What next, Mr. President?

The President waves to the crowd before his 2012 acceptance speech.

    On Nov. 6, Barack Obama secured a second term as President of the United States of America. While I congratulate Obama on his victory, I must ask: what exactly, Mr. President, will you do in the next four years?
    The focus of Obama’s reelection campaign was the economy, so it is reasonable to assume that he will make strengthening the economy his top priority. The centerpiece of the President’s first-term economic policy was the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (i.e. the stimulus), which made long-term investments in infrastructure, green energy, education and manufacturing. Obama plans to enact another, smaller stimulus in his second term, named the American Jobs Act, which will cut income and payroll taxes and increase infrastructure and education spending. The rest of his economic plan consists of an overhaul of the tax code and investments in energy. Obama promises to raise the capital gains tax (a tax on investments and stocks held for more than one year that primarily affects the wealthy) from 15 to 20 percent and to raise taxes on the top two tax brackets from 33 and 35 percent to 36 and 39.6 percent, respectively. His tax plan also includes promises to eliminate loopholes and to streamline the tax code for businesses and individuals. The plan specifies to phase out loopholes for those with incomes over $200,000 and to eliminate several loopholes for large companies, although how it plans to streamline the tax code remains unclear. He also aims to create or extend numerous tax credits for individuals and businesses, such as a $3,000 credit per each worker hired for businesses, cut the corporate tax rate, eliminate the current tax credit for outsourcing and extend the Bush tax cuts and other tax cuts and credits for individuals making less than $200,000 per year.

The President’s energy policy in his next term will be similar to his first term’s energy policy. Obama plans to focus primarily on funding alternative energy while also expanding access to cheap hydrocarbons. He aims to raise fuel efficiency requirements for vehicles, set a requirement that all utilities must produce 80 percent of their electricity by 2035, continue funding and supporting the alternative energy industry and increase gas, oil and coal production by opening up some public lands to drilling and encouraging hydraulic fracking (a new, controversial type of natural gas extraction) while insisting on higher environmental safeguards for drilling and fracking.

    For the President, economic policy and fiscal policy dovetail, which is why he has proposed a plan for cutting the deficit. His plan for reducing the deficit centers around an 80-page deficit reduction plan that he drafted in 2011. Obama calls for raising taxes on the wealthy by eliminating the capital gains tax, raising marginal income tax rates and eliminating loopholes for the wealthy. The plan also incorporates spending cuts. Obama plans to cut $257 billion from discretionary spending, primary by cutting subsidies to agriculture and the oil industry. He will also cut $450 billion from the defense budget, try to cut Medicare’s budget by negotiating with pharmaceutical companies to lower drug prices and to levy an additional Social Security tax of 2-4 percent on those with incomes over $200,000 to try to make Social Security solvent, among other things. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), this budget will cut the debt by $2 trillion and increase GDP growth by 0.6 percent, although the President’s opponents point out that his budget adds $4 trillion to the deficit when compared to the CBO’s baseline budget, which includes the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and sequestration (an imminent series of spending cuts). Despite his willingness to cut the deficit, Obama has stated that he will try to prevent the impending “fiscal cliff” (i.e. the impending combination of the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and sequestration), which is projected by the CBO to put the economy back into recession. Like much of Obama’s economic policy, however, his deficit plan is unlikely to pass through the Republican-controlled House.

Indeed, because the Democrats do not control Congress, the only thing that Obama can be guaranteed to do in his second term is to cement the achievements of his first term. Two of his main accomplishments, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank), a banking and financial sector reform law and the Affordable Care Act, still have major provisions that need to be implemented. The main achievement of Dodd-Frank was to require regulatory agencies and new committees set up by the law to draft and enact certain regulations of the financial sector. Only one-half of these rules have been drafted however, so Obama will have to fight to get the rest of the regulations drafted. Similarly, most of the important provisions of the Affordable Care Act, including the individual mandate and the ban on gender discrimination by insurance companies, will be enacted in 2014. Since several states are already trying to fight these provisions through both legislation and governor decree, Obama will have to fight, using the courts, personal influence over state governments and possibly legislation, to ensure that the main provisions of healthcare reform get enacted.

