slayed the white 'Goliaths' of race.  Expect Oscar nominations, no matter how bad the acting or directing actually is. 

   

Wouldn’t it be refreshing if next year on Jackie Robinson day, if one of the dozens of players interviewed would depart from the script of “Jackie breaking the color barrier” and give some credit to Branch Rickey for making it possible?  And even more refreshing will be the day when we stop treating black accomplishments like something unnatural and unexpected and instead treat them as ordinary members of the human race.