On social policy, Obama supports gay rights, gender equality and immigration reform. The most important social policy for Obama is women’s rights, judging by the amount of focus he placed on it in his first term. The President aims to expand free contraceptive access to women, pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, which aims to make it easier for victims of wage discrimination to discover if they are being discriminated against and to seek justice and to try to pass other bills that combat sexual violence and wage discrimination. The President believes that women should be allowed to get abortions, so he will likely oppose potential legislation that restricts access to abortions, both in Congress and at the state level. In terms of gay rights issues, Obama supports legalization of same-sex marriage, although how he plans to achieve this is unclear, as it can only be accomplished by amending the Constitution. He also plans to enact the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (which bans hiring discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity) and repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman for federal purposes. On the issue of immigration, the President’s platform notes his support for reforming and streamlining the immigration process, although his platform lists no explicit reforms. He is a noted supporter of the DREAM Act, which would provide illegal immigrants who are students or soldiers in America with permanent residency status, and he would probably make trying to pass the DREAM Act his biggest goal as far as immigration is concerned. Since he has described his failure to pass the the DREAM Act as the biggest failure of his first term, it is reasonable to expect that he will make pushing for the DREAM Act one of his top priorities in his second term.

Although Obama fought for all of these issues in his first term, the extent to which he would be able to achieve them in his second term is limited due to both the limited Constitutional role of the President and the fact that the House is controlled by Republicans. The most important way that Obama can influence social policy is through whom he appoints to the Supreme Court. Four justices are in their late 70s and are thus likely to retire. The Court, which is split 5-4, is set to rule on cases concerning the constitutionality of the 1968 Civil Rights Act, the Defense of Marriage Act, the constitutionality of affirmative action and California’s Proposition 8, among other important social issues, so who Obama appoints to the Court will have long-lasting effects on social issues.

The foreign policy of Obama’s second term, like his first term, will be centered on slowly ending the War on Terror while preparing to face other, more long-term threats. Obama’s primary foreign policy challenge in his next term will be to ensure that the 2014 withdrawal from Afghanistan goes well. The success of the withdrawal will be contingent on whether Afghan security forces are able to fight terrorism on their own in 2014 and whether the Afghan government will be able to become functioning, strong and non-corrupt, so the President will likely focus on making these things happen in his second term. Even after the Afghanistan withdrawal, Obama will have to continue to fight terrorism. He will probably continue his policy of drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, and will have to manage the backlash and opposition that they generate, although he has offered no specifics.

The President’s primary foreign policy plan is to shift American power away from the Middle East and towards Asia. The centerpiece of this effort will be to continue the “pivot” to Asia, which is the rebalancing of American power (especially military power) towards East Asia and especially China. The President promises to shift 60 percent of our military strength to Asia by 2020, an effort that is already underway, and to attack China’s allegedly unfair trade policies, although he probably will not do so due to the risk of starting a trade war. He also will likely reach out to American allies in East Asia, especially India, and continue to invest in military hardware for South Korea and Japan. Unfortunately, he has offered few specifics on other major foreign policy issues, including Iran, the rise of the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and the economic crisis in Europe. Judging from his first-term’s record, Obama will likely try to reach out to Brazil and India, increase sanctions on Iran while continuing both covert military actions against Iran and create efforts to find a diplomatic way to remove Iran’s nuclear weapons and ignore the crisis in Europe.

Barack Obama has a difficult four years ahead of him. He will have to fix the economy, prevent the deficit from spiraling further out of control, protect the rights of minorities and refocus our foreign policy towards long-term threats, all while having to battle strong Republican opposition in Congress. I wish him good luck. He’ll need it.

We gave up in Afghanistan today

An American medic treats a wounded French soldier in Afghanistan.

Something huge happened today: we gave up in Afghanistan. This was a long time coming. American interest in the war has fallen substantially and is now nearly non-existent. The Republicans did not mention the war at their convention (Clint Eastwood's mention of Afghanistan in his speech, the only mention of the war in the Republican convention, does not count) and devoted just part of a paragraph to it in their platform while the Democrats mentioned the war just once at their convention. The war receives just two percent of all news coverage. Although everything from the high price and difficulty of the covering the war to the complexity of the conflict (which makes it too difficult for most Americans to understand), the main reason the war is not featured in the media is simple: people just don’t care about it. Three-fourths of Americans disapprove of the war, and almost none rank it as the most important issue in the Presidential election. Even the government is ignoring the war. Because of its unpopularity, the war in Afghanistan is ignored by the President. The most popular solution, speeding the withdrawal, is militarily impossible: the Afghan army is not ready to maintain order in Afghanistan or combat terrorism, evidenced by its systemic corruption, its failure in counter-terrorism operations (specifically in the Helmand region), and, most importantly, the huge number of green-on-blue attacks that raise questions about the loyalty and cohesiveness of the Afghan force. The President knows that he is in a double-bind: succumbing to popular opinion would lead to a partial collapse of the Afghan state at best and a Taliban resurgence at worst, neither of which would go over well with voters, while dragging on the expensive and bloody war is unpopular. The best solution for the President is to thus keep the war out of the spotlight, where it cannot hurt his chances for re-election.

All of this collective disgust with the war and ignorance towards it has an effect on the situation on the ground. The President’s sole focus in Afghanistan has, for the past year, been trying to end the war as quickly as possible. The entirety of the Afghanistan section in his platform is devoted to reminding the American people that he is orchestrating the withdrawal of American forces from the country. Indeed, his entire line of attack against Romney in his platform is that Romney “has suggested he would leave [American troops in Afghanistan] indefinitely.” The consequences of this have been his decision to publicly announce the withdrawal timeline (which is very useful for the Taliban because it gives them a clearly defined schedule for preparing to reconquer Afghanistan, a schedule that yesterday’s massive, complex attack on “impregnable” Camp Bastion proves they are following) and to leave no troops in Afghanistan after the deadline, which could contribute to instability there if the Afghan army is not ready by 2014, as now looks probable.

The president’s strategy vis-a-vis Afghanistan is now shifting to include another aim: keep the war out of the spotlight. This shift in strategy is best illustrated by today’s announcement that man-on-man training of the Afghan army, which is more effective than training in huge groups (think of the benefits of learning from a tutor over learning in a huge lecture hall), will be ended. This will surely reduce number of American casualties (which will also reduce the amount of news coverage the war receives), but it will make the Afghan army less effective. Although it can be argued that Obama is simply showing concern for our troops, we have to keep in mind that the point of sending soldiers somewhere is for them to go into harm’s way. While it is very generous of Obama to care for American troops, it runs counter to the point of deploying soldiers somewhere in the first place.

It’s hard to place the blame on Obama for America’s failure to fully commit to Afghanistan because it is brought on by the American people’s apathy and disgust towards the war. Mitt Romney’s vague plan for Afghanistan, which consists of little other than a promise to provide security in South and Central Asia (that’s about as specific as if he made his China policy “interact with China”) and a criticism of Obama’s public announcement of the withdrawal timeline. If we want to see change in our Afghanistan policy, we need to take interest in the war. We can’t have both a speedy withdrawal and a low-intensity war. We have to ramp up troop training efforts and supervision of the Afghan forces if we want order to stay in the country. Bases for drones and special operations will have to stay past the 2014 deadline in the likely event that terrorism threatens the Afghan government. We may even need to do a top-down restructuring of the Afghan government and military to root out corruption and diffuse power from the current elite to include more ethnic groups. Will this take a lot of effort and resources? Of course. But we have committed far too many resources to Afghanistan to simply half-ass the final, crucial transition and waste our 11 years of hard work there. Afghanistan is not just some backwards hellhole that we invaded in an imperialist fit of post-9/11 rage. It is a resource rich energy hub that, if its natural gas and minerals are exploited and the proposed pipelines through there are built, could change the balance of power in Asia depending on which country, China or India (or both or neither) exploits it first. It is a key piece in the struggle between India, a rising superpower, and Pakistan, an important player in the War on Terror, that shapes all of our interactions with South Asia and most of our policy towards the Indian Ocean. And, finally, it has the potential to become a terrorist base once again, which would allow for Al-Qaeda to launch another mass casualty attack on the American mainland. Afghanistan is still crucial to our country’s security, and if we give up now, all our resources spent their will be wasted. If the American public puts pressure on the Administration to go whole hog in Afghanistan, we may yet succeed. It is not yet too late.

It was ok to kill al-Aulaqi

There has been a lot of controversy lately surrounding Attorney General Eric Holder's speech in which he defended the Obama administration's killing of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Aulaqi. Holder argues in his speech that due process does not imply judicial process, i.e. a trial, since judicial process is not specified in the Constitution. Although he is correct, since the Supreme Court has consistently ruled that due process is liberty, not judicial process, this is a highly unwise argument to make, since many Americans view due process as referring to judicial process. Holder regrettably ignored the many valid and popular justifications for the legality of the killing of al-Aulaqi.

One argument leveled against the Obama administration is that al-Aulaqi was merely a terrorist sympathizer, not a combatant, so his killing was not justified under the laws of war, which only permit the killing of enemy combatants. This calls for a little background information. Al-Aulaqi, a former radical Islamic imam and al-Qaeda propagandist, was also a direct planner of terrorist attacks. In the failed Christmas Day Bombing of 2009, al-Aulaqi not only advocated for the attack, but he helped plan the attack and supply the perpetrator. As RAND counter-terrorism expert Seth Jones said, "Al-Awlaki actually helped get him [the bomber] in a jihadi camp, helped him get access to the underwear bomb and then actually walked him through [it]. He wanted [the bomber] to wait to explode [the bomb] over American airspace." He further instructed the bomber on how to evade capture. In addition, Al-Aulaqi had communicated regularly with Maj. Nidal Hasan, the man responsible for the deaths of 13 U.S. soldiers at Fort Hood, and had not only encouraged Maj. Hasan to carry out the attack, he gave Maj. Hasan his personal blessing to carry out the attack. In the words of al-Aulaqi, "[I] blessed the act because it was against a military target." Going further back, one can see ties between al-Aulaqi and 9/11. In early 2000, al-Aulaqi met with several of the 9/11 hijackers, including Khalid al-Mihdhar, both al-Hazmi brothers, and one other unidentified hijacker. In February of that same year, al-Aulaqi made four calls to Oman al-Bayoumi, who assisted the hijackers, although the FBI is confident that Nawaf al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar were using al-Bayoumi's at the time. Ominously, al-Aulaqi  After the attacks, al-Aulaqi admitted to the FBI of having met with Nawaf al-Hazmi several times, although he did not tell the FBI what they discussed.

Although the above is already a fairly damning implication of al-Aulaqi in terrorism, the acts detailed above are only those in which al-Aulaqi had a direct involvement. His indirect involvement, in the form of radicalizing Muslims and then inspiring them to do terror, has had a far greater impact: he inspired or aided the Times Square bomb plot, the 2010 British Airlines bomb plot, and the 2009 Little Rock recruitment office attack, to name a few. Although some claim that al-Aulaqi acted as a journalist or commentator when he advocated violence against Americans (in the same way that O'Reilly is considered a commentator instead of a combatant despite his calls for war with Iran), this claim ignores al-Aulaqi's direct involvement in inspiring people to kill (many terrorists have cited al-Aulaqi as their inspiration), his recruitment campaigns for al-Qaeda, the fact that he both advocates and plans terror in his speeches (one of his most famous pamphlets, 44 ways to support jihad, calls on Muslims to finance and join jihadi organizations and to undergo weapons training), and his membership in al-Qaeda. These facts, particularly the last one, mean that al-Aulaqi is more similar to a military recruiter, military chaplain, or senior officer than to a journalist. These clear ties to al-Qaeda make it hard to argue that al-Aulaqi is a civilian.

There is also the legality aspect. Critics of the killing of al-Aulaqi argue that it is illegal to kill a U.S. citizen without due process. However, because the U.S. is at war with al-Qaeda, al-Aulaqi's organization, al-Aulaqi is effectively an enemy combatant. U.S. law allows for the killing of the killing of enemy combatants regardless of their citizenship, so this killing was justified. Although it can be argued that the U.S. could just call anyone a terrorist and thus justify killing them, al-Qaeda is a serious enough threat to justify calling them an enemy, as Maj. Matthew Machon and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights explain, "Statman claims that the United States is entitled to classify operations against al-Qaeda as war...based upon two specific criteria: (a) the gravity of the threat posed by al Qaeda and (b) the impracticality of coping with this threat by conventional law-enforcing institutions and methods. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Report on Terrorism and Human Rights in 2002 appears to agree[s] with the assessment of Statman." Maj. Machon is right on both fronts: al-Qaeda has killed over 5,000 Americans, and intimidation of juries and witnesses by terrorist groups plus the difficulty of finding 100% conclusive evidence of al-Qaeda membership makes trials of terrorists almost impossible.

Part (b), the impracticality of law-enforcement, applies particularly well to al-Aulaqi's case. His location in Yemen, deep in the heart of an al-Qaeda stronghold, would have made his capture difficult if not impossible. Trying al-Aulaqi would have just given him an opportunity to rant about his political beliefs for hours, and the fact that he is not a trigger-puller but a support-member in al-Qaeda would make him difficult to convict, especially since civilian courts have a tendency to clear terrorists of their charges (see: Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani).

Finally, al-Aulaqi will not set a precedent for killing Americans. In the U.S. Civil War, the Confederates were all former U.S. citizens, and yet they were killed. Indeed, some Northerners defected to the South, and yet some of them were still killed by Union troops. This precedent of the U.S. being allowed to kill Americans who try to destroy America has been around since 1861, and yet we have not been plunged into a fascist dictatorship. This proves that the U.S. only attacks organizations that pose a great threat to its security, and al-Qaeda is one of those organizations.

So to recap: al-Aulaqi was a confirmed enemy combatant who was directly responsible for several attacks on U.S. citizens and was indirectly responsible for the deaths of many others. His status as a combatant invalidates any claims he could have had to a civilian trial, and the impossibility of capturing him made the drone strike the only viable option.

Thoughts on Iran

Iran's been in the news a lot recently, so I will share my humble opinion on Iran. Note: I am a Jewish Zionist, so this will be more than a bit biased.

Before anyone can have a reasonable discussion about foreign policy, it's necessary to know what we (the U.S.) wants. In the case of Iran, we want four things: oil, democracy in Iran, a market for U.S. goods, and no Iranian nuclear weapons. The first three make sense on their face, but we need to analyze the third one a bit more. After all, we didn't slap sanctions on France when it got its nuclear weapons.

We're scared of Iranian nuclear weapons for three reasons: First, they could obliterate Israel. Second, they could give their weapons to terrorists. Third, they could use their nuclear weapons to gain leverage and influence, both in the Middle East and abroad.

The first outcome is highly unlikely. Although most pundits consider Iran to be an undeterrable "rogue state" led by maniacs with one goal, that could easily describe Mao's China or the Soviet Union, and yet neither ever initiated nuclear holocaust upon getting their weapons. The Soviet Union, which existed for the sole purpose of spreading Marxism-Leninism at any cost to its own people, never initiated nuclear war. Neither did Mao Zedong, who famously stated "When 900 million are left out of 2.9 billion, several five-year plans can be developed for the total elimination of capitalism and for permanent peace. It is not a bad thing," in other words, that nuclear holocaust is a good thing. Iran's leadership is very rational and self interested, and they will continue to behave as such in the future.

With that in mind, the probability that Iran gives nuclear weapons to a terrorist group is very low. Even the most loyal terrorist organizations can often turn against the nation that sponsors them, as in the case of the U.S. funded Mujaheddin turning into Al-Qaeda. Further, the uranium in a nuclear weapon can be traced back to its source using modern nuclear forensics techniques, so any attack using an Iranian supplied bomb would be immediately identified as an attack by Iran, leading to a swift and deadly retaliation by the west. No self interested state would allow that to happen.
The main concern with a nuclear Iran, then, would be Iran becoming a major regional power and using its influence to spread terrorism, cause instability, and promote undemocratic and unfriendly regimes throughout the region through the use of coups and revolutions. Iran has been trying to do this for a long time, evidenced by its support for Hezbollah, Bashar al-Assad, Iraqi anti-government militias, and the 2011 attempted Shiite uprising in Bahrain. American military might has a record of providing credible deterrence against potentially harmful regimes, and it can continue to do so in the future. Thus, more troop deployments to the Middle East, coupled with more exercises, can help to credibly deter a rising Iran. Further, more financial and diplomatic aid to U.S. allies (and neutral countries) in the Middle East can strengthen U.S. allies in the region and bring neutral countries over to our side. Thus, in the event that Iran attempts to overthrow a friendly regime, the friendly regime will be stronger and better equipped to defeat an undemocratic uprising. To stop terrorism, small groups of U.S. special operations troops can be deployed to terrorist hotspots to train local forces and root out terrorist cells, in a fashion similar to the highly successful Operation Enduring Freedom - Philippines.

However, recent events, such as Iran's ultimatum warning the USS John C. Stennis not to return to the Persian Gulf, or this New York Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/world/middleeast/us-warns-top-iran-leader-not-to-shut-strait-of-hormuz.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2), which claimed that the U.S. Navy would lose against the Iranian Navy, make the deployment of troops to the region look like a dangerous option. These fears are misguided. Although Iran has been making a lot of noise about how it won't tolerate any U.S. forces in the Gulf, the USS Abraham Lincoln and her carrier strike group entered the Gulf this morning without incident. Further, the day after Iran issued its ultimatum to the Stennis, her crew reported that the Iranian warships and aircraft in the Gulf were not stepping up their patrols (as would be expected if the Iranians actually planned to take action against the Stennis. The crew of the Stennis reported that the Iranian warships were returning to port, exactly the opposite of what would be expected. The 2002 Navy computer wargame cited by the New York Times as evidence that the Iranian navy would win in a fight over the Straight of Hormuz was highly flawed: the simulation glitched, allowing the Iranian patrol boats to both teleport and regenerate.

Note that I'm not advocating war with Iran. I advocate increased military exercises and deployments to the Persian Gulf region. War with Iran would be a disaster because it would cost an unreasonable amount of money, hurt our image abroad (which would erase our soft power and fuel terrorism), and probably not even work.

Further, sanctions have failed. Economic sanctions have mostly hurt the Iranian people, and have allowed the regime to skillfully paint a picture of unwarranted U.S. aggression that increases support for the regime, the exact thing we don't want. Besides, sanctions hurt the economies of Europe and our East-Asian allies by denying them the oil their economy relies on.

So what would work? The only policy that has seemed to work so far is covert attacks on Iran's nuclear program, such as Stuxnet or the "accidental" explosion of Iran's nuclear facilities earlier this year. However, a better solution would be to persuade Iran to give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons. This cannot be done with the overtly hostile current regime, regime change is thus needed. The problem of encouraging regime change in Iran is the high probability of a repeat of the 1979 Iranian revolution (U.S. funded!) which put Khomeini and the current regime in power. To avoid this, we need to covertly fund an opposition group in Iran that aligns itself with U.S. interests. From what I hear from Iranian people, such groups exist. If we can cause such a group to become powerful enough, they could overthrow the government, giving us an ally in the region.

Thus, we could achieve all four of our objectives in Iran fairly easily: lifting sanctions secures our oil, a revolution would spread democracy and give American businesses a market to export to, and increased troop deployments would stop Iranian regional hegemony in its tracks.

Citations:
http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Quotes/maoterror.htm
http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/08/23/the_martyr_state_myth
Nuclear Forensics: Role, State of the Art, and Program Needs; Joint Working Group of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Counterstrike: The untold story of America's secret campaign against Al Qaeda, Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker. Times Books, 16 August 2011.
http://oilandglory.foreignpolicy.com/category/wordpress_tag/iran_sanctions